ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY OR SOURCE OF AMERICAN DECLINE? How strategic narratives on the economy-security nexus shape United States foreign policy

Introduction
Securitizing the economy is not a new phenomenon in American politics. Over the last century, we find strategic narratives - sense-making devices that forge shared meanings in order to shape policy outcomes - on the economy-security nexus ranging from praising an arsenal of democracy to diagnosing American hegemonic decline. Yet we know surprisingly little about the mechanisms and implications of securitizing economic affairs.
This project addresses this lacuna by putting the securitization of economic issues center-stage, with an empirical focus on post-Cold War America. It focuses on (i) tracing the conceptual underpinnings of the economy-security link; (ii) identifying the core discursive toolkit of economic securitization moves; (iii) exploring the socio-linguistic mechanisms influencing narrative effectiveness; and (iv) evaluating how securitizing economic issues in US politics, and as part of American grand strategy, is politically consequential.
State of Research
By the end of the Cold War, four prevalent strands of conceptualizing the economy-security nexus in international politics had incrementally emerged, but without a shared scholarly understanding of what the nexus precisely comprised, how it should be achieved, and why it matters: (1) neorealist thought advanced the idea economic capabilities affect national security because they are key ingredients to states' composition of material power; (2) (neo)institutionalism focused on the benefits of interstate economic cooperation for international security; (3) liberal internationalism raised the importance of international economic justice in fostering peace; and (4) Democratic Peace Theory proposed the advantages of democratic systems of governance for international security in which economic interests of the electorate feature centrally.
Analytical Strategy
This project seeks to understand how strategic narratives on the economy-security nexus shape US foreign policy and what difference it makes. The inquiry is centered on three interconnected research questions:
1. What types of strategic narratives on the economy-security nexus have emerged as dominant within US foreign policy projections, and in what context?
2. What are the main ingredients of the different types of strategic narratives on the link between economy and security?
3. What factors - including at the socio-linguistic level as well as with respect to economic conditions, political behavior, and cultural residue - influence the receptiveness and effectiveness of these narratives?
To answer these questions, the project engages in mix-methods research that systematically analyses the key economic securitization moves from each post-Cold War administration. It features a blend of computer-assisted quantitative textual analysis and qualitative discourse analysis aimed at three different types of political agents: (i) government level; (ii) expert level; (iii) media level. The project's tiered research process will allow for a broader evaluation of how the securitizing of economic issues in US politics and as part of American grand strategy is politically consequential.
Objective and Contributions
Illuminating the under-recognized integration of economics and national security in contemporary US foreign policy, its key contributions are (i) the development of an academic understanding of the core mechanisms underpinning securitization of economic issues within an American foreign policy context; (ii) the conceptual integration of economic issues within the broader discipline of security studies that aligns with, but also goes beyond, the narrative turn of the field; and (iii) an empirical illustration of the power of strategic narratives featuring the economy-security nexus to shape policy outcomes as well as the socio-political facilitating conditions to do so.