The Global Governance of Security and Finance: Introduction to the Special Issue

Global governance links security and finance in four important ways. First, the combined effect of the financial crisis and the global ‘war on terror’ has been an increasingly explicit merging of finance and security concerns. Second, security and finance were arguably closely linked in the rise of the modern form of government as far back as the late 17th century, a relation still evident in the form of ‘government securities’ such as bonds and treasuries, which in 2010 rose to new prominence in the various sovereign debt crises of the Eurozone. Third, a considerable literature has shown that finance and security share a claim to universal applicability in (all) other social spheres, resulting in various forms of financialization and securitization (Martin, 2002; Langley, 2007; Buzan et al., 1998). Finally, not only have the liberal strategies of finance and security converged in a common vocabulary and epistemology of risk (management), but this technology of governing the future is currently undergoing a critical epistemic transformation that in turn implies finance and security in new relationships.