Security governance and the limits of depoliticisation: EU policies to protect critical infrastructures and prevent radicalisation

Abstract

This article alerts to the emergence and limitations of a depoliticised problem-solving approach to security governance that relies primarily on informal steering through networks of selected stakeholders and the generation of expert knowledge. It argues that such an understanding - as visible in both academic discourse and political practice - reaches its limits when being applied to highly erratic and contentious security issues, such as terrorism and radicalisation, for which there is no scholarly and political agreement to build upon. In these cases, adopting a strategy of depoliticisation not only raises problems from a normative democratic standpoint, but also fails to achieve its own practical and political goals. Rather than facilitating technical consensus and smooth implementation, this kind of security governance cannot escape the uncertainty and contestation inherent in the issues at hand. Therefore, eventually, it gets bogged down in the contingent security politics and myopic ad-hocery that it has sought to overcome. This examination focuses specifically on the case of EU internal security governance and it substantiates its arguments through two empirical illustrations using EU policies to protect critical infrastructures and prevent radicalisation.