The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security (CHALLENGE)

Contemporary discussions on the merging between internal and external security and the relationship between liberty and security in Europe are seriously constrained by the degree to which the concepts, historical practices and institutions of liberty and security have been examined independently. This analytical division of labour expresses the practical and institutional division of labour encouraged by the structures of the modern international system and its clear distinction between foreign and domestic policies. This project is informed by an appreciation of the historical circumstances under which this distinction became a crucial defining feature of political life in the modern world of sovereign states, and of its consequences for the forms of liberal democratic politics that have emerged in Europe over the past few centuries. More significantly, it is also informed by an analysis of a broad range of structural changes on a global scale that now pose many profound challenges to this defining feature of modern European politics. Conversely, and more crucial for this project, the familiar world of secured communities living within well-defined territories and sustaining all the liberties of civil society is now seriously in tension with a profound restructuring of political identities and practices of securitization.