Energy Security: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

How states perceive security issues shapes how they react – both in international relations and in domestic political processes. This is true for all areas of politics, including energy – which is now one of the most important domains of policy and politics. To give an example, although Poland is far less dependent on Russian gas imports than Slovakia, it is in Poland that discussions about the country‘s dependency on Russian energy imports and the immanent endangerment of its national security has sparked political controversy and has put a strain on the relations between Warsaw and Moscow. On the whole there is a visible tendency for energy security analyses written within International Relations (IR) to focus on oil (global commodity) or gas (regional strategic resource) security of supply. The electricity sector has largely remained outside of those debates. Not surprising – in the 20th century paradigm electricity was the domain of national authorities and utilities, and interconnectors were mostly for additional balancing purposes. Electricity analyses are ‘traditionally’ dominated by engineers and economists, while oil and gas have seen quite a lot of interest from political scientists. Same can be said of the few ‘critical’ research projects, applying securitization theory to the energy sector. Christou and Adamides (2013) came up with what is perhaps the best example of serious treatment of securitization in energy security studies. Even in their most theoretically refined account, securitization of energy suffers from the legacy of studying energy politics as if it was only related to oil, and perhaps to a lesser extent – gas. Energy security and securitization needs to move beyond natural resources and face the new realities of energy transformation. This panel invites scholars who combine knowledge of IR theory with expertise in the energy sector to explore the different possible alternative or ‘critical’ approaches to energy security – starting with securitization of energy security (the peculiar phrasing serves a purpose), critical geopolitics of energy and the role of normative and ideational factors.

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