Governing Security across State and Society

Governing Security across State and Society

Panel Abstract

This panel examines how security claims are produced, legitimised and institutionalised across the shifting boundary between state and society. Approaching securitisation through the lenses of power, legitimation and institutional practice, it regards national security not as a fixed policy domain but as a social process through which states, publics, bureaucracies and firms define threats and authorise governance. Bringing political sociology into conversation with international relations, the panel asks how culture, nationalism, disciplinary institutions, information rules and economic regulation produce authority and social order. With China as a recurring focus alongside South Korea, the United Kingdom, ASEAN, Italy and Europe, the papers show how security is constructed across domestic, regional and transnational settings.

The panel is organised around three arenas. First, it examines culture and symbolic power. Papers analyse UK and South Korean nation branding as the conversion of cultural resources into political authority, and China’s informal Hallyu restrictions as cultural governance sustained through regulatory discretion, corporate self-censorship and nationalist pressure. Second, it turns to domestic discipline and the nationalist public sphere. Papers examine Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign as a routinised system for reorganising elite power, and South China Sea nationalism as a process through which state actors and popular publics co-produce security narratives. Third, it examines information and economic governance. Papers consider the institutionalisation of China’s data-security norms in China-ASEAN cooperation and the renegotiation of development and security in China-Italy relations.