How High is High Enough? Dutch Flood Defences and the Politics of Security

Why are Dutch flood defences as high as they are? And who has made that decision? These seemingly simple questions have complicated answers because they deal with issues of security. Increasingly, historians and political scientists point to ‘securitisation’ theory to help explain how some security issues are socially constructed as a threat and thereby dramatised as an issue that needs to be dealt with urgently. This article argues, however, for a focus on ‘desecuritisation’: the process by which measures are first suggested and then adopted to prevent the security breach from reoccurring, th... Mehr ...