Applicability of Copenhagen School’s Theory of Securitization in Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution

The Copenhagen School’s securitization theory, initially emerging as a critique of mainstream realist and liberal international relations theories, has evolved as a separate theory focusing on the intersubjective meaning of security and its formation through social life. Shifting from the state centric security, securitization places the audience as the main actor to determine whether the placement of issue will be raised to high politics. Nevertheless the theory itself has been under scrutiny of postcolonial and feminist critiques that have since positioned securitization theory closer to the very mainstream approaches it sought to challenge. Following from this, this article aims to provide an overall critique of the securitization theory being labelled as unusable in the context of Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan and non-western settings in general. This paper critically examines these claims, arguing that, on the contrary, the theory itself is applicable outside the European context without altering its core premises, and that securitization theory cannot be applied at all in an empirical study of the Tulip Revolution.