Open research questions in Global Security and Public Health

What the literature leaves open

• Explore the ethics of emerging technologies like AI in warfare. Investigate the evolving landscape of climate justice and global governance institutions.

  Forty Volumes of Ethics & International Affairs · 2026 · DOI

• The gap identified is the often overlooked role of ethics in international affairs policy decisions.

  Forty Volumes of Ethics & International Affairs · 2026 · DOI

• This is an understudied category of actors who, while external to formal decision-making, nonetheless affect threat construction and security agenda setting in various ways.

  Pandemics, Securitization, and the Powers of Functional Actors · 2026 · DOI

• Currently, there is no consensus on standardized requirements, processes, and methods for assessing national security risks.

  Research on the national security risk assessment model: a case study of political security in China · 2025 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in the academic discourse on public safety governance at the regional level. The research highlights the need for a systematic comparative framework for understanding legal and institutional arrangements in public safety governance.

  Foreign Legal Frameworks in Regulating the Maintenance of Public Safety and Public Order at the Regional Level · 2026 · DOI

• The regulation of AI systems poses challenges for policymakers and regulators. The AI Act must balance the need to mitigate risks with the need to foster innovation and competitiveness.

  Securitizing the algorithm: a quantitative analysis of liberalization and securitization logics in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act · 2026 · DOI

• The underlying political rationale structuring the AI Act's provisions remains underexplored. There is a need for a replicable framework for analyzing securitization in regulatory texts.

  Securitizing the algorithm: a quantitative analysis of liberalization and securitization logics in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act · 2026 · DOI

• The US's withdrawal from the WHO is a major setback for global health security and governance. The EU has struggled to demonstrate leadership, including during the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations.

  Global health security and pandemic preparedness: Europe’s leadership challenge · 2026 · DOI

• The article identifies the challenge of managing ontological insecurity in foreign policy. The article also identifies the challenge of balancing the need for narrative stability with the need to acknowledge and address ontological insecurity.

  Providing ontological security through analogies and metaphors: A leader approach · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could explore the use of analogies and metaphors in leader narratives in other contexts. Future research could also investigate the impact of ontological insecurity on leader decision-making and policy outcomes.

  Providing ontological security through analogies and metaphors: A leader approach · 2026 · DOI

• The study focuses on Executive Proclamations, which may not be representative of all immigration policy documents. The analysis is limited to the text of Proclamations and does not consider other factors that may influence immigration policy.

  The Securitization of the Migrant: CECOT and Restrictive Executive Policy · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of the implications of the construction of the migrant as a securitized subject. The study highlights the need for further research on the role of language and discourse in shaping immigration policy.

  The Securitization of the Migrant: CECOT and Restrictive Executive Policy · 2026 · DOI

• The existing studies do not utilize securitization theory as a unified framework to conduct a comparative analysis of the U.S. and the EU. The hybrid nature of migration perception, where securitization and governance are combined according to the structure of political systems, is not well understood.

  The reflection of migration policy in the security strategic documents of the usa and the eu: a political science perspective · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in the understanding of the relationship between political regime type and the adoption of AI-based digital surveillance systems.

  Beyond Digital Authoritarianism: State Capacity and the Functional Convergence of AI Surveillance in China and the United States · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies the risk of over-securitization and constraints on academic openness. The paper notes the challenge of balancing national security concerns with the need for academic freedom and openness.

  Education as a Strategic Domain of National Security Culture in the Information Age: A Qualitative Scoping Review · 2026 · DOI

• The cultural dimension of education in relation to national security remains comparatively underexplored. There is a need for further research on the securitization of education and its risks.

  Education as a Strategic Domain of National Security Culture in the Information Age: A Qualitative Scoping Review · 2026 · DOI

• The theoretical diversity, practical indeterminacy, and normative complexity of ontological security scholarship. The difficulty of translating ontological security insights into policy guidance. The need to consider the ontological security needs of actors and the potential impact of actions on others' security.

  How to avoid ontological security dilemmas: toward building a policy theory · 2026 · DOI

• The gap between ontological security theory and policymaking. The lack of comprehensive policy frameworks that incorporate ontological security theory.

  How to avoid ontological security dilemmas: toward building a policy theory · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies the challenge of maintaining a sense of ontological security in the face of uncertainty and anxiety. The paper highlights the challenge of responding to ontological threats in a way that is consistent with the state's self-narrative. The paper notes the challenge of balancing the need to maintain an idealized image of oneself with the need to respond to changing circumstances.

  Life narrative and the possibilities of self: South Africa’s position on Gaza and Ukraine through an ontological security lens · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could examine how other states respond to ontological threats using a life story approach. Future research could explore the implications of the paper's findings for the development of foreign policy and international relations. Future research could investigate the role of narrative analysis in studying the social world.

  Life narrative and the possibilities of self: South Africa’s position on Gaza and Ukraine through an ontological security lens · 2026 · DOI

• technical addressing Four recommendations follow for the Directorate of training modules Immigration Services. First, specifically failure management should be developed for land border sites — not generic resilience guidance but site- specific protocols for each class of biometric system failure that officers at Namanga and Busia routinely encounter. These modules should be based on the developed discretionary informally by experienced officers at each site, formalising what works rather than imposing untested procedures. practices already Second, supervision structures should be reformed to provide written, site-specific guidance on which for processing modifications are established regular crossers and which require secondary supervisor authorisation. The current sanctioned 456 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. East African Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, Volume 9, Issue 2, 2026 Article DOI : https://doi.org/10.37284/eajass.9.2.5050 absence of such guidance is the root cause of rule- invisible adapting discretion’s informal and character; formalising a subset of it would strengthen accountability without eliminating the operational flexibility that land border processing requires. Third, security-escalating discretion should be formally recognised as a legitimate professional competency, incorporated into officer performance frameworks, and made visible through a secondary inspection logging protocol. Currently, it occurs without systematic documentation, preventing the accumulation of the pattern intelligence that would make it analytically valuable. Fourth, infrastructure investment at Namanga and Busia should prioritise stable connectivity and reduced system downtime as security investments rather than administrative ones, directly addressing the structural condition from which system-compensating discretion arises.

  Between Security and Service: Immigration Officer Discretion, Institutional Compliance, and Biometric Border Management in Kenya · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in understanding the role of Swedish secret services in shaping national security policy. The analysis aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of these services on Sweden's neutrality and security strategy.

  Polityka bezpieczeństwa Szwecji i rola w niej służb specjalnych · 2026 · DOI

• Survivorship bias can lead to misleading performance metrics. Survivorship bias can result in faulty resource allocation. Adaptive operational tactics are needed to react to changing methods of illegal border crossings.

  Analysing the Impact of Survivorship Bias on Border Security Effectiveness · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in the understanding of the impact of survivorship bias on border security effectiveness. The gap is related to the lack of consideration of unsuccessful outcomes in border security operations.

  Analysing the Impact of Survivorship Bias on Border Security Effectiveness · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could explore the implications of security privatisation for democratic governance and accountability. Future research could also examine the role of technological systems in security governance, including the use of surveillance systems and mobile communication platforms.

  Security Privatisation as Governance Assemblage · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Global Security and Public Health

• The surveillant assemblage · British Journal of Sociology · 2000 · 1,437 citations
• Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease · Alternatives Global Local Political · 2002 · 1,392 citations
• The Implications of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence · Political Behavior · 2001 · 903 citations
• Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics · International Studies Quarterly · 2003 · 677 citations
• The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies · American Journal of Sociology · 1906 · 562 citations
• The Renaissance of Security Studies · International Studies Quarterly · 1991 · 458 citations
• Special Section: Transnational Public Sphere: Transnationalizing the Public Sphere · Theory Culture & Society · 2007 · 424 citations
• ‘Securitization’ revisited: theory and cases · International Relations · 2015 · 349 citations
• Security and the democratic scene: desecuritization and emancipation · Journal of International Relations and Development · 2004 · 339 citations
• The postcolonial moment in security studies · Review of International Studies · 2006 · 336 citations

Most recent work

• Global health security and pandemic preparedness: Europe’s leadership challenge · BMJ · 2026
• Unknowing the future: Speculative foresight in international institutions and the unexpected ‘origins’ of expertise · Review of International Studies · 2026
• From the Ground to the Stars: The Vertical Politics of the EU Drone Wall and Airspace Defence · JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies · 2026
• Research security by roundtable: analysis of Germany’s committees for the ethics of security-relevant research · Science and Public Policy · 2026
• How Fragmented Are Global Policy Debates on Health Data Sharing? Studying Fragmentation Through Discourse Network Analysis · JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies · 2026
• Algorithmic security vision: Diagrams of computer vision politics · Environment and Planning D Society and Space · 2026
• How to avoid ontological security dilemmas: toward building a policy theory · Journal of International Relations and Development · 2026
• From Codes to Contexts: The Maturation of Historical Cryptology · History Compass · 2026
• Offline: Why Munich missed the mark · The Lancet · 2026
• Keeping it secret: surveillance, informant networks, and the protection of informants in authoritarian regimes · Journal of Peace Research · 2026

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