The Securitization of Good Governance?

Abstract

Promoting good governance has, since the 1990s, been a central component towards envisaging development assistance. However, good governance contemporarily configures in the security domain as well, which can be attributed to the current foreign political emphasis of combining civil-military efforts and the notion that development and security are intertwined. Using the Copenhagen School’s Securitization Framework and aspects of Thierry Balzacq’s and Rita Floyd’s “sociological approach” to securitization, this thesis charts discursively and non-discursively good governance’s transition into the security domain. On the basis of considering power, context and practice towards securitization, it is demonstrated that good governance has successfully been securitized.