Paper: Politicising UK Energy: What Speaking Energy Security Can Do

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Paper: Politicising UK Energy: What Speaking Energy Security Can Do

Politicising UK Energy: What Speaking Energy Security Can Do

By: Caroline Kuzemko

In: Policy & Politics

Abstract:

This article explores one set of conditions under which a policy area, energy, became politicised. It also explores the relationship between concepts of ‘speaking security’, which claim that the language of security is politically potent, and notions of (de-) politicisation. It explains that framing energy supply as a security issue influenced an opening up of UK energy, which had been subject to processes of depoliticisation since the early 1980s, to political interest, contestation and deliberation. It is noted that speaking security about energy appears to have had a high degree of cognitive authority, to have re-focused political actors on energy as a nationally defined issue area and to have been instrumental in revealing a lack of policymaking capacity in energy. The article concludes that although ‘speaking security’ for many leads to depoliticisations in this specific context it had politicising powers of a short and longer-term nature.

Keywords: (de)politicisation; energy policy; institutional change; securitisation

Contact: c.kuzemko@exeter.ac.uk

Date: January 2014

Linkhttp://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2014/00000042/00000002/art00008

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