Copenhagen School

The Copenhagen School of security studies is an academic school that employs a critical approach to security studies. It is part of the postpositivist movement in the field of international relations (IR), which became a salient part of post–Cold War scholarship. IR theorist Barry Buzan’s 1983 book People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations forms the bedrock of the school’s academic thought. Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde are two well-known scholars connected with the school. At the core of the school is the way in which many different types of security issues interact with domestic politics. Drawing on the ideas of the ontology of constructivism within the field of IR, the Copenhagen School looks at threats to states (i.e., national ...