Securitization of COVID-19 as a Security Norm: WHO Norm Entrepreneurship and Norm Cascading
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Health Security, Norms, and Securitization Processes
- Sources: Norms come from a variety of sources, involving a complexity of actors, issues, and contexts.
- Contexts: What matters in norm circulation is not just the security norm entrepreneur, but also the context from which he/she draws the norms.
- Agents: There should be attention not only to how norms originate, but also how they diffuse. The first mention of a new term or concept of a norm is important, but agency can also lie in who and how the norm in question is being promoted.
- Contestations and Feedback: “Resistance that leads to the redefinition, contextualization and localization of a norm is a form of agency. Norms are seldom likely to be adopted wholesale, even though the very idea of a ‘universal’ norm in the sense of ‘applying to all’ masks important variations in the implementation of the norm and the instruments, institutions and processes used for its propagation” (ibid).
3. Methodology
3.1. The Securitization of a Pandemic—COVID-19 and the World Health Organization
3.2. WHO and the Global Health Security Norm
3.3. COVID-19 Security Norm Emergence by the WHO
3.4. Norm Cascading at the Member State Level—The Spectrum of Responses
- Primary norm: COVID-19 is a security threat that needs to be contained along the lines of accepted, pre-existing, global health security norms linked to communicable diseases.
- Secondary norm: There are several ways to contain the COVID-19 spread, including international cooperation, investment in health capacities (detection, treatment, etc.), interruption of global mobility to contain human-to-human infections, etc.
- Competing secondary norms: economic security, human security, civil liberties, and democratic governance (and many more).
3.4.1. Israel
3.4.2. Germany
3.4.3. United Kingdom
3.4.4. United States
4. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Kaunert, C.; Leonard, S.; Wertman, O. Securitization of COVID-19 as a Security Norm: WHO Norm Entrepreneurship and Norm Cascading. Soc. Sci. 2022, 11, 266. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070266
Kaunert C, Leonard S, Wertman O. Securitization of COVID-19 as a Security Norm: WHO Norm Entrepreneurship and Norm Cascading. Social Sciences. 2022; 11(7):266. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070266
Chicago/Turabian StyleKaunert, Christian, Sarah Leonard, and Ori Wertman. 2022. "Securitization of COVID-19 as a Security Norm: WHO Norm Entrepreneurship and Norm Cascading" Social Sciences 11, no. 7: 266. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070266