Showcase.
Volume 1
Showcase promotes the best essays and research projects written by our own Board. Volume 1 was published at the end of the 2023/2024 academic year.
Calixthe Blain
19/05/2024
This paper analyses terrorism and counterterrorism to argue that the security of the state does not translate to the security of the people. Drawing on securitisation theory, it demonstrates that counterterrorism measures aimed at securing the state often undermine the security of the people they claim to protect. The argument is illustrated and supported by an attached case study of terrorism and counterterrorism in France in 2015. The essay explores how terrorism has been securitised. It then explains how emergency counterterrorism measures, intended to safeguard state security, can adversely affect the security of individuals. This paper examines how terrorism enables political actors to implement extraordinary measures, driven by a logic of state securitisation, which can be harmful to people’s security. This is further enhanced by the discursive construction of terrorism, which shapes public responses and policy in ways that harm people’s security. This includes the restriction of daily liberties and human rights, the fostering of racism, and the alienation of minority groups. Finally, the essay considers how state terrorism challenges the notion that state security guarantees people’s security.
Leah Webster
30/05/2024
This essay offers insights to the global power status of France and Germany between 2002-2017. The individual state identities will be used to base the overall analysis of the essay. La Grandeur de la France and German togetherness are symbols of the principles these states stand and ones that guide their institutions formations and foreign policy actions. France’s ambition of exceptional status supports its pursuit of global power status, while Germany's aversion to isolation hinders the opportunity to be considered a globally powerful state. This essay explores identity, political structures, the United Nations, The European Union, Economic status, BREXIT and Military Power. It will become clear through the years of 2002-2017 France’s global power status remained and ranks superior to Germany.
Sarah Shields
17/06/2024
Margaret Thatcher’s premiership is arguably the most famous and controversial in British history. Regardless of her reputation, her policies shaped modern Britain as we know it today. The underlying theme of her eleven years of political changes can be neatly categorised and summarised as a hegemonic shift from collectivism to individualism. This essay evaluates and explains the policies and events that provide evidence of the shift in the ‘everyday thinking’ in the UK. The first half discusses the growing crises that exemplified the problems of the policies of the post-war settlement. UK economic growth was stalling and post-war state and collective policies such as Keynesianism were no longer proving effective. The second half of the essay leads on from these crises and explains how Thatcher’s policies signify a growing ambition for individualism in UK politics and economy, but also culture.