Bio(in)security, scientific expertise, and the politics of post-disarmament in the biological weapons regime

The increasing focus on new biological risks and threats together with unsatisfactory progress in international negotiations about biological disarmament have opened up new questions about the further development of the biological weapons regime. The present paper focuses on the politics of biological (post-)disarmament from the perspective of critical security studies and scrutinizes the changing role of scientific experts in relation to the shifting understanding of the threat of bioweapons. Specifically, it argues that the move toward a networked approach to biosecurity governance relying on an increasing role of experts and nonstate actors may be read in the context of a broader insecuritization of biological risks and threats and the evolution of new techniques of government. Drawing on sociological approaches in security studies, the paper unfolds the connections between the construction of biosecurity and the politics of expertise and explores the changing role of scientific experts in biological disarmament. The paper also finds that the attempts to manage bio-insecurity create demand for new types of expertise and empower actors with a specific form of knowledge who can navigate in the changed structural environment, and enable new forms of governing security.