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How do State Agents Understand the Self Against the Threat of Internal Insecurity?: A discursive analysis of ontological security within the United States as presidents respond to the storming of the Capitol in 2021
Swedish Defence University.
2021 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Introducing the reader to the issue of domestic insecurity in the context of the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the following thesis applies discourse analysis to understand how the presidential responses to the Capitol insurrection can be understood through the Ontological Security Theory (OST). Using a domestic perspective of OST suggests a theoretical need to understand how state agents are coping with domestic security issues internally to preserve the state’s ontological security. The analysis questions whether state agents in times of insecurity always act to secure the nation-state’s self or rather act in terms of satisfying their political identity and agenda. President Trump and President Biden communicated their capabilities to constitute the national identity and security of the United States after the Capitol insurrection. However, as this thesis demonstrates, the state agents were not coherent in their actions to satisfy the nation-state’s identity needs as they rather claimed different state-narratives. This thesis therefore accounts for, although in small contribution, a request for theoretically nuance the OST framework where the state-perspective can neither be reduced to the interpretation as a ‘coherent individual’, nor that state agents always act in expected conformity. By identifying the need for analyzing domestic security issues through the lens of OST, the author aims to increase the academic interest in analyzing state agents’ behavior at the state-level in times of domestic insecurity and political anxiety. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. , p. 43
Keywords [en]
American identity, discourse analysis, ontological security theory, state agents
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-10713OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-10713DiVA, id: diva2:1636479
Subject / course
Political Science with a focus on Crisis Management and Security
Educational program
Swedish Defence University’s Bachelor Program
Uppsok
Social and Behavioural Science, Law
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2022-02-21 Created: 2022-02-09 Last updated: 2025-09-29Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf