Security as a Public, Private or Club Good: Some Fundamental Considerations

Abstract

Security is often defined as the absence of threats. However, security has far more aspects, reaching from security of nation states to health security. Baldwin (1997) formulated seven questions to narrow the (broad) concept of security. Along with Baldwin's questions, this paper analyses 'security' in the context of private, public, and club goods and their changing mixture. On the individual level, a shift from public provision to private protection can be observed, whereas the international challenge is to provide 'security' as a global public good with a fair and efficient financing for both rich and low-income countries.Public goods, Private goods, Club goods, Property rights, Security,

Ethical health security in the age of antimicrobial resistance

“…This means that no one can be excluded from their benefit (as opposed to private or club goods), nor does the quantity of benefit reduce if shared with more people. 48 The rationale is that preserving AME and preventing emerging infectious diseases, which are transboundary in nature, would bring non-excludable and non-rivalrous benefits to all people. 36 49 The difficulty, as noted by several articles, is that because AME is a global public good, the international cooperation required to curb AMR has elements of the classic ‘collective action’ and ‘free rider’ problems, whereby countries fail to cooperate due to the externalities associated with addressing AMR.…”

Conflict and Defence Output: An Economic Perspective

“…Free riding results in a nation's citizens failing to reveal their true preferences for, and valuations of, defence and peace. Here, the problem is that the state in providing and financing defence which leads to peace does not know the true preferences of the potential beneficiaries of defence and peace: it cannot easily quantify the volume of the defence and peace public goods demanded by consumers and estimate the true price the beneficiaries are willing to pay (Engerer [2011]). There are some theoretical solutions to estimating the optimal amount of a public good but these are difficult to operationalise (Cornes and Sandler [1996]).…”

“…Security is sometimes defined as the absence of threats or risks (Baldwin [1997]; Engerer [2011]). But a world of no threats or risks does not and cannot exist: real worlds are characterised by threats and risks.…”

“…Overall, security measures can be analysed as national or international public goods, club goods and private goods each with different solutions and each embracing different industries (e.g. security industries; defence industries : Engerer [2011]). These different industries have different customers, products and technologies (Sempre [2011]).…”

Siber Güvenlikte Devlet Müdahalesinin Teorik, Ampirik ve Normatif Boyutları: Japonya Örneği

“…Security is often considered as the absence of threats or a critical public good provided by the nation state to its citizenry per its raison d'état (Engerer, 2011). Due to the progression of technology, the same process of getting rid of threats by the nation states has to be implemented in cyberspace, the newest domain of national security which "… fuses all communication networks, databases and information networks into a global virtual system" (Liaropoulos, 2013).…”