Description
Can ontological security - an individual-level concept - be empirically investigated on the state-level? Is it possible to demonstrate that the state is an ontological security-seeker due to experienced anxiety? This paper proposes to supplement methods of ‘capturing’ national identity anxiety by evaluating the researcher’s interpretation of the historical processes and textual/audio-visual data with context-specific knowledge from state officials. This study is the first to use elite interviews to verify and support narrative analysis-based contention that countries are dealing with ontological insecurity. In ontological security studies, determining what type of evidence illustrates state anxieties remains underesearched. Claims about the state’s anxiety are mostly based on historical and narrative analysis. Where the literature could be developed is the way how we establish that states are anxious. By conducting 70 interviews with British and Israeli officials, this investigation generates rich empirical evidence supporting seminal theoretical literature on ontological security's role in states’ behaviour. In particular, it verified and traced how officials’ anxiety about their country’s policies “scales up” to the state level (Mitzen, 2006). The study provides new evidence – coming from the state officials themselves – confirming salience and the transferability of individual-level anxieties to states’ practices.
