Introduction: Understanding the governance of security

This collection of essays has an explanatory as well as a normative focus. On the one hand it tries to establish and clarify what it is that we know, as well as that which we don't know (at least very well), about the ways in which ‘security’ is thought about and promoted within diverse empirical contexts. Based on what we know, and recognizing what we don't know, this book shares some key concerns about how the advancement and protection of democratic values is being threatened or compromised by contemporary arrangements for security governance. In light of such worries, various theoretical and practical ideas for ways forward are argued, and in some cases vehemently so, by contributors to this volume. What we, as editors, hoped for in preparing this book was to provide more structure to the ‘friendly dialogue’ that has been occurring between those advancing different descriptions and explanations of what has been happening and/or those offering different assessments of what is at stake for the future of democracy and what to do about it. In reading the chapters herein it will become clear that there is more agreement about what has been happening than there is about what to do about it. None the less, there remain important differences in the ways in which scholars describe and explain contemporary developments, reflecting their use of different conceptual and analytical tools.