Introduction: ‘What kind of theory – if any – is securitization?’

When international affairs seemed stuck in a state of (cold) war, how could politics regain its place? How could diplomacy get back to center stage, when it was asked to establish a common language for assessing (if disa-greeing about) events and finding compromises, while being, paradoxically, only able to function if such shared understandings already existed? As it happens, political practice gave some hints. German