A RAWLSIAN APPROACH TO DE-SECURITIZATION
A RAWLSIAN APPROACH TO DE-SECURITIZATION

Summary/Abstract: Practices of contesting security have been identified by several authors, such as Claudia Aradau, Florent Blanc or Matt Mcdonald in actions ranging from protests against the Iraq war, Roma people cleaning up trash, the re-shaping public discourse on security and judicial contestation of national security policies. The paper first criticizes the practices of contesting security that the literature has uncovered by focusing on their insufficiently deliberative character. It argues that securitization theory, as originally formulated by the Copenhagen school, opposed the logic of security to the logic of deliberation. Thus, the paper concludes that these practices include a type of non-public reasons which a real deliberative democracy would exclude. Alternatively, the paper looks to the concept of public reason as formulated by political theorist John Rawls as a better understanding of how de-securitization should proceed. It argues that only public reason-giving practices, such as judicial contestation can amount to a true de-securitization.

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