Theoretical Approaches to Human Security

When we talk about security, the mind often jumps to armies, borders, and the survival of the state. But over the past three decades, a quieter revolution has reshaped how scholars define safety itself. Human security shifts the spotlight from the protection of territory to the protection of people, asking a deceptively simple question: secure for whom, and secure from what? Yet there is no single agreed way to study this idea. Two broad theoretical camps dominate the debate. One keeps the state at the centre while expanding what counts as a threat. The other questions whether the state should be the reference point at all. Understanding these two approaches is essential for anyone trying to make sense of contemporary security studies.

Why a theoretical lens matters 🔗

The concept of human security gained global recognition with the United Nations Development Programme’s 1994 Human Development Report, which argued that security should be equated with people rather than territories and with development rather than arms. The report identified seven interconnected dimensions: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. It also popularised two guiding phrases, freedom from fear and freedom from want.

This was a radical departure. For most of the twentieth century, security studies were dominated by realist and neo-realist thinking, which treated the state as the primary actor and military force as the main currency of safety. Human security disrupted this by suggesting that for many people, the greatest threats come not from foreign armies but from internal conflict, disease, hunger, and even their own governments.

But agreeing that people matter does not tell us how to study them. Should we keep working within the existing state system and simply add new threats to the list? Or should we rethink the entire framework from the ground up? This is precisely where the neo-realist and the postmodernist or critical approaches part ways.

The neo-realist approach: broadening without abandoning the state 🔗

The neo-realist approach to human security accepts that the security agenda has grown wider, but it refuses to give up the state as the central organising unit. Scholars in this tradition argue that you can study non-military threats like environmental degradation, economic collapse, or pandemics while still treating the state as the main provider and guarantor of security.

Barry Buzan and the widened agenda 🔗

The most influential figure here is Barry Buzan. His 1983 book People, States and Fear challenged the narrow, state-centric and militaristic view of security that prevailed during the Cold War. Buzan contended that our understanding of national security should be broadened to address concerns involving individuals, states, and the entire international system. Crucially, though, he did not throw out the state. Instead, he argued that security operates across multiple sectors.

Buzan’s framework, later developed with colleagues into what became known as the Copenhagen School, identified several sectors of security: military, political, economic, societal, and environmental. This is what made his approach so powerful. It allowed analysts to take seriously a far wider range of threats without losing analytical focus. The state remains central, but it shares the stage with new institutions, regimes, and rules, while the sources of threats become more diverse and local.

The traditionalist worry about coherence 🔗

Not everyone welcomed this widening. Traditionalist critics warned that if security came to mean almost everything, it would risk giving the discipline intellectual incoherence. If poverty, climate change, migration, and disease are all “security” issues, the concern is that the word loses analytical sharpness. Some traditionalists relaxed their purely military focus but insisted that widening should only be allowed where a threat could plausibly be linked to the use of force.

Buzan and his collaborators answered this worry with the concept of securitization. In this view, security is not the content of a particular sector but a particular kind of politics, defined by reference to existential threats and calls for emergency action in any sector. An issue becomes a security matter when an actor successfully frames it as an existential threat requiring extraordinary measures. This kept the broadened agenda disciplined while preserving the state as the dominant actor that usually does the securitizing.

What the neo-realist approach offers 🔗

The strengths of this approach are practical. Because it works within the existing state system, its insights translate readily into policy. Governments already have ministries, budgets, and institutions, so framing health or environmental crises as security threats can mobilise serious resources. The state-centric lens also fits the reality that most security provision still flows through national governments, their police forces, their disaster management agencies, and their public health systems.

The postmodernist and critical approach: putting people first 🔗

The second camp goes much further. Postmodernist and critical theorists argue for a fundamental reconceptualization of security that moves away from state-centric thinking altogether. For these scholars, focusing primarily on the state can actually obscure, or even create, threats to individuals and groups.

Ken Booth and security as emancipation 🔗

A leading voice in this tradition is Ken Booth. He argued that security should be understood as emancipation, the freeing of people from the physical and human constraints that stop them from carrying out what they would freely choose to do. From this angle, true security is not about defending borders but about removing the conditions, such as poverty, oppression, and lack of education, that keep people unfree.

This reframing carries a sharp implication. If the goal is to free people, then the state can itself be a source of insecurity rather than its solution. A government that represses dissent, discriminates against minorities, or fails to protect vulnerable communities becomes part of the problem. Critical theorists therefore advocate a bottom-up approach that prioritises the security of people and communities over the security of states.

The role of non-state actors and interdependence 🔗

The critical approach also emphasises actors beyond the state. Civil society organisations, community groups, international NGOs, social movements, and even individuals are treated as meaningful participants in producing security, not just passive recipients of state protection. This connects to a broader insight: in a globalised world, security is deeply interdependent.

A pandemic in one country quickly becomes a threat everywhere. Climate change driven by emissions in industrialised nations devastates farmers thousands of kilometres away. Financial shocks ripple across borders within hours. Because these threats ignore national boundaries, critical theorists argue that a framework fixated on individual states cannot capture how insecurity actually travels and accumulates across the globe.

Where the critical approach challenges the mainstream 🔗

Both human security and critical security studies challenge the state-centric orthodoxy that defines security as the military defence of territory against external threats. Both broaden and deepen the security agenda. Feminist scholars within this camp have added a further critique, pointing to phenomena such as the use of sexual violence as a weapon during ethnic conflicts and the marginalisation of women in neo-realist security discourse. The critical approach’s great strength is inclusivity, since it foregrounds the voices and experiences of marginalised groups who are often invisible in state-level analysis.

Comparing the two approaches 🔗

The clearest way to grasp the difference is to ask the three questions that organise the human security debate: security for whom, security from what, and security by what means.

Security for whom: The neo-realist approach keeps the state as the central referent, even as it acknowledges individuals. The critical approach insists the individual and the community are the proper referents, and treats the state as one actor among many.

Security from what: Both accept a wide range of non-military threats. But the neo-realist version organises them into sectors that the state can manage, while the critical version stresses how these threats are interconnected and often produced by existing power structures, including states themselves.

Security by what means: The neo-realist approach relies largely on state institutions, policy, and securitization. The critical approach favours emancipation, empowerment, and participation by non-state actors from the bottom up.

It is worth noting that even postmodernist and post-structuralist scholars, despite questioning the foundations of the discipline, have acknowledged the continuing importance of security studies. The two camps are rivals, but they are arguing about the same urgent questions.

Putting the approaches to work 🔗

These are not just abstract debates. Consider how a country responds to a public health emergency. State-led measures such as nationwide lockdowns, centralised vaccination drives, and emergency legislation reflect the neo-realist logic of the state acting as the primary security provider. At the same time, community health workers, civil society support for migrant labourers, and grassroots awareness campaigns reflect the postmodernist emphasis on decentralised, participatory security from below.

The same pattern appears across contemporary challenges. Climate change, large-scale migration, digital privacy, and deepening economic inequality all demand responses that draw on both state capacity and community innovation. The most effective answers often combine the institutional strength the neo-realists prize with the participatory, people-centred ethos the critical theorists champion. In a diverse society marked by significant regional, linguistic, and economic differences, neither a purely top-down nor a purely bottom-up model is likely to be sufficient on its own.

Two lenses, one shared concern 🔗

What unites these approaches is more important than what divides them. Both reject the idea that security is only about armies and borders. Both insist that the everyday safety, dignity, and wellbeing of people belong at the heart of security thinking. Where they differ is in method and emphasis: whether to reform the state-centric system from within, as Buzan suggests, or to rebuild security thinking around people and communities, as Booth and the critical theorists argue. Holding both lenses at once gives the richest picture of what it really means to keep people safe.

What do you think? Should the state remain the central actor in providing security, or do today’s interconnected threats demand that we treat communities and individuals as the true reference point? And can a single framework ever capture both institutional power and grassroots empowerment, or will security studies always be pulled between these two poles?

References

1. https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_security
3. https://www.e-ir.info/2014/07/05/a-critical-evaluation-of-the-concept-of-human-security/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People,_States_and_Fear
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_School_(international_relations)
6. https://infogalactic.com/info/Copenhagen_School_(international_relations)
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231962570_Critical_Human_Security_Studies
8. https://www.e-ir.info/2011/07/31/are-security-issues-most-effectively-addressed-by-a-neo-realist-ir-approach/
9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291864050_Neo-realism_neo-liberalism_and_security