National risk registers: Security scientism and the propagation of permanent insecurity

Abstract

Abstract Aiming at the measurement, comparison and ranking of all kinds of public dangers, ranging from natural hazards to industrial risks and political perils, the preparation of national risk registers stands out as a novel and increasingly popular Western security practice. This article focuses on these registers and the analytical power politics in which they are complicit. We argue, first, that positing science as an objective determinant of security truth, national risk registers advance a modernist understanding of how knowledge of national dangers can be arrived at, discounting both sovereign and popular authorities; second, that by operationalizing a traditional risk-assessment formula, risk registers make possible seemingly apolitical decisions in security matters, taken on the basis of cost–benefit thinking; and, third, that risk registers’ focus on risk ‘themes’ tiptoes around the definition of referent objects, avoiding overt decisions about the beneficiaries of particular security decisions. Taking all these factors into account, we find that risk registers ‘depoliticize’ national security debates while transforming national insecurity into something permanent and inevitable.