The Effects of Using Security Frames on Global Agenda Setting and Policy Making

338 Pages·2016·2.11 MB·English

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Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses
November 2015
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Sirin Duygulu Elcim
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Duygulu Elcim, Sirin, "The Effects of Using Security Frames on Global Agenda Setting and Policy Making"
(2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 438.
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THE EFFECTS OF USING SECURITY FRAMES ON GLOBAL AGENDA SETTING
AND POLICY MAKING

A Dissertation Prepared

by

SIRIN DUYGULU ELCIM

Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

September 2015

Political Science
© Copyright by Sirin Duygulu Elcim 2015
All Rights Reserved
THE EFFECTS OF USING SECURITY FRAMES ON GLOBAL AGENDA SETTING
AND POLICY MAKING

A Dissertation Presented
by
SIRIN DUYGULU ELCIM

Approved as to style and content by:

_______________________________
R. Charli Carpenter, Chair

_______________________________
Peter M. Haas, Member

_______________________________
Maryann Barakso, Member

_______________________________
James Ron, Member

___________________________________
Brian F. Schaffner, Department Chair
Political Science

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DEDICATION

To my family for their relentless support…

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work would not have been possible without the intellectual and emotional
support of a number of people.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Charli Carpenter who agreed to chair this
dissertation four years ago when I did not know whether the idea I had in my mind was
worth pursuing. It’s her support, guidance and patience to go through countless number
of drafts that made this project possible. I am grateful to the members of committee for
seeing the potential in this work and supporting me with their eye-opening feedback.
Peter Haas’s guidance made me see the bigger picture, and Maryann Barakso’s insights
into interest group politics as well as James Ron’s suggestions about how to develop the
study made it possible for me to turn a very rough first draft into this dissertation.
I also would like to thank MJ Peterson, Joshua Busby, Clifford Bob and Wendy
Wong for their comments on different parts of this work. I am also thankful to the
participants of the BISA-ISA Annual Conference in 2012 for deepening my
understanding of the securitization theory. I am extremely grateful to the interviewees,
who preferred to remain anonymous, for sharing insights that fundamentally changed the
way I see conflict diamonds and securitization.
I thank University of Massachusetts Graduate School, International Studies
Association and Okan University for a number of conference travel grants that allowed
me to workshop my ideas and learn from very different audiences.
At University of Massachusetts, Amanda Brule, Jeanette Harvie, Meltem Duran,
Zeynep İnanç, Gizem Zencirci, Aycan Kapucu, Colleen Tarsi and Ruchika Singh made
the years I have spent in Amherst memorable; Ilke Ercan turned a humble apartment into
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a home by being the best roommate one can hope for; and if it was not for Melinda Tarsi
I would not have found the courage or the will to continue to this journey.
I am also thankful to Donna Dove, Jennifer Southgate, Stephen Marvell, Michelle
Goncalves, Trish Bachand, and Barbara Ciesluk for their administrative support
throughout the years.
At Okan University, Mustafa Kibaroğlu, Ayşegül Kibaroğlu, Zeynep Alemdar,
Hasret Dikici Bilgin, Umut Azak, Mehmet Kabasakal, Nihan Köseoğlu, Hasan Pekşen,
Pınar Sayan, İrem Yalkı, Ceyda Ovacı and Emre Çakmak, both helped me develop this
work with their feedback and made it possible for me to write this dissertation while
working at a full-time academic job with their patience and support. I am also grateful to
my dearest friends Günsu Usanmaz, Selin Derya Bilkur, Yasemin Veli Kara, Dilan Ceren
Akşahin and Gamze Turan for believing in me.
I am thankful to my father for dreaming this career for me and having the vision
to send his only child across the ocean to pursue it and my mother who taught me to be
strong and who stood by me in every turn and every fall.
I would like to thank my husband who did not complain once even though I spent
every holiday and every weekend of the first year of our marriage on revising this
dissertation. Thank you for making me a better person.
Lastly, I thank my grandmother for being my biggest supporter.

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ABSTRACT

THE EFFECTS OF USING SECURITY FRAMES ON GLOBAL AGENDA SETTING
AND POLICY MAKING

SEPTEMBER 2015

SIRIN DUYGULU ELCIM, B.A., SABANCI UNIVERSITY
M.A., KOC UNIVERSITY
Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Charli Carpenter

Why do transnational advocacy campaigns on environmental, health, human
rights or humanitarian causes sometimes (but not always) frame these problems as
security issues? This is an important question because there is an under-analyzed
assumption made by some transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and securitization
studies scholars that framing an issue as a security threat has an overall positive effect on
convincing states to take actions in addressing transnational social problems. The lack of
systematic comparison across cases limits our ability to reveal the advocates’ motivations
in adopting security frames and the contrasting effects that securitization might have at
various stages of advocacy campaigns. It is crucial to address this question as it will help
us better understand the sources of transnational advocacy campaigns’ influence over
states as well as the inner dynamics of advocacy strategies.
The study conducts a systematic comparative analysis of thirty-eight transnational
advocacy campaigns to test whether the assumed correlation between using security
frames and reaching advocacy success would hold when analyzed comparatively. The
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study then takes a closer look at the question by conducting a comparative
analysis of nine cases and an illustrative analysis of a securitized campaign
(Conflict Diamonds) to address the similarities between securitization and other
acts of framing as well as to shed light onto the inner dynamics of securitization.
Based on this analysis, the study argues that rather than being unique and
correlated to transnational advocacy success, as argued by the literature, security
frames operate like any other frame, and in order for such framing decisions to
translate into advocacy success they need to coexist with an enabling strategic
environment. The study also provides insights into the conditions that shape
advocates’ framing choices. In addition to the widely cited role of the broader
political context, the study also finds the advocacy networks’ own dynamics as
well as the advocates’ previous experiences and their fields of expertise to be
important in shaping their framing choices. The study also argues that advocates
engage in multivocalization, which refers to the inclination of the advocates to
invoke multiple frames simultaneously to reach out not only to targets of
influence but also to potential allies with the goal of strengthening their networks.
The analysis also reveals that the motivations behind adopting security
frames are more complex than appreciated by the securitization literature in two
ways: (i) a security frame does not have to be tailored toward states or security
organizations, it can also be crafted to get the attention and the cooperation of
non-state actors; and (ii) a security frame might appeal to an audience not
necessarily because of the security threat it voices but because of the non-security
concerns it silences.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………....xiv

LIST OF FIGURES………………………….……………………………...…………...xv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………..…xvi

CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1
The Puzzle ................................................................................................................1
Relevance of the Research Question ........................................................................5
What is Missing from the Existing Studies and Why it is Important to
Explore This Question?..............................................................................13
Contribution of the Study.......................................................................................17
How does This Study Go about Exploring the Research Question? .....................19
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ..............................................................................................27
Introduction ............................................................................................................27
Securitization .........................................................................................................32
Defining Securitization and its Contribution to Security Studies..............33
Limitations of the Securitization Literature ...............................................37
Securitization as Framing and the Strategic Environment for TANs ....................40
Transnational Advocacy Campaigns .........................................................41
Strategic Environment ...............................................................................46
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