This book examines the extensive network of security professionals and the wide range of practices that have spread in Azerbaijan’s energy sector. It unpacks the interactions of state, supra‐state, and private security organisations and argues that energy security has enabled and normalised a coercive way of exercising power.

In recent times, the Blue Berets have become markers of peace and security around the globe. Yet, the iconoclastic symbol of both the Blue Beret and the Blue Helmet continue to engage the international political imagination in ways that downplay the inconsistent effects of peacekeeping missions on the security of local people. In this book, Paul Higate and Marsha Henry develop critical perspectives on UN and NATO peacekeeping, arguing that these forms of international intervention are framed by the exercise of power. Their analysis of peacekeeping, based on fieldwork conducted in Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo, suggests that peacekeeping reconfigures former conflict zones in ways that shape perceptions of security. This reconfiguration of space is enacted by peacekeeping personnel who 'perform' security through their daily professional and personal practices, sometimes with unanticipated effects. Insecure Spaces' interdisciplinary analysis sheds great light on the contradictory mix of security and insecurity that peace operations create.

This publication is part of a series linked to the Council of Europe's project "Responses to violence in everyday life in democratic society" which considers various aspects of policy making and law enforcement to combat crime and violence in society. Aspects discussed include: the need for reliable statistics to qualify and quantify crime; institutional responses; violence and personal responsibility; active citizenship; mediation; and links to wider issues of freedom and security.

This anthology explores the political nature of making order through policing activities in densely populated spaces across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Based on ethnographic research, the chapters analyze this complex with respect to marginalized young men in Haiti, community policing members and national politicians in Swaziland as well as other individual and collective actors engaged in policing and politics in Indonesia, Swaziland, Ghana, South Africa, Mexico, Bolivia, Haiti and Sierra Leone. What these contexts have in common is a plurality of order-making practices. Not one institution monopolizes the means of violence or a de facto sovereign position to do so. A number of interests are played out simultaneously, entailing re-negotiations over the very definition of what ‘order’ is. How and by whom a particular order is enforced is contested, at times violently so, and is therefore inherently political. In the existing literature on weak states, legal pluralism and policing in the Global South it is seldom made explicit that making order is a route to power and positions of political decision-making. It is this gap in the literature that this anthology fills, as it analyses the politics at stake in processes of order-making.

The fifth Small Wars Journal—El Centro anthology spans online journal and blog writings for all of 2015 with a thematic focus on narcoterrorism and impunity in the Americas. This anthology is composed of an About SWJ and Foundation section; a memoriam to our friend and colleague, George W. Grayson; an acronym listing; a foreword; an introduction; twenty-eight chapters; a postscript; anthology notes; and notes on its twenty-three academic, governmental, and professional contributors.

This topical Handbook explores the emergence of climate change as an international security issue, the threats it poses, and the political and academic debates it has prompted. Framing climate change as a security issue, it explores the ways relevant actors, states and international organizations have conceptualized climate security and its associated threats.

This book assesses Mongolia’s position in the security calculus of Northeast Asia and presents the policy outlooks of major powers vis-a-vis the region, including the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and India. Ground-breaking and modernistic in its approach, the book treats the often marginalised and landlocked small power state of Mongolia as a critical regional actor, particularly with regards to managing ties with encircling major powers Russia and China and assist in engaging the nuclear state of North Korea through dialogue mechanisms. This compilation of chapters by distinguished scholars explores Mongolia in the Northeast Asian geographical space within the context of three major themes: nuclear proliferation, environmental security, and socio-economic and civilisational conflicts. The book provides a multidisciplinary and multinational approach to Mongolia’s role in the region's strategic landscape. It moves the regional security discussion beyond major power politics, North Korea's denuclearisation, and the impasse on the Korean Peninsula to discuss and analyse other underappreciated challenges facing the region. Considering Mongolia’s role in achieving peace and stability in the neighbourhood, the book will be a valuable resource for researchers and readers in International Relations, Political Science, and Asian Studies.

This book looks at human security in China’s foreign relations. It discusses the concept and theory of human security, and their implications for China. The book goes on to analyse environmental security issues, including climate change and water resources, as well as looking at issues from an energy consumption perspective. Significant human security issues are then focussed on, including food safety, pandemic disease control, migration, and the human rights implications of China’s overseas investment.

This handbook provides a comprehensive look at the study of gender and security in global politics. The volume is based on the core argument that gender is conceptually necessary to thinking about central questions of security; analytically important for thinking about cause and effect in security; and politically important for considering possibilities of making the world better in the future. Contributions to the volume look at various aspects of studying gender and security through diverse lenses that engage diverse feminisms, with diverse policy concerns, and working with diverse theoretical contributions from scholars of security more broadly. It is grouped into four thematic sections: Gendered approaches to security (including theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches); Gendered insecurities in global politics (including the ways insecurity in global politics is distributed and read on the basis of gender); Gendered practices of security (including how policy practice and theory work together, or do not); Gendered security institutions (across a wide variety of spaces and places in global politics). This handbook will be of great interest to students of gender studies, security studies and IR in general.