Deudney: Bounding Power: Chapter 1: Republican Security Theory

Deudney, Daniel. (2007). Bounding power : republican security theory from the polis to the global village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 1: Republican Security Theory
“From its inception, republican security theory has been concerned with what might be termed the security-political question: what kinds of political arrangements are necessary for security?” (27). This focus on security first and foremost assumes that the freedom from violence is the most political issue. Later, Deudney identifies this approach to security as normative survivalism (31).

“In the broadest terms, insecurity results from the absence of restraint on violent power, and security results from the presence of restraints on violent power” (27). This is the double meaning of “bounding power”: firstly, violent power continues to bound upwards in its material capability and secondly, political power must discover ways in which it is possible to bound this power.

The other problem of republican security strategy is that neither anarchy or hierarchy are suitable: “…the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy are fundamentally alike because neither provides adequate restraints upon the application of violence to the human body” (31). This is problematic, and requires that republican security strategy find a middle ground between these two extremes.

These two extremes are then highlighted in more detail. “The main argument of the anarchy-interdependence problematique, as we have seen, is that situations of intense violence interdependence combined with anarchy are a first anarchy. First anarchies are incompatible with security, and the size of the space with intense violence interdependence has expanded over time with far-reaching implications for security” (41). The second extreme is the hierarchy-restraint problematique. “The animating insight of the second problematique is the realization that governments can themselves pose as severe a security threat as first anarchy” (46).

Deudney deploys the concept of negarchy to explain the set of Republican negative constraints that comprise a triad between hierarchy and anarchy. This negative forces mutually restrain, while also providing for freedom. This involves, “balances all the way up and down” (49).