Security, identity and contestation : the discursive production of national and European security identities in British and Swedish parliamentary debates 2001-2009

This thesis examines. the discursive production of the relationship between national security identity and the development of the EU as a security actor. It aims both to answer Howarth and Torfing's (2005) call for discourse theoretical CDT) analysis to be comparative and to look at areas of TR and politics like national security identities, and to help fill the discourse theoretical gap in European Studies. Drawing on a DT approach which neither presupposes or essentialises the identity or qualities of international (security) actors nor privileges certain actors or subjects over others, the thesis focuses on how the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and the EU as civilian and military. security actor has been made possible. It does so through a comparative study of the parliamentary discursive production of the nation and the EU as security actors, and the relationship between the two, in two cases: Britain and Sweden. Both were initially reluctant, even hostile, towards the development of a military and defence dimension of the EU, but since the late 1990s have become driving forces behind the ESDP's development. Applying a discursive reading strategy 10 parliamentary foreign and security policy debates in Sweden and Britain between 2001•2009, the thesis illuminates the considerable discursive change in both countries which has accommodated and made possible the production of the militarisation of the EU. Both Britain's and Sweden's parliamentary security discourses are found to change gradually over the period of study and, drawing on different discursive elements, to produce the ESDP as, in the main, compatible with and a natural continuation of national identity. However, in both cases the dominant pro-ESDP governments' discourses are contested and there are intense discursive struggles over the meaning of security and the subject positions of both the EU and the nation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo