Keith Krause

Despite long-term and general declines in most forms of lethal violence, some states and regions, in particular in the Global South, remain caught in an “insecurity trap.” Neither “declinist” scholars who present war and all forms of violence in long-term decline due to shifts in norms and values, nor scholars working on transitions from the natural state to “open access orders” focusing on the emergence of liberal institutions and social arrangements, can adequately account for the persistence of the “insecurity trap.” Working between macro-historical accounts of the relationship between “violence and social orders” and micro-level accounts of particular cases, this project attempts to uncover the processes and mechanisms associated with the historically embedded and evolving relationship between state security institutions (broadly understood) and civilian power/civil society in the European and extra-European experience, helping to account for the failure of states to provide security (from internal and external threats) as a public good.