【Lecture Report】Dr.Keith Krause from Geneva

Guest Lecturer: Prof. Keith Krause 

Short Bio

Prof. Keith Krause is a Professor at Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva and Director of Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding as well as Programme Director, NGO Small Arms Survey. His research interests are concepts of security, the changing character armed violence, and multilateral security cooperation.

Session

Prof. Keith Krause gave a presentation on his on-going research project entitled “The ‘Insecurity Trap’: Violence, Order and Contemporary State-Building”. He started his presentation by posing a question on what are the conditions that give rise (or not) to pacific versus predatory states, that fight few wars, that have created domestic order, and that provide security as a public good. The lecturer then continued the lecture by explaining his approach to answer the question. He also elaborated the four modes of state’s security functions according to the Weberian concept. Moreover, Prof. Krause examined Charles Tilly’s seminal work on war-making and state-making as part of his framework discussion. His presentation is followed by analysing the way states responding when they are having the ‘insecurity trap’. According to Prof. Krause, the ‘insecurity trap’ happens when a state having the problems of inability to eliminate major challenges, having large-scale contestation and an inability to provide order, state repression and violence, and corrupt, ineffective, absent or predatory policing. He ended his presentation with an examination of some examples of states that having insecurity issues. Furthermore, he mentioned his intention to enhance the research by adding cases of countries that have managed to escape the ‘insecurity trap’. Prof. Krause argued the additional of success cases could provide useful insights for countries that have not yet dodged the ‘insecurity trap’ issue.

During the question and answer session, several students engaged in a discussion with Prof. Krause. The questions for Prof Krause ranged from theoretical related inquires to policy relevant queries.