From the editors

Abstract

Security, Annette Seegers points out, has to be defined; it must be given content or substance.  How security is defined is in many cases the result of a dualistic process, an interplay, between a debate on security by academia in the scholarly environment and an executive function of government in the policy process. In the definition of security, both the academic and the policy processes have to contend with two variables: domestic or internal vulnerabilities and threats from the outside, dangers lurking in the outer environment. This interplay between both perceptions and reality about the internal and the external environment and between vulnerabilities and threats is at the heart of how both the scholarly community and governments go about providing content to the idea of security. Security is therefore a deeply subjective process; a process, to quote Colin S Gray, “… influence by personality and mood swing chemistry and consideration or circumstances, but scarcely at all reliably by empirical data”.