2024/12/20 by Hannah Wright · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Diversity (politics) #Gender, Security, and Conflict #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #Law #National security #Peacebuilding and International Security #Political science #Politics #Power (physics) #Public administration
paper · doi:10.1177/09670106241262855
published in Security Dialogue 56(2), 97-115 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2024/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract The idea that diversity and inclusion in policymaking institutions is a national security imperative because it enhances ‘diversity of thought’ has proliferated among policymakers in recent years. Building on critical, feminist and postcolonial scholarship arguing that constructions of gender, race and class undergird hegemonic militaristic and colonial approaches to security, this article analyses how the discourse on diversity of thought occasionally challenges, but more often reinforces these hegemonic approaches. Based on interviews with UK civil servants, the article explores how this discourse, and consequent measures to promote diversity of thought by creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace, have developed in the UK national security community, analysing how officials interpret the relationship between demographic diversity and knowledge production. Using feminist epistemologies as a heuristic, the article argues that although some officials view this agenda as a means to challenge militaristic thinking, the commonplace exclusion of structural power analysis places hard constraints on its ability to achieve this end and has enabled its recuperation by far-right anti-equality agendas. Ultimately, the politics of diversity are insufficient to overcome UK national security institutions’ commitment to militarism, which demands attention to the material structures that make militaristic approaches to security appear necessary.