When energy becomes security: Copenhagen School ...

When energy becomes security: Copenhagen School meets energy studies Kacper Szulecki, University of Oslo [email protected] Draft – please do not circulate or quote without author’s permission Abstract: In this paper I try to do several things at once – and probably I will end up splitting it in two, eventually. The main goal is discussing why, how and with what possible results can securitization theory be applied to the domain of energy. The paper starts with setting the stage, showing the divergence between the material conditions of energy systems and perceptions of energy security. I then discuss three main approaches to defining energy security, and present Cherp and Jewell’s (2014) definition as the most workable analytical one, still leaving space for empirical analyses of securitization. I then briefly reconstruct some main points of securitization theory (mostly drawing on the classic Copenhagen School formulations) and then provide three reasons for why energy security is most often not securitized at all. I then review the few existing studies that try to use securitization theory (beyond using the securitization slogan) in energy studies, and move on to propose how empirical research on energy securitization could look like, building on Guzzini’s proposal to treat securitization as a causal mechanism, as well as inputs from Hay’s interpretive policy analysis and more recent developments in securitization theory (Balzacq, Huysmans…). I then move to an empirical illustration (still rather chaotic) of securitization in two sectors: natural gas and electricity, taking place in/between Poland and Germany. I don’t conclude, because it’s too early to conclude anything.

Word count: 11 729 (no refs) 1. Introduction Although energy studies are and will be firmly rooted in “hard” scientific disciplines like physics and engineering, emphasizing the materiality of energy systems, there is already a considerable body of literature exploring the role cultural and discursive factors play in the way those systems are perceived, governed and interpreted (Sovacool 2014). Interestingly, perceptions of energy security diverge from objective accounts of energy landscapes. A good example is the way dependence on gas imports from Russia is interpreted differently across Europe – in ways which hardly correlate with the importance of gas for national markets. Clearly, energy security as a political concept has dynamics that cannot be explained with accounts of energy system materiality – other factors seem to shape this domain. Domestically, defining an energy sub-sector as an element of “national security” may imply removing it from the sphere of political debate and public scrutiny. This can be done strategically, as a political move aimed at safeguarding sovereignty in energy policy as one of core state powers (cf. (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2016). But it can also suggest the existence of a mechanism which influences the actions of political elites, though it is not necessarily steered by them. The concept of securitization, as initially proposed by the so called Copenhagen School (Wæver 1995); (Buzan et al. 1998), and later refined by other scholars (e.g. Balzacq, 2011; Guzzini, 2011) can be a very useful tool for analyzing 1

these questions. Securitization is rooted in the “basic idea that the existence and management of certain issues as security problems does not necessarily depend upon objective, or purely material conditions” (Balzacq and Guzzini 2015), p. 97). Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver define securitization as “the discursive process through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat […] and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat” (Buzan and Wæver 2003), p. 491). However, using securitization to the study of energy is not as straightforward as it may seem. In fact, although the concept is quite dated, there are surprisingly few studies that try to apply it consistently to the energy sector. Importantly though, the ‘energy+security’ amalgam rarely has the fundamental features and significant repercussions that securitization theory assumes. Hence, one can suggest that talking security in energy rarely implies securitizing it. Along these lines, Jonna Nyman (2013) interestingly points out that energy security – as a political domain – is often de-securitized, by Copenhagen School standards, that is – energy security can be discussed in normal, political terms and does not imply the “exceptional measures” of securitization. Another set of problems is related to the concept of securitization itself. Both critics, and supporters (Stritzel 2007; Balzacq and Guzzini 2015) have been asking whether securitization is a mechanism, a process, and act or an effect, and whether securitization theory is a theory at all – and if yes, what kind of theory? How can we then apply it to study the way in which energy issues become security matters? In this paper I first discuss what ‘energy security’ means and how it differs from ‘security’ in other contexts. I review existing studies of energy securitization, and then, building on existing theoretical proposals under the “securitization” umbrella, propose a workable approach to studying energy securitization empirically. In this theoretical bricolage I try to maintain fidelity to the initial goals, conceptualization and normative commitments of the Copenhagen School, but propose an explicitly causal interpretive/analytic framework. I sketch two models, one related to the macro-context in which (de)securitzation of energy occurs and another helping to grasp the micro-micro and micro-macro conditions for triggering securitization. What follows is an empirical illustration using material from energy security discussions in Poland. 2. Clarifying the concepts: energy security, security, and securitization Energy security Although the use of energy security has been gradually increasing in the 2000s (Bridge 2015), its definition is a contested issue. For the sake of my argument’s clarity, the quickly expanding body of literature on this topic can be boiled down to three most important approaches:   

Accepting a general policy consensus on a particular, supply oriented definition Searching for a broad positive definition derived in an inductive manner Adopting a narrower, analytic definition.

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The definition of energy security, sometimes even dubbed ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ (Cherp and Jewell 2014) is credited to Daniel Yergin, most importantly his 2006 “Foreign Affairs” article, even if Yergin tends to hold a more nuanced view of the matter. It is then defined as the “availability of sufficient energy supply at affordable prices.” This has later been expanded to the catchy “four As” of energy security: availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability, a formulation which, as Cherp and Jewell (2014) have shown, steals from a 1980s piece on the “5As of health care access”. Both these definitions are focused on energy supply and both define it in terms of a policy goal rather than a feature of energy systems themselves. They incorporate most or the whole of energy policy, often understood as a trilemma cast between the tips of an imagined policy triangle – security, affordability and sustainability. In fact, Yergin’s (1988, p. 112)earlier formulation clearly states that this is not a definition of energy security but its objective. The second approach, motivated by the drive to “open the black box of energy security” (Cox 2016) or to “propose a workable framework” to objectively measure it (Sovacool and Mukherjee 2011), values precision, nuance and complexity and tries to inductively acquire some conceptualization (much less definition) of energy security from the policy practitioners and academic experts practice (Sovacool 2011). In other words, it seeks for energy security’s meaning in the concepts use, or even in the normative prescriptions energy security practitioners give to the notion. The result of such exercises is either a complex web of energy security indicators (320 simple indicators and 52 complex indicators, in case of Sovacool and Mukherjee, 2011), or a broadly depicted landscape of issues and approaches which are, can or ought to be seen as elements of energy security (Cox, 2016), or further still, a rich cultural-relative notion of energy security (Sovacool 2016). Like in the previous set, these studies of energy security make no attempt at delimiting it from energy policy sensu largo, which gives them an interesting policy-oriented edge, but reduces analytic sharpness. Narrower, solidly grounded and analytical definitions are scarce. In fact, the only one which tries to cast energy security as an ideal type, emphasizing energy system’s characteristics has been put forth only quite recently by Aleh Cherp and Jessica Jewell (2013; 2014). Drawing explicitly on Arnold Wolfers, in a clear attempt to combine the rich tradition of security studies with an independently evolving literature on energy security, they specify what energy security would imply. Namely, they suggest that if energy security is indeed security, we need to ask: security for whom?; for which values?; and from what threats? – questions that most energy security conceptualizations not only fail to answer, but forget to ask. They thus arrive at a simple, but analytically significant definition of energy security as “low vulnerability of vital energy systems” (2014). This puts clear emphasis on (in)security, but also leaves space for perceptions and non-material factors to matter. Which energy systems are vital and why? What constitutes a vulnerability and who defines it? “Both vital energy systems and their vulnerabilities are not only objective phenomena, but also political constructs defined and prioritized by various social actors” (Cherp and Jewell, 2014, p. 419). In this way, Cherp and Jewell not only create a more objective benchmark against different ideas about energy security can be evaluated, but problematize the two earlier described approaches to energy security, putting them not in the definiens, 3

but making them a definiendum of their own. Lastly, they point out that the combination of securitizatoon theory and the concept of vital energy systems “offers promising avenues of future research” (Ibidem; also Ciută, 2010: 125), a call to which this article tries to respond by both enabling and giving an early example of such research. Security and securitization “Security”, write Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, “is about survival”, only to begin the next sentence with “It is when…”, indicating that they are more interested in security as event, rather than a state (1998: 21). Further, they suggest that “’Security’ is a move” (which should perhaps be better understood as a commonplace) “that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game” (Ibidem: 23). There are good reasons for this dynamic approach to security. Indeed, the focus in the securitization model is on an issue becoming or being turned into a security concern rather than on what security means. This ‘lacuna’ is, at least in my reading, the greatest critical and conceptual contribution of securitization to the earlier security studies literature. Firstly, it points to the fluid and constructed nature of the security domain, and secondly, it has an important political component, to which we shall return. Last but not least, security is an intersubjective category, and J. Peter Burgess, in his appraisal of the Copenhagen School’s innovativeness, emphasizes that this approach is “based on the movement of meaning and perception between the individual and the social setting” (Burgess 2011, p. 13). As is often pointed out, especially in face of critique coming from different branches of security studies, the focus of securitization theory is not on what security is, but on what security does, and the conceptualization proposed is that it removes an issue area from the sphere of political (democratic) oversight and into the sphere of “exceptional measures”.1 Growing out of the immense Cold War era securitization of domestic, transnational and international politics, the concept of (de)securitization as advanced in the early writings of Ole Waever (1989, 1995), should not be lost from sight (compare (Hansen 2012).2 Whereas ‘traditional’ security studies understood themselves at “the study of the threat, use, and control of military force” (Walt 1991), securitization theorists were right to point out that already the first element – threat – opens up an entire new space of political contestation, where the definition of threats (by and towards a given community), their referent objects, degrees of probability and actions prescribed to deal with them – are all parts of a complex game. “[W]hen an issue is Certainly, security in securitization theory has a negative connotation, simply because securitization is seen as a dangerous move. The critique, advanced from the positions of other critical security studies approaches, like the Welsh School, that security (and by extension – securitization) is a positive state, and that securitization theory misses that point – are unfounded. Another still offshoot of securitization theory argues, that securitization too can have positive implications, such as mobilizing or rallying around the flag against a common threat (Williams (2015)). In my reading, this idea is against the purpose and roots of securitization theory and renders the concept useless. 2 The transnational network of peace activists and independent human rights movements, both East and West, which tried to reform the confrontational Cold-War mindset and ultimately politicize (that is – open up for political discussion) the petrified geopolitical notions and securitized practices of that time (Szulecki 2013, 2015), and in which Waever himself was active, should be seen as a reference point for a normative/political evaluation of what security can do if not checked by democratic politics. 1

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presented as posing an existential threat, [it opens] the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats … to use whatsoever means are necessary to block the threatening development” (Buzan et al. 1998, p. 21). Additionally, in modern societies, the threat of using military force is becoming quite rare, but threats in other ‘security sectors’ – economic, societal, environmental or political – are abundant. 3. Is energy security securitized (and why most often it is not)? Felix Ciută’s (2010) excellent early review of the emergent energy security literature is symptomatic for how scholars in security studies react to the proliferation of ‘energy security’ and its gradual emergence as an omnipresent buzzword. “The totality of energy”, writes Ciută, “has … the potential to normalize security and render it politically unexceptional” (2010: 124), which can lead to the banalization of security. Although his analysis of the different security logics behind the use of energy security in various contexts is valid, I would argue that the fears of banalization might be overstated and even unfounded. This is because in most cases, energy security is not a security issue, it is not interpreted as a security issue on par with ‘conventional’ security problems, and that its utterance is not a securitizing act in itself. What I will argue instead is that most existing studies of energy security that employ the concept of ‘securitization’ are rendering securitization banal. Energy security – not a security issue In its conventional use, closest to the “4As” type of definition energy security denotes a certain state of equilibrium and robustness of energy systems. And indeed, ‘energy equilibrium’ could perhaps even be used as a synonym of energy security in most contexts. Importantly, in its emphasis on availability and affordability, ‘energy security’ draws much more on the semantics of the verb to secure than the noun security. The meanings of the verb include: to make certain; ensure; to guarantee; to get possession of; acquire; to bring about; a well as to protect from danger or risk. In many policy contexts, however, when the object (security for whom?) is left unspecified, the meaning of energy security is close to energy procurement. This is in line with the widespread equating of energy security with supply security (e.g. Yergin, 2006). Energy security – qualitatively different from military security In many ways, energy security has a logic that functions in exact opposition to ‘classic’ military security. The threat to which energy security refers (in its minimal version – the interruption of energy supply) fulfils itself I the moment when it occurs. In military security, while the border dividing the threat and its fulfilment is blurred (as the ongoing “hybrid war in Ukraine’s East illustrates), it is clear that between the moment when security is breached until the ultimate end of physical annihilation there is still a whole spectrum of turmoil. These threats are thus of a qualitatively different sort. Furthermore, Cherp and Jewell (2014) distinguish between two kinds of threat for energy systems. A shock, which is momentary (like the ultimate energy 5

security threat I described above), and a stress, which is long-term and far beyond the usual political temporal horizon. The two require two different characteristics of systems to counter – resilience (to shocks) and robustness (in the face of stresses). Although stress-type threats might seem similar to military security buildups, they are in fact mostly environmental risks, and their final result is in any case – a shock, instant shortage of energy supply which (especially in case of electricity) stops all normal activity at once in the affected society. What this implies is that energy security is indeed different from military security, and that it is not “securitized” by definition. Defined by the threatening lack, the degree of resilience and preparedness is an objective fact or state, which can be measured. This is the punchline of Cherp and Jewell’s (2014) piece, bringing forth an objective benchmark for energy security. This stands in stark opposition to security in the way Buzan et al. understand it – “always a political construction and not something the analyst can describe as it ‘really’ is” (1998: 35). If energy security can be understood as a particular feature or characteristic of energy systems, their resilience and robustness, then it is only logical that it can be called up and discussed in a manner which is not akin to securitizing speech acts. Energy security – not necessarily securitized In this sense, energy security can function as a point of reference in both technical (depoliticized) and political debates, without gaining the “emergency” quality and exceptional status of security issues. Nyman notices that while “energy security is sometimes securitized, it often isn’t, despite being the subject of consistent security speech-acts by elite actors” (2013). The observation is correct, although the theoretical reading behind it is flawed in two ways. Nyman overstresses the speech-act moment and utterance of the word ‘security’. This is consistent with the ‘canonical’ framing of securitization in which “the utterance itself is the act” (Waever, 1995: 55). Yet, as noted earlier, ‘energy security’ and ‘security’ are in a certain sense merely homonyms, due to their very different logics. Energy security can be an element of “national security”, but does not always have to be. A similar observation is made by McGowan (2011) who points out that while in the 2000s there has been more energy security talk in the EU, this does not imply the securitization of the issue as neither references to an existential threat nor calls for the adoption of extraordinary measures were convincingly made. Nyman also, more importantly, states that in the energy sector, “emergency measures are rarely possible”, equating these with military measures (e.g. the invasion of Iraq). Let us not forget that the ‘emergency measures’ implied by Buzan et al. were fairly modest: “violations of rules that would otherwise have to be obeyed”, “breaking rules” and “substantial political effects” beyond the status quo ante (1998, p. 25). 3 Elsewhere, the possible policy change indicated includes imposing a new tax – hardly a violent measure, but certainly breaking some earlier Note also that “we do not push the demand so high as to say that an emergency measure has to be adopted, only that the existential threat has to be argued and just gain enough resonance for a platform to be made from which it is possible to legitimize emergency measures or other steps that would not have been possible had the discourse not taken the form of existential threats” (Buzan et al. 1998, p. 25). 3

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consensus. The ‘emergency measures’ we are after will therefore mean all deviations from the intersubjectively accepted political norm which would not be possible without securitizing the issue. Contrary to what Nyman suggests, exceptional politics in the initial sense proposed by the Copenhagen School might actually be more possible in the energy sector than in many other areas. This is because energy has a long tradition of technocratic governance detached from public scrutiny or even awareness. Paraphrasing Carl Schmitt who stated that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception” – governments, companies or other relevant actors exercise sovereignty in that issue area by deciding over its exception from regular policymaking. Giorgio Agamben (2005) conceptualized the “state of exception” as a particular paradigm of government. Drawing on both Agamben and Schmitt allows us to understand what these special measures of ‘exception’ may imply in political processes and what that means for the image of politics underpinning securitization theory (Wæver 2015; Hansen, 2012). Narrowing down “emergency measures” and “exceptional means” to military interventions brackets off most of what might be interesting in energy securitization if we were to move beyond the narrow classic focus on the international politics of oil procurement.4 4. Energy and securitization to date: a review Given the possibilities that open up when securitization theory is applied to energy (security) it might be surprising how few studies do that, at least if we go beyond the use of “securitization” to simply mean “energy security discussions” – that is beyond banalizing the idea of securitization in energy. On the whole there is a visible tendency for energy security analyses to focus on oil (global commodity) or gas (regional strategic resource) security of supply. The electricity sector has largely remained outside of those debates. Not surprisingly – in the 20th century paradigm electricity was the domain of national authorities and utilities, and interconnectors between national systems were mostly for additional balancing purposes. Electricity analyses are ‘traditionally’ dominated by engineers and economists, while oil and gas have seen quite a lot of interest from political scientists. Same is true for the few securitization studies. In a piece addressing the securitization of energy directly, Özcan argues that energy “has been securitized” since the 1973 oil crisis (Özcan 2013). Put simply – energy security has become a permanent feature of political debates, but through the lens of securitization theory, this is not exactly the same. The difference between ‘speaking security’ in energy and securitizing it remains untouched. Nyman and Zeng (2016) move their analysis closer to securitization theory, when they write of the “securitization of Chinese climate and energy politics” understood as framing certain energy and climate policy questions as issues of security. Questioning the usability of securitization as ultimately a Western, liberal concept (which emphasizes the move away from normal democratic procedures) Understanding that “extraordinary measures” and “exceptional politics” mean the removal of energy issues from public oversight, returns us to the political/normative component of the theory which is especially interesting. Who should be exercising power and governing the energy sector? To what extent is securitization – and expert insulation – of energy security acceptable? When are securitizing moves acceptable? All these questions make looking at energy through the securitization lens additionally attractive. 4

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they nonetheless find traces of security in China’s energy debates – though have very little to say about the mechanism through which securitization would occur. Contrary to the assumption that all mentions of security should be interpreted as securitization attempts, Kuzemko shows the positive dimension of ‘speaking security’ in the energy sector (2014). Her analysis of the British case shows that framing energy supply as a security issue was a process that counterbalanced the long-lasting de-politicization of energy governance. Security arguments made energy a more salient policy issue, gaining interest and sparking political deliberation of key energy policy goals. In a similar way to Nyman and Zeng, McGowan (2011) takes the Copenhagen School framework and applies it to EU energy debates, arguing that on the level of intergovernmental politics in the Union securitization is not taking place through lack of “existential threats” nor adopting “extraordinary measures”. Casier’s (2011) analysis of EU-Russia gas trading relations seems to suggest something similar. While Europe’s import dependence can only arguably be defined as a security issue, Casier points out that shifting identities and self-perceptions in EU-Russia relations are responsible for the visibly increased ‘temperature’ and the penetration of energy policy with geopolitical logics. In a similar vein, Godzimirski (2009) looks at the way actors’ identities influence policy choices related to strategic energy projects – such as the Nord Stream pipeline. Christou and Adamides (2013) came up with a theoretically refined account of securitization in energy, but even that analysis suffers from the legacy of studying energy politics as if it was only related to oil, and perhaps to a lesser extent – gas. Energy security and securitization needs to move beyond natural resources and face the new realities of energy transformation. An early sign of this move is the way Fischhendler et al. (2015) discuss solar farm construction in the Israeli Desert as a case of securitization related to land use. They point to the fundamental importance of the broader national security discourses which dominate other debates, serving as a reservoir of narratives and other rhetorical commonplaces that spark securitization in areas far from usual security concerns. These observations are very important for studying energy securitization beyond the usual “high politics” of oil and gas, but also for understanding different securitization modes in these sectors. This is illustrated by Fischhendler and Nathan’s (2014) study of Israeli natural gas exports as an issue of “national security”. Together with Casier (2011) and Godzimirski’s (2009) study, and echoing Guzzini’s (2013) and colleagues’ analysis of the “return of geopolitics”, Fischhendler et al. provide us with much food for thought about how securitization of different issues – including energy policy – seems to be facilitated in some social contexts while it is less probable in others.5 This opens up securitization theory reflections to the broader literature in critical security studies, where the notion of a “fragmented evolution” of approaches to security and a plurality of security cultures is already visible (e.g. Burgess, 2009). 5. Empirical research on energy securitization: building a framework 5

The importance of context and audience acceptance (Balzacq, 2005), need to be taken into account if we want to clearly separate securitization as a mechanism influencing actors in the energy sector.

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(De)securitization allows us to inquire into two types of energy security related questions. Firstly, analytical questions, i.e. how and why do certain energy issues become security matters? Secondly, political/normative questions, i.e. which issues are subject to securitization, to what extent is it successful, are these issues removed from public scrutiny and to whose benefit? In the remainder of this section I leave the latter questions aside and focus on constructing a workable analytical framework for researching energy securitization from some already existing elements. As a result, we might not have that much to say about the divergent energy security definitions, yet we will likely end up with a mapping of the dynamics and a wide range of security issues in the energy domain. Available options: thin, philosophical, sociological securitization ‘How energy issues become matters of security?’ is not a fundamentally new research question, but, as the previous section has shown, there are surprisingly few attempts at tackling it empirically. Understanding that the idea of ‘securitization’ is the obvious reference point, we have several options in designing research on these issues. The first one is to follow a ‘thin’ securitization concept, which I criticized earlier for banalizing the very idea of securitization. The approach here is very often either untheorized or vaguely referring to the ‘classic’ formulations of the Copenhagen School, and a visible emphasis on the securitization speech act. To be fair, the notion of the security speech act invites such ‘thin’ rationalist readings, and might well the securitization theory’s greatest liability. The result is that “many analysts (and innumerable student papers) [that] fall prey to reducing securitization to studies in which they expose intentional war-mongering of some political actors” (Guzzini 2011, p. 334) – in which action is conceptualized as strategic, the context and audience are left unspecified and the link between rhetoric and practice is left implied. Another option would be to follow the Copenhagen School’s approach and refinement of the theory, in which it moves closer to post-structuralist analysis of security discourses. Brushing the problematic ‘act’ in speech act under the carpet or reformulating it in Derridean terms, that approach, however, makes it difficult to account for agency and change. In fact, it’s purposefully moving away from immediate empirical questions, hence the label that Thierry Balzacq uses in his review of securitization theory’s offshoots – ‘philosophical securitization’ (Balzacq 2011a). In his numerous interventions (e.g. Bazacq 2005; 2011b; 2015), Balzacq, in turn, proposes a “sociological theory of securitization” which has an explicitly empirical aim. While his review of different approaches and the deep vivisection of securitization theory/ies is very useful, his own conceptual proposals are also of a particular kind. Balzacq’s idea for making securitization accommodate action while at the same time increasing the importance of (discursive) context is through Bourdieu leading to a theory of securitization practices (Balzacq 2011a), defined along the lines of Reckwitz (2002), as routinized behaviour entangled in a specific socio-cultural context. From experience to theorization: what should securitization theory achieve?

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Behind every theoretical proposal, though that might not always be admitted, is a certain intuition and a particular goal. Earlier, I tried to show how a reading of Cold War history helps understand the fundamental premises of Copenhagen School’s securitization theory. If ‘intuition’ is understood in pragmatic terms, as ‘something like our ‘hunches’, our pre-analytic sense of the way things are, rather than something that is immediately or directly known’ (Jackson 2009; Bernstein 2010), a more explicit element is the goal we want a theorization to serve – what do we want to learn? (compare Jackson 2011: 113-5). Take two illustrative examples. The Polish government, media and political elite are all highly concerned about the threat posed by Russian gas imports. Why is that such a pressing issue, given that we are talking about merely ca. 8-9% of the country’s energy mix? Asking ‘how has gas become a security issue in Poland?’ is asking about securitization on a macro-level, the emergence and reproduction of an energy security discourse constituted within a broader security imaginary (see: Weldes 1999). That goal can well be achieved with both the ‘philosophical’ and ‘sociological’ variant of securitization theory. But take another illustration. In 2013, during ‘field research’ I visited the Warsaw Energy Exchange. If market-oriented energy thinking were a religion, this is its cathedral. I could not conduct my scheduled interview with the Exchange’s director, however, because he refused to answer any of my questions once he found out that my main affiliation as with a Berlin-based private university. “We are in the middle of hard negotiations with the German side and this is about national security” – was the only justification I got from energy-market’s ‘Archbishop’ before being asked to leave. To explain (and understand) what happened here, we need a securitization theory framework which can also “go micro”, take in individual action which is nested in broader structural contexts – but leaves space for actors to act (un)intentionally and cause further change. The two situations are related to the creation of security categories but not all strands of securitization theory can deal with both. A mechanismic twist: ‘causal’ theory of securitization? Securitization theory is from the onset characterized by an implicit causality. This is something the Copenhagen School had trouble with – both due to the otherwise strongly post-structuralist theoretical preferences of some of the key scholars and to the reluctance to engage in causal arguments associated with positivism. Stefano Guzzini (2011) argues that a non-positivist understanding of causality is precisely what strengthens the propositions of securitization theory. An ‘empirical theory’ of securitization (as opposed to a political theory and a framework for analysis) is what is at stake. That ‘leap’ is perhaps not as grand as we are often made think. “The main task of the social sciences”, writes Jon Elster, “is to explain social phenomena” (Elster 2007, p. 9). Much of non-positivist social science, especially the interpretive tradition tracing its roots to Max Weber, has been reluctant to ‘explain’, seeking instead to ‘understand’. But Weber himself was not at all clear in separating the two realms. He defined sociology as “a science concerning itself with the interpretive

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understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences” (Weber 2002, p. 4).6 It should thus come as no surprise that resigning from causal claims and capitulating from explanatory ambitions feels blunting for many social scientists, including this author. Elster makes it clear: ‘to interpret is to explain’ (Elster 2007, p. 52). This statement, bridging the artificially widened gap between Erklären and Vertehen is an encouragement for interpretive scholars to engage with causal arguments (that is the point made by Elster as well as Jackson [2011, p. 8-9]). According to Guzzini the full analytical potential of securitization can be achieved by recasting it as a (causal) social mechanism (2011). This provides a ‘third way’ beyond ‘philosophical’ and ‘sociological’ securitization theory. Guzzini defines mechanisms according to Elster, as “frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences” (2007, p. 36). They constitute the “dynamic aspect of scientific explanation”, producing accounts of “ever finer grain” (Elster 1989, p. 7). In Charl Tilly’s typology, securitization appears to be a relational mechanism, altering connections among people, groups and interpersonal networks (Tilly 2001). Empirical research using mechanisms has a long tradition, and indeed seems to offer a lot for those interested in causal arguments, but not necessarily willing to leave causality to positivist methodologies. That the usual antinomies of explanation vs. description and causal analysis vs. interpretive understanding lose their clarity when mechanisms are involved is nicely shown by the way Josef Schumpeter, who defined economics as “the interpretive description of economic mechanisms that play within any given state of … institutions” (Schumpeter 1989, p. 293 – my italics). The fact that law-like generalizations are probably neither possible (compare: Hempel 1942) nor desirable in social sciences does not mean that all we are left with is description, as Elster strongly argues (1998, p. 49). Although mechanisms can be the bridge between single cases and general “laws”, they themselves make no claim to generality (Elster 1989, p. 10), on the contrary, they tend to be idiosyncratic and singular (Boudon 1998, p. 173), a risk interpretive or analyticist scholars are willing to take. They do make, however, it possible to “connect cases and to transfer knowledge from one to another” (Guzzini 2013, p. 262). In terms of ontological commitments and epistemological choices, securitization studies have really been all over the place. Employing Jackson’s (2011) four-partite typology of social science methodologies, we can find analyses of securitization in each: (neo)positivist, critical realist, analyticist and reflexive methodologies. From Hansen’s (2012) strongly post-structuralist takes, through Guzzini’s (2011) account of mechanisms compatible with critical realism and interpretivism, through Balzacq’s habitus oriented sociology of security practice (2011) or the more recent commitment to empirical, Weber-inspired sociological analyticism (2015), all the way to numerous ‘thin’ studies of securitization expressed in the idiom of instrumental causality-cum-variables characteristic of On other occasions, scholars use the idea that all meaningful social theory is explanatory for disciplining purpuses and dismissing much of 20th century social inquiry (like Hedström and Sweberg do Hedström and Swedberg (1998). 6

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positivism. In fact, different methodological commitments can co-exist in individual studies, where leaps are made between theoretical discussions in a poststructuralist idiom and strongly positivist analyses (cf. Fischhendler and Nathan, 2014). Following Guzzini’s (2011) initial nudge, which can be read both as a plea for critical realist or analyticist reframing of securitization, I propose to follow the latter path. It may be productive, keeping Elster’s definition as an answer to what mechanisms are in ontological terms, to think of their analytical role along the lines that Thomas Schelling provides: “a social mechanism is an interpretation, in terms of individual behavior, of a model that abstractly reproduces the phenomenon that needs explaining” (Schelling 1998, p. 33). Put differently, a mechanism is (part of) an ideal type in the classic Weberian sense ((Weber 2011, pp. 124–31)(Hedström and Swedberg 1998, pp. 13–14). Although interpretivists have traditionally been cautious with regard to causality, Guzzini strongly argues that “the whole point of the mechanism debate is to redefine causality in a different manner, not to deny it” (Guzzini 2013, 265 fn), and that applies to “constructivist” scholarship as much as it does to whatever we label the mainstream to be. The preferred method is then not stand-alone discourse analysis, which can only provide the structural context, and not a positivistic process tracing following a chain of intermediary variables, but an interpretive process tracing, which is about “the causal ‘how’ of mechanisms, not the causal ‘what’ of correlational analysis” (Guzzini 2013, p. 258). “How” causality allows for the analysis of action “embedded in a process that, despite its focus on structures (security imaginaries, identity discourses, cultures of anarchy), institutional processes and their path dependencies, is basically open, since it is contingent on a series of contexts and factors” (Guzzini 2013, p. 276). A theory of action: speech acts, situated agency and creative action Guzzini’s “mechanismic” proposal helps to safeguard securitization’s most appealing features, including the role of broader discursive structures, with the idea of a security act, including space for individual agency in the analysis. Most importantly, Guzzini opens new spaces for re-constructing securitization as an explanatory theory, which can account for certain outcomes and explain the causal pathways that lead there. This explanation, something of a singular causal analysis, eventually “takes form of abstracted re-description – the specific case is represented (and in the process of being represented in this way, is ‘explained’) as a specific instance of a more general phenomenon”. Such interpretivist explanations “take a narrative form, are couched at the same level of generality as the phenomena for which they seek to account (and not to make reference to general or covering laws)” (Hay 2011, pp. 171-2). Two important points have to be made clear. Firstly, both Guzzini’s “mechanismic” securitization and Balzacq’s “sociological” securitization move emphasis away from the securitizing speech act. Guzzini suggest that “the idea of a speech act refers here to a process, not a kind of single bombshell event” (2011: 334). The latter seems to have been the most common misinterpretation of the initial theorization by the Copenhagen School scholars – and one with far reaching consequences. In a similar vein, Balzacq does not mention the actual speech act 12

among the “essentials” of his ideal type of securitization (Balzacq, 2015). Instead, he argues that securitizing moves are engraved in social mechanisms such as persuasion, propaganda, learning, socialization and in social practices (2015: 106). That idea is somewhat debatable, as it would either make securitization a mechanism of some higher echelon, or a kind of “molecular mechanism” (Elster 2007, p. 42-44), or an unspecified theoretical construct comprising of different mechanisms (the way Schelling proposed that “theory may comprise many social mechanisms, but also a social mechanism may comprise many theories” [1998, p. 33]). Secondly, there is the issue of intentionality in action and agents’ rationality. Mechanisms do not have to involve motivated individual behavior as their empirical anchor.7 I want to treat securitization not merely as a conscious, instrumental move which is planned and executed by the political elites, but rather a mechanism, which is “embedded in the dominant discourses among [political] elites” (Guzzini 2011, p. 330), which can take place without conscious planning, which can occur through actors rather than with their strategic intention and lead to unexpected results. Again, this is in stark contrast to a plethora of studies which “do not really acknowledge the intersubjective (i.e. both non-materialist and non-individualist) character of the initial framework” and banalize it to “intentional war-mongering” (Guzzini 2011, p. 334). Traces of this instrumentalist fallacy can be seen even among the most highly reflexive securitization scholars, like Balzacq (2011) who writes that his “sociological” securitization theory is “strategic”, but elsewhere notes that it can be both “intentional and non-intentional” (p. 2) and not necessarily a rational design (p. 15). Jef Huysmans also suggest that “speech acts rupture a given situation in a decision to create … Speaking security is a decision to rupture a situation with certain calculable consequences for others” (Huysmans, 2011: 373). But Huysmans nuances that standpoint towards a much less reason-explaining position. Drawing on Isin, he notices that “the concept of act refers to rupturing actions that somehow are always a move into the unexpected and unknown.” This “undecidability, the radical openness and the creativity of being, the possibility of the unexpected; actions that cannot be fully folded back into calculability and instituted normativity” (ibidem: 374). The agency that we mean here is situated and creative. Situated, because actors are “embedded or contextualized in a manner that circumscribes their room for maneuver” (Hay, 2011: 176). But that does not yet tell us about the way action is understood. The studies which I criticized for banalizing securitization conceptualize action according to a rationalist model, assuming that the actor is not only purposive but has control over her own body and is autonomous in relation to the environment and other people. To understand that securitization can be strategic, but also unintentional or normatively driven, we need a theory of action that can accumulate all these options. A convincing proposal is provided by Hans This is not to say that securitizing speech acts cannot be purposeful, strategic and result from rational calculation. On the contrary, assumption of rationality is always a preferred first ‘hypothesis’. So is the idea that governments use securitization strategically – assuming otherwise would be parting from securitization theory’s normative and critical roots, which to me are about a ‘watchdog’ attitude towards officials ‘speaking security’. 7

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Joas (1996), who conceptualizes creative action as a third model – added to rational and normative action but overarching them (Joas 1996, pp. 4–5). Every action takes place in a certain situation and presupposes an actor who performs not only one action – that is, has experience of other action (Joas 1996, p. 146). In Joas’s creative action, “goal-setting, body control and the formation of boundaries between subject and environment can no longer be regarded as … self-evident truths” (Joas 1996, p. 195), and we have to analyse concrete actors in concrete situations (Jackson 2009, p. 657). The concept of a situation replaces the idea instrumental means-ends action. Dietrich Böhler understands ‘situation’ as a set of relationships that “precedes the particular action under consideration” and which is therefore in each case already understood by the actor (Joas 1996, p. 160). Creative action in particular situations provides a non-teleological conception in which actions should be thought of as responses to situations – I will come back to this in the next section when I propose a model of micro-level action. The double openness of securitization mechanism: two research designs? That said, treating the idea of a social mechanism seriously requires asking questions about the possible double openness of securitization – both the way it is triggered and the way it plays out. In Elster’s words: they are either “triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences”. To this Guzzini adds that same conditions can also trigger more than one mechanism (2013, p. 264) but equifinality is a general problem of both process tracing and Weberian singular causal analyses, so I shall put this aside. We are left with two analytical possibilities. The effect of a social mechanism is determinate, but triggering the mechanism is contingent – in which case we can explain why (or how was it possible that) a certain effect occurred. Or we can know the trigger but try to understand (and explain) the consequences. Looking for a single trigger can mean focusing on individual action, but we have to bear in mind that mechanisms are triggered by broader constellations of events and facts – actions and contextual factors. (De)securitization can only be understood against the background of existing “discourses, their embedded collective memory of past lessons, defining metaphors and the significant ‘circles of recognition’ for the collective identities of a country; and whose success does obviously depend on, but cannot be reduced to, the distribution of authority and the different forms of capital in the relevant field. Its effectiveness … is historically constituted and evolving.” (Guzzini, 2011: 336).

There has been some reluctance in the broader securitization literature to engage with contexts. “The inclusion of context”, writes Rita Floyd, “would change the theory beyond recognition, moving the focus away from the act that is securitization, toward a causal theory of securitization instead” (2010: 21). As the latter is not our concern, but our goal (provided that causality is understood in non-positivist terms), we should not be restrained from following this path, rather think of ways in which discourse analysis can be blended with interpretive process tracing. If securitizing speech acts, the potential ‘visible’ triggers, do not have to be “bombshell events”, but can also be small instances in a larger chain, then instead of ‘moments of critical decision’ we can have “a myriad of decisions in a process that is 14

continuously made and remade … Such a process invites moving from speech acts of security to concepts and methodologies that facilitate studying practices and processes of dispersed associating” (Huysmans, 2011: 376 – my italics). But this tension between macro-contexts and micro-action means that we not only need to have two research designs, but also two levels of analysis and two models. Toward empirical study of energy securitization: two models What this lengthy theoretical exposition implies for studying securitization in the energy sector can be summed up as follows:     

Securitization is a mechanism which can be triggered by case-specific conditions; These conditions originate in the broader ideational context, structured by such elements as collective memories, experiences, traditions, and discourses; In case of energy, this includes the energy related discourse as well as the security imaginary, and a broader geopolitical context (material/geographical conditions and their interpretations); The material reality of the energy system is a pool of competing beliefs which also condition the dilemmas that different agents face; We can put the de-securitization-politicization-securitization model in that context, and assume that issues which are de-securitized are governed according to the practices linked to the energy discourse, politicized issues can gather input from different discursive contexts, while securitization means a pull of an otherwise neutral energy-issue into the sphere of foreign policy, organized according to (national) security logics (see Figure 1).

It seems sensible to have two different models here, operating at different levels – traditionally referred to as macro and micro (though we have to understand that this is merely analytic shorthand, and the two are interrelated). The question may arise if we really need a micro focus implying individualism? We do not need it for the sake of itself, but since our point of departure is action as speech act, we should have a framework which includes individual speech and text production – though without assuming instrumental rationality and with a clear link to the structural and institutional macro-contexts (compare Szulecki 2011). In a ‘classic’ sociological model, the analytical gaze moves from macro to micro level, follows micro-level interactions and then returns to the macro level, which is altered by the micro-input.8 This suggests the existence of three kinds of mechanisms: situational (macro-micro), action-forming (micro-micro) and transformational (micro-macro) (Hedström and Swedberg 1998). But which of these is securitization? Assuming a non-instrumental, and intersubjective nature of securitization, the only answer we can give is – all of them; the discursive and geopolitical context conditions situated creative action of individuals, who influence others and ultimately may alter the broader context of their action – by pushing the boundary through legitimizing ‘extraordinary measures’.

“The general thrust of this model” write Hedström and Swedberg “is that proper explanations of change … entails showing how macro states at one point in time influence the behavior of individual actors, and how these actions generate new macro states at a later time. That is, instead of analyzing relationships between phenomena exclusively on the macro level, one should always try to establish how macro-level events or conditions affect the individual (Step 1), how the individual assimilates the impact of these macro-level events (Step 2), and how a number of individuals, through their actions and interactions, generate macro-level outcomes (Step 3)” Hedström and Swedberg (1998, pp. 21–22)). 8

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On the macro-level, the process of (de)securitization can be conceptualized like in Figure 1, as a kind of pendulum in which different issues move from desecuritized, through politicized to securitized – and back – as a result of the symbolic action of political struggle. This is the macro level, and to analyze it we need discourse analysis – which can help understand the way meaning is produced in energy and security debates. “Memory and the representation of history” argues Guzzini (2013, p. 255) has to be “endogenized in the analysis”. This is the static component, but to trace the movement of the imaginary pendulum, we can combine this with rhetorical or content analysis of texts (compare Szulecka and Szulecki 2013). Depending on the types of arguments, and the dominance of references and commonplaces called up in different phases we can convincingly argue about the position of the “pendulum” – and the direction in which it is pulled.

Fig. 1 - (De)politicization and (de)securitization of energy issues in a broader context. Own elaboration drawing on Guzzini (2011)

Understanding that securitization is a mechanism and the speech act event is of lesser importance, we have to bear in mind that the kinds of evidence we are after is not as simple as “I hereby declare this a security matter”. In fact, the word security does not have to be uttered at all for a specific statement to add to a gradual buildup towards security (and clearly does not have to be mentioned in desecuritizing moves). This is well captured by the empirical study of securitization related to Israeli national gas, conducted by Fichhendler and Nathan (2014), who cast their net widely in a meticulous content analysis of committee public hearings. For them it was not ‘security’ as such, but ‘existential language’ that was the indicator of securitization – “a sense of urgency, prioritization, and/or survival, [expressions] centered on threat and risk” etc. An instance where such language was present was termed a “securitized event” and for each the scholars identified a referent object (energy issue) and a security plot – either explicit or implicit. The empirical illustrations that I provide were also supported by a wide content analysis, 16

involving hundreds of media articles and official documents, which, however, were focused more on reconstructing the discursive context and the “practices and processes of dispersed associating” that Huysman pointed to, combined with an interpretive process tracing around most important energy issues, in which the model drawing on Hay was used. Following Balzacq’s useful exposition of a policy approach, we can expect “variations of intensity within the process of securitization” (Balzacq 2008), p. 78), which means that tracing it in time can encounter a sinusoid (or any other curve-metaphor) of increasing and decreasing levels of securitizing pressure.

Fig. 2 - Hay’s (2011) ‘hermeneutic circle’ – a model of situated agency (for illustrative purposes)

For analyzing the macro-micro-macro causal paths, it might be useful to combine the conceptual framework of securitization theory with interpretive policy. Drawing on Colin Hay’s “new hermeneutics” of public administration, we can think of the securitizing actor in a particular kind of situation – as an agent facing a dilemma. Dilemma is the core concept to which interpretivists appeal in explaining change (Hay, 2011: 178). Drawing on Bevir (1999), this can be understood as every new belief “no matter how one arrives at it and no matter how insignificant it and its consequences may be”. In Hay’s model (which too is more of an ideal type), the dilemma may result from a governance failure, linked to the institutional context in which the agent operates, as well as to the ideational context (fig. 2). But the trigger does not have to be an event, 9 but also the “way in which that event was interpreted”, like in the analysis of responses to the end of the Cold war in Guzzini et al. (Guzzini 2013, p. 251). Thus, the situated actor (embedded in that ideational context) confronts the dilemma and responds with a certain practice or action (a decision) to that dilemma. For triggering the social mechanism of securitization, this means painting the dilemma as an existential threat, identifying the referent object and the source of 9

See Elster’s evolution on that matter between (1989) and (1998).

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the threat and proposing policy changes – what Balzacq calls “deontic powers”, which include rights, obligations and possibly exceptional derogations (2015: 106). The practice or action taken by the securitizing agent reproduces or transforms both the ideational context, the institutional context and the political subject (actor) herself (Hay, 2011: 176-81). 6. Empirical illustration: Securitizing energy in Poland10 Background: Energy discourses, market structure and security concerns Poland has for the most part been largely self-sufficient in its energy production – at least in the electricity sector – due to its robust indigenous hard coal and lignite endowment. Dependence in oil and gas (both initially as part of the Soviet-bloc, Comecon trade exchange system and later on long-term bilateral agreements with Russia) received relatively little attention in public debates (cf. Świątkiewicz-Mośny and Wagner 2012). Another legacy of the communist era was full public ownership of energy sector companies: from extraction (coal mines), production, refining to transmission and distribution, in all sub-sectors. Energy sector “unbundling” has taken place in the aftermath of EU accession and the adoption of the “Third Energy Package” in 2009, but the State treasury remains the strategic shareholder of the country’s four major energy producers (PGE, Energa, Tauron and Enea) and has full ownership in the national transmission system operator – Polskie Sieci Elektronergetyczne (PSE). Even though the historic trajectory of Poland’s energy sector is quite similar to that of its neighbor, Germany, the governance implications and perceptions of energy security differ greatly. “The German Federal Republic”, notes Kraemer, “changed its outlook from national energy security (with the option of autarchy) toward collective energy security, or energy policy in the context of collective security framework provided by the West” (2016, p. 7). The Polish perspective on energy security is quite different. Firstly, since the late 1990s ‘energy security’ in domestic public debate has functioned mostly as shorthand for the issue of import dependence on Russia (but only in the gas sector). Secondly, with high state involvement in the energy sector at all stages of the production chain (and in consumption – through centrally fixed tariffs for individual consumers), the link between energy and statehood is very visible. Energy is a national matter, and so logically – energy security is national security. This overlap between energy discourses and national security discourses is not limited to politicians, who might be thought to maximize their influence over the sector in this way, as the example This illustration draws on the data gathered as part of the research project “Towards a common European energy policy? Energy security debates in Poland and Germany”, supported by a German-Polish Science Foundation grant and conducted by a consortium comprising the Research Centre of East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Jacobs University Bremen, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Environmental Studies and Policy Research Institute (ESPRi), Wrocław. The data gathering included mass media analysis in which 8799 hits were produced. After checks by the responsible coders 1237 newspaper articles were included in the analysis, employing MAXQDA software. Polish media reports have been selected and coded at the University of Poznan (coders: Agata Stasik and Aleksandra Lis, coordinator: Aleksandra Lis). For details of the analysis, the thesaurus and code structure (all based on Buzan et al. (1998)), see XXXX. Further materials included 85 semi-structured expert interviews and an archival query of parliamentary and governmental documents, conducted by Karol Dobosz, Marcin Fronia, Julia Kusznir and Kacper Szulecki. 10

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of Warsaw Energy Exchange’s director given earlier attests. 11 When the highest representative of a market-oriented institution securitizes electricity trade, this is certainly not instrumental securitization – as that would be against his best interest as the head of an ultimately commercial entity. It is rather an example of the way contexts condition the triggering of and sustain the level of securitization. The Polish debate, as the analysis below will show, oscillates between securitization (when energy is discussed as a national security issue requiring different types of special measures), and de-politicization (when energy is presented as a technological issue, requiring expert, usually engineering competence, and not requiring political debate) (cf. Kuzemko, 2014). Natural gas: NordStream, diversification and coal statecraft Commenting on Germany’s apparently unilateral decision to move forward with the construction of a direct undersea pipeline supplying its domestic market (and interconnected neighboring markets) with Russian gas – the Nord Stream – the then Polish defense minister Radosław Sikorski famously stated: "Poland has a particular sensitivity to corridors and deals above our head. That was the Locarno tradition, that was the Molotov-Ribbentrop tradition. That was the 20th century. We don't want any repetition of that" (Beunderman 2006). The German media outrage at the quote, suggesting a taboo-breaking “indirect Hitler comparison” (Kloth 2006), seemed to match the heat of the Polish domestic debate over the controversial project. Though ‘security’ is not mentioned in his speech, the quote was a clear securitizing move, attempting to break the business-as-usual mode of energy policy conducted by the Angela Merkel government (and her predecessor Gerhard Schröder). For Polish political actors, the German-Russian agreement on Nord Stream is a dilemma which Guzzini suggests can “mobilize a shift in political debate towards a security logic … if a country’s foreign policy discourse has features that cause certain events to recall earlier threats” (2011: 336 – my italics). Der Spiegel’s misinterpretation of the quote shows how different historical discourses can work as contexts for dilemmas and for interpreting such securitizing moves. The securitizing move discussed here was aimed at different audiences, but primarily on German and other foreign ones. Domestically, a high level of gas securitization is sustained and reproduced through almost ritual media and expert discussions. Although Russian gas constitutes only about 8-9% of the Polish energy mix, governments since 2005 have been able to sustain a peculiar state of emergency related to the gas sector. Russia is consistently represented as the source of a threat.12 When weighing the options for Europe, between importing gas through Turkey (and its EU accession) and continuing dependence on Russia, an economic journalist exclaimed: “[European] Union, it’s time you decide what you are afraid of. Seventy million new citizens from Turkey, or the cold, and suffocating stranglehold of the Bear” (Niklewicz 2009a). The threat itself is dependence on gas imports and cuts in gas supplies, and the referent object is very often not merely the Polish economy, but also the ‘nation’ or ‘sovereignty’ of the state. As the former Interview with TGE S.A. president, 16 July 2013. For the 744 newspaper articles analysed in the work package on Polish debates related to gas pipelines, 26 mention Russia in terms of explicit enmity, and another 14 mention Gazprom in that role – here treated as a synecdoche for Russian ‘hydrocarbon statecraft’ (Hawryluk (2016)). 11 12

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Polish ambassador to Moscow, Stanisław Ciosek, put it: “for Poland energy security is equivalent to state security” (Greczuszkin and Kościński 2006). This far reaching and firm link between energy supply and political sovereignty needs some explanation, because it constitutes something of an implicit theory of international energy politics which dominates in the Polish expert community and public administration, although its most outspoken proponents are conservative politicians. Piotr Naimski, key energy expert linked to the currently governing Law and Justice (PiS), published a selection of his energy policy articles and interviews under the title Energy and independence and clearly states that “relying on [energy] imports” will in mean resigning from “our dreams of Poland behaving as a sovereign political subject” (Naimski 2015, p. 170). The key warrant of Poland’s independence is then indigenous call – often referred two in telling and naturalized metaphors, as “the black gold” or “the blood of Polish economy”. The organic metaphor is related to a particular vision of the nation-state, which is rooted in the national landscape – and resource endowment, in turn constituting an oft cited part of national identity (Popkiewicz 2015). Hence the expression “Polish coal”, a national resource opposed to foreign, imported ones (even though the country increasingly imports coal, also from Ukraine and Russia). This ‘coal statecraft’ has roots in Communist modernization discourses, but remains largely unquestioned by the ruling conservative government, even if the coal doxa is continuously challenged by different dissident opinions. Against this background, de-securitizing tendencies are scarce and dispersed. The former prime minister and agrarian party leader, Waldemar Pawlak, was perhaps the most visible figure who tried to confront the general securitized perceptions with objective data on energy imports and markets. “In theory we should have no worries, Poland is energy secure … only 12 % of our energy comes from gas and one third of this is indigenous production” (Niklewicz 2009b). At the same economic forum, CEO of the Polish national oil champion, PKN Orlen, Jacek Krawiec, hinted on a broader mechanism in play here: “What for us seems like Germans and Russians ‘conspiring’ together, for the Germans is merely supply diversification” (ibidem). If energy securitization, and so, discussing energy security as ‘national security’, brings energy discussion into the heart of foreign policy and security debates (see Fig. 1), then in consequence the mechanism of securitization can trigger or occur together with security-domain specific mechanism, such as the one identified by Guzzini – self-fulfilling geopolitics (2013, p. 5). In the context of a particular security imaginary, all foreign policy interaction begins to be interpreted in a certain light, in which roles are pre-defined by the expectations derived from geopolitically essentialized imaginary. To illustrate how this mechanisms works as both a condition for and result of gas securitization and foreign policy interactions between Poland, Russia and Germany, we can use the ‘historicization’ of gas relations. The recently ‘uncovered plan’ in which Gazprom and its sister/daughter companies have taken over a majority share package in a German gas storage facility “Kathrina” has been interpreted with reference to 18th century history and the figure of tsarina Kathrine II. “The constructors of this storage do not hide the fact that it was named after Kathrina II, who was born a Germanic [sic!] princess of Saxon Anhalt. In this way, a ruler associated with a great tragedy of Polish history – partitions – is the patron of 20

another Russian-German plan, which may threaten the security of our country” (Jakóbik 2015a). This formulation is symptomatic, for, as one energy analyst put it (Ruszel 2016), “Russia and Germany have a two centuries-long history of mutually beneficial trade relations” – a statement not only essentializing the “Germanness” of only selected states (e.g. Prussia, but not Saxony which was in the 17 th and 18th century in personal Union with Poland), but also conveniently overlooks two world wars and tens of millions of mutually inflicted casualties. On the other hand, the real genealogy of German-Russian gas relations, evolving from Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik towards NordStreeam, is virtually unknown in the Polish debate (for an account see: Högselius 2013) In communications with external, European partners, Polish governmental actors have consistently tried to securitize the issue of gas dependence, and break the business-as-usual relationships with Russia. In his famous “energy union” article for the Financial Times, Donald Tusk called Russia’s asymmetric energy relationship with Europe a “stranglehold”, clearly framing it as existential threat. 13 The exceptional measures proposed were numerous, but the one following a securitizing logic was to break the liberal consensus of EU’s approach to energy, and replace a market mechanism with joint gas purchasing (Szulecki et al. 2016) According to this definition and prioritization of threats, measures proposed by all political actors (two opposing ruling parties between 2005 and 2015, as well as the parliamentary opposition) emphasized the need to diversify gas supplies. Two main ways of achieving this include domestic shale gas extraction and the construction of an LNG Terminal in the port of Świnoujście. The consecutive governments were trying to remove these two projects from public discussion, citing “energy security”, “national security” and “national interest” as justifications for locking out the potentially contentious debate. Desecuritization attempts are very often quickly dismissed, and individuals or groups questioning the link between certain energy infrastructure projects and national security - labelled as 'agents', acting for foreign interests. In the case of shale gas exploration and potential extraction, especially environmental groups voicing concern over the different negative side-effects of shale were targeted and accused of (voluntarily or not) acting as Russia’s agents. A prominent politician and former MEP, Paweł Piskorski, spoke openly of a “Russian-environmentalist antishale alliance” (Piskorski 2014). In the case of the LNG Terminal controversies arose over costs, and attempts were made to open a debate about the economic rationality of realizing such a massive and possibly uneconomic project. An energy journalist pointed out that talking about LNG’s non-competitive prices and the high costs of the Terminal itself is acting against the Polish national interest. “The Terminal in Świnoujście is a strategic project, and is by definition not economically viable in the short term” – he wrote (Jakóbik 2015b), elsewhere criticizing the independent public control agency (NIK) for publishing a report which was highly critical for the project and its Italian constructor, calling it an element of an “information war” waged against the terminal (Jakóbik 2015c).

http://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/poland-calls-for-eu-action-to-endrussia-s-energy-stranglehold/ 13

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Electricity – the invisible object of securitization and exceptional measures Whereas natural gas has received a lot of academic attention in relation to energy security issues, electricity has been largely ignored in this respect, and its international dimension is still very much underexplored (Puka and Szulecki 2014b). Considered a technical issue, electricity governance receives little attention in the Polish debate and the only situations of its politicization are around legislative projects and changes in energy prices – otherwise it remains a technocratic and de-politicized domain. A very interesting case on the intersection of electricity and security is the controversy over power “loop flows” – un-signaled and uncontrolled physical flows of electricity from North-Eastern Germany (where high volumes of intermittent wind energy, together with baseload lignite production are met with very low demand) to Austria and Bavaria (part of the same “bidding zone” – treated as if they were geographically adjacent) through the transmission networks of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (for more on the technical details see: (Puka and Szulecki 2014a). The issue is a technical problem, resulting as much from renewable intermittency, infrastructure characteristics (weak connections between former GDR and GFR; weak ‘resistance’ of Poland’s western grids due to low production there) and the organization of the EU electricity market, which follows nationalsystem logic, increasingly inadequate to govern electricity flows with increasing renewable energy penetration. On several days, however, the problem became quite severe for the Polish transmission system operator - PSE. The trend - on the rise since 2008 - reached critical conditions on 7 December 2011 when more than a half of the 5.3 GW scheduled exchange between Germany and Austria actually flew through the Polish network (Ratz 2012). This led to an agreement between PSE and its German counterpart, 50 Hertz, on a technical solution. The problem was, however, picked up by the Polish media, which reported on the issue without going into the details, focusing in turn on the apparent “costs” that the energy inflicts on the Polish system. Once the problem became public, a conservative MP, Dariusz Piontkowski, who in April 2013 issued an interpellation to the Ministry of Economy: „According to expert calculations, Poland is suffering high costs of transmitting through its territory of the so called „green electricity” from Germany … the data coming for the national energy regulator (URE) are alarming. In 2011 we bought 2 TWh of electricity, while 7 TWh crossed our border. The difference of 5TWh is the energy which … crossed the Polish territory, burdened our domestic energy infrastructure, generated transmission costs – but who paid for that? … The German side is visibly trying to postpone a technical solution to this problem … How will the ministry push for reimbursement of the costs for German energy transits through Polish territory?”14

Piontkowski visibly phrased the issue in geopolitical terms. The electrons in question not only have a colour (green), but also a nationality (German), and their unauthorized breach of Polish borders and transfer through Polish territory resembles the passage of an army, leaving behind it a trail of costly plunder. Again, while “security” is not uttered, the interpellation can be interpreted as a securitizing Interpelacja nr 17311 do ministra gospodarki w sprawie tranzytu niemieckiej energii elektrycznej przez terytorium Polski, http://www.sejm.gov.pl/sejm7.nsf/InterpelacjaTresc.xsp?key=5774E5E2 14

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move, defining a referent object (here: national energy system), a threat and its source (Germany and its renewables) and pushing for particular policy measures, not necessarily with a conscious intention though. This is an interesting example of the way securitization as a social mechanism can act through certain agents, rather because of the way they are embedded in “collective memory of past lessons, defining metaphors and the significant ‘circles of recognition’ for the collective identities of a country” (Guzzini, 2011: 330). Piontkowski, who seats on Education and Health commissions in the parliament, seems to have acted in response to a situation conditioned by historical experiences (he is a high school history teacher) and indirect associations, but without a clear goal and perhaps also without the awareness of the securitizing move (although this is too much psychologization, but the interpellation is a one-off example of his interest in international energy issues). The case shows how quickly and easily Polish-German energy relations can be grafted onto pre-existing foreign policy discourses and geopolitical imaginaries, resulting in their securitization without an instrumental purpose. The reaction to this securitizing move was an increase in media coverage, in which Germany was called “the energy hooligan of Europe” (Sudak 2015). Domestically, no emergency measures were proposed, as the government was quick to de-securitize the issue. In response to the interpellation, undersecretary in the Ministry of Economy, Tomasz Tomczykiewicz, provided an extensive explanation of the problem as a physical phenomenon and an economic issue which is adequately dealt with under the existing EU grid regulatory regime. 15 In the neighbouring Czech republic, however, the transmission operators threatened the German side with drastic measures – the possibility of cutting physical connection, which might cause a blackout not only in Brandenburg and Berlin, but potentially in most of Germany and Central Europe. A very different pattern was visible in the proposed nuclear energy project. After a moratorium on nuclear energy, which followed wide, societal protests in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Szulecki et al. 2015), since 2005 there have been discussions about the possibility of moving the nuclear project forward and constructing the first Polish commercial reactor by 2020. “Energy security is the key element of national economic security” – Donald Tusk claimed in his inaugural exposé as Prime Minister in 2007. Soon the nuclear project was framed as a strategic investment and a crucial solution to the country’s energy security problems. This was confirmed by Poland’s Energy Strategy 2030, a roadmap document prepared by Tusk’s government in 2009, where „Diversifying the structure of energy production by introducing nuclear energy” constituted one of the chapters. Importantly, the referent object of all rhetorical action (not just security speech acts) in the pro-nuclear discourse was not so much the society, nation or state but modernity, or Polish identity as a modern state. This idea drew on a popular 20th century notion that nuclear energy is the highest achievement of the techno-industrial society, and thus a sign of progress and keeping up with the modern world. With a new referent objects came new threats. In a risk/safety Odpowiedź sekretarza stanu w Ministerstwie Gospodarki - z upoważnienia ministra na interpelację nr 17311 - http://www.sejm.gov.pl/sejm7.nsf/InterpelacjaTresc.xsp?key=64A1E09B 15

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oriented anti-nuclear discourse, threats are numerous and come from different domains. In the governmental pro-nuclear discourse, the core threat is the people – either anti-nuclear organizations or the sceptical society. 16 Internationally, the potential threat is, again, Germany – due to its recognized anti-nuclear consensus which in 2011 led to the Atomausstieg decision. Indeed, German citizens send thousands of letters protesting Poland’s nuclear plans, and the federal government consistently demanded transnational consultations, referring to the Aarhus Convention as the legal justification. Achieving the goal – constructing Poland’s first nuclear power plant requires a number of measures going beyond the usual practice of liberal democratic politics. In 2012 Tusk nominated his long-term colleague, Aleksander Grad for the post of director in PGE’s daughter-companies PGE Nuclear Energy and PGE Nuclear Plant 1. Moving an active politician to a (partly) private business company was creating a peculiar personal public-private union, and the PM justified it by saying that “state’s engagement and strict political oversight on nuclear energy development is absolutely necessary”. 17 To the growing concerns about the project’s economic viability, the Prime Minister replied: “building security has to come at a cost and the role of the state is to design market regulation that will minimize economic risks”.18 The obscure public-private amalgam did not last long here, as grad had to resign from the position in 2014, seeing that the project might not be feasible. Another high executive in the sector and Tusk’s accomplice, Krzysztof Kilian, had to be dismissed from his position as director of PGE after he tried to conduct company policies following market logic rather than the preferred “national security” paradigm. But more far reaching exceptional measures were to be taken against the projects potential political opponents. In a strategic document about the project public communication and PR, 19 the relevant audiences have been divided into “friends” and “enemies”, an example of explicit Schmittean language of securitization. A dialogue with “the enemies” is impossible, states the report, since they have “contradictory interests and goals”. The only actions that can be taken are “communicative security” for governmental information campaigns and the “complete elimination” of “enemy” communiques. The recipe for public debate presented in the document is: „absolutely crucial is to take actions that will eliminate or tame the influence of enemies on the communicative sphere and will use our friends for information support and pushing through the positions that we want to see”. Particularly dangerous “enemies” include environmental organizations, as well as scientists and journalists sceptical towards the nuclear project, but having expert authority and good media contacts. Open debates are to be avoided, because they can “give platform to ardent nuclear-sceptics”.

Of the 221 coded newspaper articles, this is mentioned 20 times, much more often than any other threat. 17 Tusk: Grad prezesem spółki? Ta nominacja ma charakter polityczny, „Wprost”, 18. 07. 2012, http://www.wprost.pl/ar/334451/Tusk-Grad-prezesem-spolki-Ta-nominacja-ma-charakter-polityczny. 18 Państwo musi ingerować w energetykę, „Forbes”, 5. 09. 2013, http://www.forbes.pl/panstwomusi-ingerowac-w-energetyke,artykuly,161320,1,1.html. 19 Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Ministerstwa Gospodarki, Koncepcja kampanii informacyjnej dotyczącej energetyki jądrowej: Bezpieczeństwo, które się opłaca. 16

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If this was not enough, the government also reformed the Nuclear Law in 2012, giving new powers to the Agency of Internal Security, which include the possibility of monitoring (e.g. spying on) potential opponents of the nuclear project, to “protect” it (Czarkowski 2012). If the director of the Agency interprets an individual’s or organization’s actions as a potential threat to the project, defined as a “crisis situation” which may have terrorist consequences, such measures are justified – calling into question the possibility of any organized protest against the nuclear plant’s construction. In the electricity sector, making coal the foundation of energy security puts Poland’s energy policy on collision course with EU’s climate mitigation efforts. All recent governments treated European climate policy as a threat, and at one point Poland used the EU negotiations’ “atomic bomb” – it vetoed the 2050 Strategy. Domestically, climate policy instruments such as renewable energy sources are also targeted as threats – for the energy system (because of their intermittency and instability), the economy (costs) and the society (apparent health risks of wind turbines). With renewables as a convenient scapegoat, and maintaining the securitized status of coal, the Law and Justice government in 2016 proposed an exceptional measure to deal with the increasingly dangerous dire state of the coalpower sector. A ‘replacement fee’, established in response to stricter EU regulations on state aid, has been increased almost three times, re-branded a ‘renewable energy surcharge’, and added to the final consumers energy bills, while the financial resources gained are redirected to the coal sector. The conclusions that can be drawn from this short empirical illustration are firstly, that the gas sector is highly securitized and closely linked to foreign policy practice and the broader security imaginary. Russia, but also Germany, are the Others in relation to whom Polish actors create policies – not always rational, precisely because of the sustained securitization. Much of the securitization moves observed here are ritualized and breaking out of the vicious circle would require not just gas de-securitization but a revision of the image of Russia in Polish popular and formal geopolitical discourses. In the electricity sector, on the other hand, securitization is less visible – the power sector remains de-politicized. When securitization moves appear, especially related to coal and renewables (as coal’s Doppelgänger), they seem to be strategic attempts by the state administration to maintain control over energy governance which due to EU regulations is becoming increasingly market-driven. The nuclear project constitutes the clearest example of how “talking security” can be used to justify exceptional measures undermining democratic practices and taming societal dissent in a quasi-authoritarian fashion. 7. Conclusions … Acknowledgements Some very early ideas developed in this paper were first presented at the workshop “Conceptions of energy-security: Politics and policies”, part of the Nordic Environmental Social Science (NESS) conference, Trondheim, Norway, 10 June 2015. I would like to thank the conveners, Gunnar Fermann and Hugh Dyer, as well as the participants for their feedback on my rough and chaotic thoughts. I would also like to thank the organizers and participants of the conference “Towards a common European energy policy? Perceptions of energy security” held at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, 19 May 2016, where I

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presented an earlier draft, and especially Andreas Heinrich, Andy Judge and Tomas Maltby for their comments and general securitization discussions.

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