How to Reconcile Pandemic Business Interruption Risk With Insurance Coverage

In the face of major risks, the financial capacities of private (re)insurers are rapidly reached. For major risks such as natural catastrophes, a risk transfer can be operated to the financial markets through securitization. A pandemic is a cat. Unfortunately a nat cat securitization strategy cannot be replicated for a pandemic cat. In this paper, we consider the economic losses that firms are bearing during a pandemic like the COVID-19. We focus on their most important issues: Risk correlation, impact of administrative decisions, moral hazard, and financial liquidity. Then we propose a coverage strategy of the pandemic business interruption risk that combines self-insurance, standard – capped – (re)insurance and new double triggered pandemic business interruption bonds. Lastly, we provide a simple illustration with French data related to the losses borne by the catering sector. © 2023 Editions Dalloz Sirey. All rights reserved.

The handbook of security

The substantially revised third edition of The Handbook of Security provides the most comprehensive analysis of scholarly security debates and issues to date. It reflects the developments in security technology, the convergence of the cyber and security worlds, and the fact that security management has become even more business focused. It covers newer topics like terrorism, violence, and cybercrime through various offence types such as commercial robbery and bribery. This handbook comprises mostly brand new chapters and a few thoroughly revised chapters, with discussions of the impact of the pandemic. It includes contributions from some of the world's leading scholars from an even broader geographic scale to critique the way security is provided and managed. It speaks to professionals working in security and students studying security-related courses. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

At war or saving lives? On the securitizing semantic repertoires of Covid-19

This paper offers a multi-dimensional analysis of the ways and extent to which the US president and UK prime minister have securitized the Covid-19 pandemic in their public speeches. This assessment rests on, and illustrates the merits of, both an overdue theoretical consolidation of Securitization Theory's (ST) conceptualization of securitizing language, and a new methodological blueprint for the study of 'securitizing semantic repertoire'. Comparing and contrasting the two leaders' respective securitizing semantic repertoires adopted in the early months of the coronavirus outbreak shows that securitizing language, while very limited, has been more intense in the UK, whose repertoire was structured by a biopolitical imperative to 'save lives' in contrast to the US repertoire centred on the 'war' metaphor. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Relations is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Does health securitization affect the role of global surgery?

Aim: More and more frequently outbreaks of infectious diseases force the international community to urgent health action and lead to an increasing security focus on global health. Considering the limiting character of resource allocation, all other medical conditions must compete with the top spot of health security matters, as we currently see with the outbreak of COVID-19. Surgery is an integral part of universal health offering life-saving therapy for a variety of illnesses. Amidst the increasing nexus of infectious diseases and health security and in the view of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC), is there a risk of global surgery falling behind? Subject and Methods: While the global undersupply of surgical care is well recorded, contextual explanations are absent. Our research introduces the constructivist concept of securitization according to the Copenhagen School to explain the structural handicap of global surgery and by that presents a structural explanation. We investigate the securitizing potential of surgical diseases in comparison to infectious diseases. Results: Surgical conditions are non-contagious without the risk for disease outbreaks, hardly preventable and their treatment is often infrastructurally demanding. These key features mark their low securitizing potential. Additionally, as PHEIC is the only securitizing institution in the realm of health, infectious diseases have a privileged role in health security. Conclusion: Surgery substantially lacks securitizing potential in comparison to communicable diseases and by that is structurally given an inferior position in a securitized health order.

Securitising infectious disease outbreaks: The WHO and the visualisation of molecular life

Following its exceptional response to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) gained new powers to securitise infectious disease outbreaks via the revised 2005 International Health Regulations (IHRs) and the ability to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This article investigates the declaration of a PHEIC in relation to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that the securitisation of these outbreaks was dependent upon global surveillance networks that utilised genetic technologies to visualise the molecular characteristics and spread of the pathogen in question. Genetic evidence in these cases facilitated the creation of a securitised object by revealing the unique and 'untypable' nature of the H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and made visible the widespread prevalence of Ebola across the population of West Africa. The power of this evidence draws from a societal perception of science as producing objective 'facts' about the world that objectivise their objects of concern and empower political actors in the implementation of their security agendas. As a result, scientific evidence provided by genetic technologies now plays a necessary and indispensable role in the securitisation of infectious disease outbreaks.

Belarus: "Securitization" of State Politics and the Impact on State-Society Relations

State-society relations in authoritarian settings are a recurrent topic in the respective literature. Phenomena ranging from loyalty and apathy to dissent, open protest, and resistance have been widely researched. The different patterns of regime response or the way authorities mobilize forces themselves have been discussed to a much lesser extent. This contribution analyzes the gradual deterioration of the state-society relationship in Belarus. These fragile relations have been brought to the brink of collapse by the authorities' mishandling of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, which became a catalyst for the eruption of mass protests in the country. As a consequence, Belarus has developed into a state obsessed with security concerns. The pretense of legitimacy and the promise of a social welfare state have been replaced by an unvarnished clientelist dictatorship, relying on an inflated security apparatus. The article identifies indicators for an increased "securitization" of state politics in recent years and corresponding measures that guided authorities in their endeavor to counteract societal resistance. The aim is to shed light on how securitized interactions have become emblematic of dysfunctional state-society relations in Belarus.

Legislative crystallization of covid-19 securitization processes.The case of Spain. From Law 4/1981 on states of alarm, exception and siege to Law 2/2021 on measures for the management of the pandemic

EXTENDED The aim of this article is to present a theoretical-methodological proposal based on a model of analysis from the Copenhagen School of Security Studies, which incorporates the examination of legislative texts into the study of securitization processes. With this objective, we propose an approach to the study of the securitization of the Covid-19 pandemic through the comparative analysis of two texts that have given legislative coverage to the management of this health crisis in Spain. The text of (1) Organic Law 4/1981 on the states of alarm, exception and siege;and the text of (2) Law 2/2021 of the Basque Parliament on measures for managing the pandemic. After the publication of Security:A New Framework For Analysis (Buzan et al.1997), numerous investigations have used the securitization analysis model of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies to study security policies on phenomena such as migratory movements (Muller and Gerbauer, 2021), the climate emergency, or the health crisis of Covid-19 by examining the texts published on social media (Karyotis et al., 2021),or the analysis of the audiences (Bengtsson and Rhinard, 2019) or political discourses (Kuleteva and Clifford, 2021). Securitization theory holds that what gives an issue the status of threat results from an interaction between an actor, whether it is a state, an organization, or the media, and which tries to define a certain problem as an existential threat, and an audience that accepts or rejects this attempt. Under this premise, security is considered a social construct, which has enormous consequences when it comes to its study. The analysis of the security agenda no longer consists of evaluating those threats considered real, but rather aims at the communicative processes through which actors and audiences agree to securitize an issue. The contributions of Balzacq (2005), Salter (2008) and Stritzel (2007;2012), among others, have also broadened the objects of study of securitization, which have ceased to be exclusively texts of a political nature communicated in a linear manner to incorporate also the audience as an agent that interacts and participates in the creation of the securitizing discourse, the performance associated with the execution of the discourse or the interactivity of the discourse in socio-digital networks. However, despite this diversification in the approach to the study of securitization, most research continues to focus on texts belonging to political or media discourse. There is an absence of analysis of securitization in other types of texts, such as those of a legislative nature which are also interesting to study within the framework of these processes. That is, texts that, in many cases, give legislative coverage to the application of security policies and could represent the legal crystallization of previous political-media discourses. That said, given the legal nature of the texts examined in this article, it is important to make clear that the analysis proposed is, following the model of the Copenhagen School, a discursive analysis. This article does not carry out a legal analysis of the documents or a study on the legal consequences of the implementation of these laws, a study that would need another theoretical-methodological approach. Without conducting a legal analysis, we propose to observe the discursive construction of security that underlies the texts analyzed and the consequences that, according to the hypothesis of the Copenhagen School, this entails. Thus, the current analysis is about the securitization processes of the Covid-19 crisis. This health crisis has been one of the most disruptive episodes globally in recent decades. The unexpected appearance of the virus and its rapid spread made Covid-19, in just a few weeks, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pointed out, the greatest threat to global security. The pandemic surpassed any of the established international protocols, and the lack of multilateral agreements between different countries and measures against the virus showed in turn a lack of global governance to deal with this type of threat. At first sight, we could say that Covid-19, an illness that, being new, poses a threat to the health of the entire world population since most people do not have immunity against it. However, this health crisis is once again a good scenario in which to observe that the threat is perceived and constructed in a very diverse way among the population. The study by Kirk (2022) on the securitization of Covid-19 in the United States refers to this. She analyzes the discursive battle between different security narratives about the health crisis in a country where the wearing or not wearing of a mask in public places often becomes an expression of a political position. The delimitation of the object of study to the examination of the texts of the Organic Law 4/1981 on states of alarm, exception, and siege, and (2) the Law 2/2021 of the Basque Parliament on measures for the management of the pandemic, is done for several reasons. In the first place, both texts, of an eminently legal nature, respond to the necessary characteristics to carry out the analysis in accordance with the objective of the study. Secondly, despite the substantial differences that both laws maintain in their preamble and the context of their drafting, the two texts have served as a legal framework for taking measures to deal with similar events, specifically, the crisis health of covid-19. This allows, following the proposal of the Copenhagen School, to contextualize the analysis of the securitization construction of the texts based on these facts. Third, the choice of texts, which share a legal framework, responds to the proposal to carry out an analysis of a state nature, and not an international one, given the prominence of state legislation in the coverage of policies and implementation of the security measures against the covid-19 disease because of the lack of international legal frameworks. The article is structured in three parts. In the first section, a brief theoretical-methodological approach is elaborated on the evolution of security research in the field of International Relations and to the theory of securitization developed by the Copenhagen School. In the second, the context of the global health crisis and the case of Spain are described together with the securitization processes that accompany it. Thirdly, the documents examined and the operationalization that allows their analysis are presented. Subsequently, the discussion on the results and conclusions is addressed.

Militarism and the Politics of Covid-19 Response in Uganda

Within the broader context of securitized responses to Covid-19 globally, Uganda experienced an oversized military role, ranging from law-and-order and lockdown enforcement, to managing food-relief supplies, medical operations, and partisan political repression. What explains this excessive militarization? To address this poser, the article draws on secondary sources and key-informant interviews to test the hypothesis that military involvement in pandemic responses depends on pre-pandemic militarism. The findings reveal direct links between pre-crisis militarism and Covid-19 responses, contrary to the view that exceptionality and novelty of Covid-19 informed overly militarized responses. Through pandemic framing and institutional morphing, pre-pandemic militarism foregrounded military roles because Covid-19 provided Uganda's ruling elites with a public health pretext to heighten militaristic rule, clutch the political arena in the context of elections, and deepen military presence in civilian public health realms. This excessive militarization of public health seriously impacts civil–military relations, specifically command and control, reporting and accountability, and resources management. © The Author(s) 2023.

Narrowing the therapeutic window?-A case-control study on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the primary UICC stage of NSCLC.

Background: General clinical perception suggests a decline in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Early diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is crucial in therapeutic regimes as early stages are potentially curable by operation alone or with combined therapy. Pandemic-triggered overload of the healthcare system may have prolonged the diagnosis of NSCLC, possibly leading to higher tumor stages at first diagnosis. This study aims to identify how COVID-19 affected the distribution of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) stage in NSCLC at first diagnosis. Methods: A retrospective case-control study was conducted, including all patients receiving their first diagnosis of NSCLC in the regions of Leipzig and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV) between January 2019 and March 2021. Patient data were retrieved from the clinical cancer registries of the city of Leipzig and the federal state of MV. Ethical approval for this retrospective evaluation of archived, anonymized patient data was waived by the Scientific Ethical Committee at the Medical Faculty, Leipzig University. Three investigation periods were defined to study the effects of high incidences of SARS-COV-2: the curfew period as an enacted security measure, the period of high incidence rates and the period of the aftermath of high incidences. Differences in the UICC stages between these pandemic periods were studied by Mann-Whitney-U-Test. Pearson's correlation was calculated to examine changes in operability. Results: The number of patients diagnosed with NSCLC dropped substantially during investigation periods. There was a significant difference in the UICC status in the aftermath of high incidences and imposed security measures in Leipzig (P=0.016). N-status differed significantly in the aftermath of high incidences and imposed security measures (P=0.022) with a decrease of N0- and an increase of N3-status, respectively, while N1- and N2-status remained relatively unaffected. No pandemic phase showed a significant difference in operability. Conclusions: The pandemic led to a delay in the diagnosis of NSCLC in the two examined regions. This resulted in higher UICC stages upon diagnosis. However, no increase in inoperable stages was shown. It remains to be seen, how this will affect the overall prognosis of the involved patients.

Securitization of pandemic risk by using coronabond.

This article investigates the pandemic risk coverage within the European Union member states through insurance securitization. This strategy allows the transfer of health risks from the insurance market to the financial markets. We focus on the financial market crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to securitize the losses caused by the latter. Over the period from 24/01/2020 (the first proven case of contamination in Europe) to 31/03/2020 (end of the dramatic decrease in financial markets), we apply the extreme value theory allowing the selection of the trigger threshold. We identify an immediate reaction of the financial markets following a pandemic shock, the effect of which fades after a few days. The response of stock market indices, measured by the fluctuation of return rates, is not very high. Nevertheless, the reaction of the financial markets is sufficient for the corona bond triggering, provided that the threshold for triggering the incidence rate is optimal. In addition, the securitization of insurance risk could be an alternative process to the classic risk transfer techniques such as co-insurance and reinsurance. Finally, a reinsurance pool dedicated to the insurance scheme's management against the effects of a pandemic is crucial for insurance securitization. These results could have implications for various actors such as insurers, financial investors, and States.

The governance shock doctrine: Civic space in the pandemic

MotivationEmergencies heighten societies' need to be governed. Accordingly, the COVID‐19 pandemic put systems of public governance under severe pressure across the globe. Civic freedoms were widely curtailed for public health reasons. Scarce resources needed to be allocated swiftly, with little opportunity for debate.PurposeIn settings characterized by authoritarianism, violent conflict, and restricted civic space, relations between governments, civil society, and citizens at best tend to be fragile and fraught even in "normal” times. What happens when these settings are rocked by a profound shock such as the onset of a global pandemic?Methods and approachThis article is based on research on civic space and civic action shortly after the onset of the pandemic in three such settings—Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Civil society advocates in each country tracked and interpreted events in real time, debated their responses, supplemented their own knowledge through key informant interviews, and compared experiences across countries.FindingsI argue that the three governments' responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic constitute a "governance shock doctrine,” based on the premise that shocks bring responses from the powerful that advance certain agendas. This patterned phenomenon, visible across the three countries, consists of "securitization” of the public health emergency, suppression of dissent, extension and centralization of executive powers, curtailment of press freedoms, and tightened regulation of civic space, including online space. Civic activism navigated or combated these attacks in various ways.Policy implicationsMeasures adopted in emergency situations tend to persist, threatening to lock civil society into living with pandemic‐era restrictions. Preventing this should be a global priority, and especially important where authoritarianism already looms. An energetic mobilization among national and international actors to reassert and protect civic space is needed if the erosion of civil liberties and normalization of autocratic governance wrought by the political‐military apparatus in so many countries during the COVID‐19 pandemic is not to become permanent, and if the inspired and progressive innovations in organic civic activism over the 2020–2021 crisis period are to survive and flourish.

International politics of migration in times of 'crisis' and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

A much-anticipated end of the COVID-19 pandemic is on the horizon. It is important to reflect on the ways in which the pandemic has impacted the international politics of migration and especially on the migration-security nexus, which is still little understood but affecting policies and population movements with future implications. How the pandemic has shaped tradeoffs between securitization of migration, health, and economic concerns in governing migration? What are the new trends emerging from the pandemic on the migration-security nexus? And how can we study these in the coming years? This Research Note features insights from scholars associated with the British International Studies Association's working group on the 'International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora'. They argue that the pandemic has exacerbated tendencies for migration control beyond reinforcing nation-state borders, namely through foregrounding 'riskification' of migration discourses and practices, adding to an earlier existing securitization of migration considered as a 'threat'. Digital controls at borders and beyond were ramped up, as were racial tropes and discrimination against migrants and mobile persons more generally. These trends deepen the restrictions on liberal freedoms during a period of global democratic backsliding, but also trigger a counter-movement where the visibility of migrants as 'key workers' and their deservingness in host societies has been enhanced, and diasporas became more connected to their countries of origin. This Research Note finds that enhanced controls, on the one side, and openings for visibility of migrants and transnational connectivity of diasporas, on the other, are worthy to study in the future as political trends per se. Yet, it would be also interesting to study them as interconnected in a dual movement of simultaneous restriction and inclusion, and in an interdependent world where the power of nation-states has been reasserted due to the pandemic, but migrant transnationalism has remained largely intact. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Migration Studies is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Domestic Military Deployments in Response to COVID-19

Militaries are commonly deployed in response to domestic disasters. However, our understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete, partly because the particulars of disasters make it hard to generalize about deployments used in response. This article leverages the COVID-19 pandemic's global reach to systematically evaluate common hypotheses about when and how militaries are used to respond to domestic disasters. It presents original global data about domestic military deployments in pandemic response and uses it to assess common theoretical expectations about what shapes whether and how militaries are used in such contexts. The results suggest that decisions about whether to deploy militaries stem from the securitization of domestic disaster relief rather than being responses to specific disaster-related features, state capacity shortcomings, or other social or political factors, even as some of these elements shaped how militaries were used. The article concludes by outlining some hypotheses for future research about the impact of this securitization on civil–military relations.

Experiments of authoritarian sustainability: Völkisch settlers and far-right prefiguration of a climate behemoth

Despite the possibility of unintended side effects, experiments in civil society like urban gardens, sustainable housing projects, ecovillages, and so forth are associated with transformative capacities in light of an increasingly serious social-ecological crisis. The tide of the political far right, however, demonstrates that outcomes of civil society engagement undermining emancipatory sustainability are hardly just unintended effects. Therefore, I analyze the role of experimental ecopolitics for the far right by means of the example of völkisch settlers in Germany, which are diverse far-right actors practicing a strategy of rural community building. After discussing whether these practices can be understood as ecopolitical experimentation, I reflect on its tensions with far-right climate-change denialism and its relevance for future scenarios of climate politics. I suggest that despite ideological differences, far-right environmentalism of everyday corresponds with characteristic elements of experimental practices of non-far-right experimentation. Representing far-right politics beyond anti-environmentalism and denial, far-right experimentation might provide bridge building and enable potential cooptation of non-far-right experiments and participatory sustainability governance. Further, it represents an agenda of exclusive authoritarian sustainability and ethno-securitization of climate change that—as recent COVID-19 protests have indicated—has a potential for social resonance far beyond the organized far right. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Fighting the Pandemic with "Shields”: Successful COVID-19 Securitization and Mask Policy in Taiwan

Facemasks have been proven an effective non-pharmaceutical measure against coronavirus disease-19. Against the backdrop of global mask shortages, Taiwan distinguished herself from other countries in that Taiwan took a whole-of-nation approach to masks and mobilized the society quickly to become self-sufficient in masks. This paper argues that successful virus securitization as a threat to national security was what enabled Taiwan to effectively mobilize the private sector to carry out the state's will in ensuring adequate mask supply. Moreover, Taiwan securitized the virus more successfully than many other countries because the virus was connected to China, the nation's existing security threat.

Cristalización legislativa de los procesos de securitización de la covid-19. Aplicabilidad del modelo de la Escuela de Seguridad de Copenhague al análisis de la Ley 4/1981 sobre los estados de alarma, excepción y sitio y la Ley 2/2021 de medidas para la gestión de la pandemia

El objeto de este artículo es realizar una propuesta teórico-metodológica a partir del modelo de análisis de la Escuela de seguridad de Copenhague para incorporar el examen de textos legislativos al estudio de los procesos de securitización. Con este objetivo, se realiza una aproximación al estudio de la securitización de la pandemia de la covid-19 a través del análisis comparativo de dos textos que han dado cobertura legislativa a la gestión de esta crisis sanitaria en España. El texto de la Ley orgánica 4/1981 sobre los estados de alarma, excepción y sitio;y el texto de la Ley 2/2021 del Parlamento Vasco de medidas para la gestión de la pandemia. Metodológicamente, este artículo analiza la securitización de la covid-19 a partir del modelo propuesto por la Escuela de seguridad de Copenhague desarrollado a raíz de la publicación de Security: A New Framework For Analysis (Buzan et al., 1997). Numerosas investigaciones han aplicado este modelo de análisis en el estudio de las políticas de seguridad sobre fenómenos como los movimientos migratorios (Müller y Gerbauer, 2021), la emergencia climática o la crisis sanitaria de la covid-19, examinando objetos tan diversos como los textos publicados en medios de comunicación social (Karyotis et al., 2021), el análisis de las audiencias (Bengtsson y Rhinard, 2019) o los discursos políticos (Kuleteva y Clifford, 2021). Un modelo que también se nutrió de las contribuciones posteriores de Balzacq (2005), Salter (2008) y Stritzel (2007, 2012) que ampliaron aún más los objetos de estudio de la securitización, que dejaron de ser exclusivamente textos de carácter político comunicados de manera lineal, para incorporar el análisis de la audiencia como un agente que interactúa y participa de la creación del discurso securitizador, la performance asociada a la ejecución del discurso o la interactividad del discurso en las redes sociodigitales. Sin embargo, pese a esta diversificación de estudios, la mayoría de las investigaciones sobre la securitización siguen centrándose en textos pertenecientes a discursos políticos o mediáticos. Se observa una ausencia de análisis de otro tipo de textos como aquellos de carácter legislativo, que también es interesante estudiar en el marco de estos procesos. Se trata de textos que, en muchos casos, dan cobertura legislativa a la aplicación de políticas de seguridad y podrían representar la cristalización legal de discursos político mediáticos previos. Dicho esto, dado el carácter jurídico de los textos que se examinan en este artículo, conviene señalar que el análisis que se propone es de carácter discursivo. Sin analizar las implicaciones jurídicas de los textos, cuestión que necesitaría otro tipo de tratamiento teórico-metodológico, nos proponemos observar la construcción discursiva de la seguridad que subyace en ellos y las consecuencias que, siguiendo las hipótesis de la Escuela de seguridad de Copenhague, esto conlleva. El artículo se estructura en tres partes. En el primer apartado, se realiza un breve acercamiento a la evolución de la investigación sobre seguridad en el campo de las Relaciones Internacionales y a la teoría de la securitización elaborada por la Escuela de seguridad de Copenhague en los años noventa. En el segundo apartado, se describe el contexto de crisis sanitaria global y, en concreto, en el caso de España, junto con los procesos de securitización que la acompañan. En tercer lugar, se presentan los documentos examinados y la operacionalización que permite su análisis. Posteriormente, se aborda la discusión sobre los resultados y las conclusiones.Alternate abstract:The aim of this article is to present a theoretical-methodological proposal based on a model of analysis from the Copenhagen School of Security Studies, which incorporates the examination of legislative texts into the study of securitization processes. With this objective, we propose an approach to the study of the securitization of the Covid-19 pandemic through the comparative analysis o two texts that have given legislative coverage to the management of this health crisis in Spain. The text of (1) Organic Law 4/1981 on the states of alarm, exception and siege;and the text of (2) Law 2/2021 of the Basque Parliament on measures for managing the pandemic. After the publication of Security:A New Framework For Analysis (Buzan et al.l997), numerous investigations have used the securitization analysis model of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies to study security policies on phenomena such as migratory movements (Müller and Gerbauer, 2021), the climate emergency, or the health crisis of Covid-19 by examining the texts published on social media (Karyotis et al., 202l),or the analysis of the audiences (Bengtsson and Rhinard, 2019) or political discourses (Kuleteva and Clifford, 2021). Securitization theory holds that what gives an issue the status of threat results from an interaction between an actor, whether it is a state, an organization, or the media, and which tries to define a certain problem as an existential threat, and an audience that accepts or rejects this attempt. Under this premise, security is considered a social construct, which has enormous consequences when it comes to its study.The analysis of the security agenda no longer consists of evaluating those threats considered real, but rather aims at the communicative processes through which actors and audiences agree to securitize an issue. The contributions of Balzacq (2005), Salter (2008) and Stritzel (2007;20l2), among others, have also broadened the objects of study of securitization, which have ceased to be exclusively texts of a political nature communicated in a linear manner to incorporate also the audience as an agent that interacts and participates in the creation of the securitizing discourse, the performance associated with the execution of the discourse or the interactivity of the discourse in socio-digital networks. However, despite this diversification in the approach to the study of securitization, most research continues to focus on texts belonging to political or media discourse.There is an absence of analysis of securitization in other types of texts, such as those of a legislative nature which are also interesting to study within the framework of these processes.That is, texts that, in many cases, give legislative coverage to the application of security policies and could represent the legal crystallization of previous political-media discourses. That said, given the legal nature of the texts examined in this article, it is important to make clear that the analysis proposed is, following the model of the Copenhagen School, a discursive analysis. This article does not carry out a legal analysis of the documents or a study on the legal consequences of the implementation of these laws, a study that would need another theoretical-methodological approach. Without conducting a legal analysis, we propose to observe the discursive construction of security that underlies the texts analyzed and the consequences that, according to the hypothesis of the Copenhagen School, this entails. Thus, the current analysis is about the securitization processes of the Covid-19 crisis.This health crisis has been one of the most disruptive episodes globally in recent decades. The unexpected appearance of the virus and its rapid spread made Covid-19, in just a few weeks, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pointed out, the greatest threat to global security. The pandemic surpassed any of the established international protocols, and the lack of multilateral agreements between different countries and measures against the virus showed in turn a lack of global governance to deal with this type of threat. At first sight, we could say that Covid-19, an illness that, being new, poses a threat to the health of the entire world population since most people do not have immunity against it. However, this health crisis is once again a good scenario in which to observe that the threat is perceived and constructed in a very diverse way among the populatio .The study by Kirk (2022) on the securitization of Covid-19 in the United States refers to this. She analyzes the discursive battle between different security narratives about the health crisis in a country where the wearing or not wearing of a mask in public places often becomes an expression of a political position. The delimitation of the object of study to the examination of the texts of the Organic Law 4/1981 on states of alarm, exception, and siege, and (2) the Law 2/2021 of the Basque Parliament on measures for the management of the pandemic, is done for several reasons. In the first place, both texts, of an eminently legal nature, respond to the necessary characteristics to carry out the analysis in accordance with the objective of the study. Secondly, despite the substantial differences that both laws maintain in their preamble and the context of their drafting, the two texts have served as a legal framework for taking measures to deal with similar events, specifically, the crisis health of covid-19. This allows, following the proposal of the Copenhagen School, to contextualize the analysis of the securitization construction of the texts based on these facts. Third, the choice of texts, which share a legal framework, responds to the proposal to carry out an analysis of a state nature, and not an international one, given the prominence of state legislation in the coverage of policies and implementation of the security measures against the covid-19 disease because of the lack of international legal frameworks. The article is structured in three parts. In the first section, a brief theoretical-methodological approach is elaborated on the evolution of security research in the field of International Relations and to the theory of securitization developed bythe Copenhagen School. In the second, the context of the global health crisis and the case of Spain are described together with the securitization processes that accompany it.Thirdly, the documents examined and the operationalization that allows their analysis are presented. Subsequently, the discussion on the results and conclusions is addressed.

The biomedical securitization of global health.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak has shifted the course in the global health debate further towards health security and biomedical issues. Even though global health had already played a growing role in the international policy agenda, the pandemic strongly reinforced the interest of the media, the general public and the community in cross-border infectious diseases. This led to a strengthening of the already dominant biomedical understanding of global health and the securitization of health in foreign policy. METHODS: This paper critically provides a narrative, iterative review of the health security literature available to date, with a special focus on the development of the currently prevailing concept of health security and the dual trend towards the securitization and biomedicalization of global health. FINDINGS: In a world increasingly determined by power asymmetries, unequal distribution of opportunities and resources, and inadequate governance structures, securitizing health has become a key feature of global governance. Health security is predominantly based on a concept that neglects the global burden of disease determined by non-communicable conditions rather than by infectious diseases. Moreover, it exhibits a trend towards biomedical solutions and neglects root causes of global health crises. CONCLUSIONS: As important as health security is, the underlying concept driven by biomedical and technocratic reductionism falls short. It widely neglects the social, economic, political, commercial and environmental determination of health. Beyond improved health care and prevention, health-in-all policies are ultimately required for ensuring health security and reducing one of its main challenges, health inequalities within and between countries. Global health security must first and foremost seek to guarantee the universal right to health and therefore emphasise the social, economic, commercial and political determination of health.

The securitization of the Covid-19 pandemic in Greece: a just or unjust securitization?

The purpose of this article is to assess the justness or unjustness of the securitization of Covid-19 in the Greek case. To do so, the Just Securitization Theory, is used as articulated by Rita Floyd to examine the following research question: Was there a just initiation and just conduct in the case of the securitization of Covid-19 in Greece? To answer this question, the methodology employed is a mix of methods proposed by Rita Floyd, such as the recourse to natural sciences to establish the actuality of the threat in combination with discourse analysis in political and scientific actors' speech acts and qualitative analysis of legal policy documents. In total, 85 statements and legal documents were examined for the period 26/02/2020 to 15/06/2020 which is considered to be the first "phase" of the pandemic. Overall, the analysis shows that the securitization of the Covid-19 pandemic in Greece was just. More specifically, there was indeed an existential threat, the securitizing actors were sincere in their intentions to securitize Covid-19, whereas the good gained from this securitization (physical survival and protection of public health) was greater than the harm inflicted (suspension of liberties). In addition, the results show that the securitization of Covid-19 in Greece did not cause more insecurity than it aimed to solve and that the overall response from the Greek Government was proportionate to the threat and respectful of the human rights of the people secured by the threat.

Islamic Sukuk and Its Role in Economic Recovery and Growth Post-Covid

Islamic Sukuk witnessed consistent growth over the past years and is expected to follow the same trend. Sukuk issuance continues by states and corporates alike. Sukuk serves two purposes. That is to say, the issuers of Sukuk aim at diversifying the sources of funds, especially under difficult economic situations. Meanwhile, investor demand remains intact due to the shortage of new Sukuk supply and the global quest for profit. While Sukuk usually enjoys healthy annual yields, also it is unlikely to default. Compared to overall issuances by the end of 2021, the defaulted Sukuk stands at a meagre rate of 0.27%, making it an attractive and secure financial instrument. Therefore, Sukuk issuance becomes part of the value proposition of world financial centres such as the U.K., Luxembourg, Hong Kong, and others. This paper analysis Sukuk's impact on the country's economic development by focusing on specific countries with different economic-financial experiences. Furthermore, it will investigate the feasibility of Sukuk in supporting diverse sources of funds and liquidity. In addition, this paper examines the role of Sukuk in achieving economic growth and development post-Covid pandemic. It also attempts to ascertain the critical phases of economic growth and links them to Sukuk in order to assess the effectiveness and significance of Sukuk in being a potential financial instrument that could support the economies in the post-Covid period. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Lenders' pricing strategy: Do neighborhood risks matter?

This article explores the different pricing strategies of lenders who originate both government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and non-GSE loans. We find that conditional on loan and borrower characteristics and some observable local economic factors, mortgage rates on GSE loans vary significantly across regions. However, we observe no sizable regional variation in loan amounts or default risk. By contrast, the mortgage rates on non-GSE loans depend almost entirely on borrowers and loan characteristics. In addition, we find that spatial variations in GSE mortgage rates are highly responsive to regional prepayment risk. Our results are robust to various controls for neighborhood characteristics, including regional-level bank competition, borrower accessibility to mortgages, and household income levels. Overall, the findings offer a novel insight into how lenders adjust pricing strategies in response to a changing lending environment. The results provide implications relating to the present and imminent dangers of housing bubbles and the intensified refinancing wave following the COVID-19 pandemic.