Description
One aspect of securitisation research that pertains all key debates but remains surprisingly and vastly under-theorised concerns the thorny concept of ‘success’, or its absence, in securitisation processes. Although success features as a key aspect of all definitions of securitisation, scholars often focus on different dimensions of the securitisation process, which means that their empirical assessments of success and failure are not conceptually analogous. Furthermore, despite sporadic (but scarce) references to partial, incomplete or failed securitisations in empirical studies, there is no framework to explore such varying degrees of success/failure and the relationship between them. Drawing on insights from the policy success literature, this paper sets out ideal-type criteria to measure four dimensions of securitisation success relevant to both the process of social construction (evaluation of discourses and of policy responses) and its consequences (implications for referent object and for agents). It draws attention to the complex, multi-dimensional and contested nature of securitisation success, proposing an original ‘success heuristic’, which can guide empirical research and systematise comparisons of different types/dimensions of securitisation success and failure, as well as the grey areas and tensions between them.
