How can we understand international and local ‘security’ today and what are the prospects for its transformation? The present international arrangements - a patchwork of the national security policies of states, private security services contracted to public and private customers at home and abroad, and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations - are in ferment. There is not only partnership but also pursuit of specific and sometimes competing security interests. This paper asks, could ‘cosmopolitanism’ offer a more inclusive agenda? Looking for empirical evidence, this perspective is found to have been significant in some historical instances, such as environmental security; intelligence analysis in support of sanctions against apartheid; and campaigning to set up the International Criminal Court. Less encouragement arises from experiences of international interventions in conflict situations, for example the experience of DutchBat at Srebrenica; from NGOs’ participation in post-conflict capacity-building, for example in anti-corruption narratives that backfire by undermining democracy; and from consideration of the possibility that truth and reconciliation tribunals, although inclusive, may be interpreted as giving ‘permission’ for criminality. It is critically concluded that, whilst cosmopolitanism may sometimes be able to ameliorate situations when it acts as a ‘ginger group’ to more powerful security actors (state, private, multilateral), it is prone to error and unintended circumstances in the rare cases in which it attains ascendancy.

Target group

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Author's information

Nicholas Dorn has been teaching part-time since 2006 in Erasmus University Rotterdam (Criminology Department, School of Law) and in 2007 was appointed Professor of International Safety and Governance. He is also a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and an independent UK researcher specialising in economic crime.