Democratizing Security in Turbulent Times

"Democratizing Security in Turbulent Times" is a collaborative research training group of four Hamburg institutions. It analyses the possibilities and challenges of democratising security in three interconnected research perspectives: ‘rescaling’, ‘reimagining’ and ‘redesigning’ democratic security.

Security is a crucial promise and fundamental value of democratic societies, where we expect principles of accountability, participation, transparency and inclusivity to guide the conduct of political institutions (Dahl 1989: 222). Yet in today’s turbulent times, established relationships between security and democracy are being reconfigured. The proposed research training group examines these fundamental reconfigurations along three distinct research perspectives: reordering, reimagining and redesigning (democratic) security. We investigate the different and at times contradictory ways in which democratic forms of governing security are changing. We ask how the relationship between security and democracy is re-configured under the current challenging conditions.