New article published by Frank Gadinger, visiting professor

The Snowden controversy in the US and Germany around surveillance has shown the recent complexity of political debates in the context of security practices and challenges IR scholars to ask: How can we engage critically with these controversies and analyze them? With a focus on practices of (de-)legitimation, Frank Gadinger (in co-authorship with Christopher Smith Ochoa and Taylan Yildiz) adopt a practice-oriented approach to develop a conceptual framework around the term ‘narrative legitimation politics’. Furthermore, by zooming in on the Snowden controversy in the US and Germany, the paper analyses how different justificatory practices are linked to narrative elements (e.g. Snowden described as a traitor vs. hero) and demonstrates the power of narratives in the context of processes of (de-)legitimation in our uncertain times.

Smith Ochoa, C., Gadinger, F., & Yildiz, T. (2020). Surveillance under dispute: Conceptualising narrative legitimation politics. European Journal of International Security, 1-23. doi:10.1017/eis.2020.23

The paper is available under Cambridge University Press