The Changing Psychology of Security: How Societies Renegotiate Their Role in an Uncertain World

Across the globe, societies are undergoing profound transformations in how they think and feel about security. Japan is dismantling its post-war pacifist consensus; Germany has proclaimed a Zeitenwende; Sweden and Finland have abandoned decades of neutrality; South Korea debates its nuclear future; and rearmament has returned to political agendas across Europe and beyond. These transformations are not merely matters of strategy and capabilities, they are psychological and societal processes in which nations renegotiate their identities, their memories of past wars, and their perceptions of threat. This panel invites papers on the transformation of national identities long anchored in pacifism, neutrality, or civilian power; the role of collective memory and generational change in enabling or resisting security transformation; public opinion on defense, rearmament, and the use of force, including the psychological drivers of attitude change under perceived threat; elite discourse and leadership in legitimating new security roles; and the emotional politics of insecurity, from anxiety and threat perception to nationalism and nostalgia. Contributions employing survey, experimental, discourse-analytic, and comparative case-study methods are all welcome, and we particularly encourage papers that connect mass attitudes to elite decision-making.