Projet de recherche : Bound to cooperate? - Simon Hug

Bound to cooperate?

Bound to cooperate? Mapping Swiss security in a changing global landscape

A project funded by SNFS (143818) and led by Prof Dr Andreas Wenger (main applicant, Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik, ETH Zurich) with Prof Dr Simon Hug

With (UNIGE): Stephan Davidshofer and Amal Tawfik

From October 2013 to September 2015

Summary

In Europe, the dividing lines between external and internal security, military and police, diplomacy and development, national authorities and local first responders have become increasingly porous in recent years. Whereas actors such as diplomats, general staff officers, policemen or – women and civil protection agents had evolved in fairly discrete professional fields earlier, each being subject to clearly defined local or national rules and regulations, these traditional career paths have become increasingly intertwined. Today, it is no longer uncommon for a police officer to become a private security consultant, for a military officer to have received internationally standardised training, or for local emergency forces to cooperate regularly with colleagues across national borders.

This research project investigates into this blurring of functional and national professional fields in the security realm. Focussing on Switzerland, it analyses how various actors have gradually formed a single – yet complex and stratified – national security field. Looking at the biographies and professional positions of individual security actors at both local and national level, it pursues following questions: How have previously distinct realms of ‘security work’ become integrated into a national field of security professionals? How does this integration operate – what actors with what resources and policy perspectives ‘make career’ in the newly formed field, and which do not? And in the context of ever more pressing transnational security challenges, to what extent do Europeanisation processes impact this integration of the Swiss national security field?

This research project is a collaborative endeavour between the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zürich, and the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF project number 100017_143818), it started in October 2013 and ends in September 2015. The project contributes to Swiss debates on the integration of security services as well as European discussions on transnational and trans-functional cooperation. Furthermore, it directly connects with an emergent international academic agenda on the measurement of security politics in Europe.