Ontological (In)security for New Democracies: Implications of Ontological Security Seeking Amid a Democratic Recession

• In Event: Human Security

Abstract

Ontological security in constructivist international relations uses psychology and sociology to explore a state’s security in their sense of self. This security is anchored in routines, relationships, behaviors, myths and narratives to define and reaffirm a state’s place in the world. It providing a certainty that can keep a state’s anxiety about self-identity in the unconscious. When this certainty is threatened, so is an actor’s identity and, thus, their agency. There are times when a nation faces critical situations as external and internal existential threats to its common understanding of national identity. These force a reordering of their framework of reality.

This is a real challenge for those looking at the international order today as the tenants of a liberal political, social and economic order are under significant stress. The globe has the lowest number of liberal democracies since 1985 and according to some studies, democracies that embrace liberal norms is the rarest form of polity today. Instead, there is a widening gray zone of countries that may be structurally democratic, but lacking the liberal norms highlighted by the literature above. Routines, relationships and narratives are shifting dramatically as states democratize and autocratize. As such, many states are facing significant ontological stress which is reordering the international system.

This paper will explore the extent to which there has been an ontological role for democracies, the ways in which those calculations are distinct for countries in transition, and the international implications amid gray zone competition in a multi-polar world.

Author

• Dylan L Diggs, George Mason University