An approach of the energy security concept under conceptual history studies

Abstract

Each concept has a history. Conceptual history studies allow for rebuilding those moments of crisis where vocabulary which used to make sense to the world, becomes outdate. Therefore such vocabulary has to be updated regarding the transformations within the historical context. In this sense Reinhart Koselleck, one of the main exponents of conceptual history studies, asks about what is the nature of the time relationship between concepts and circumstances. Now at day ‘energy security’ as a concept has many meanings, most of them are deterministic ones, showing that there is no consensus about one single definition of energy security. Consequently, the aim of this article is to analyze the concept of energy security under the conceptual history approach to study its evolution regarding the changes at the international system level which caused the appearance of the concept itself and its modifications. Apart from that, this article could help to explain if the concept of energy security appeared bound to the public politics (energy policy) or there were the public politics which came from energy security. We try to go back along the constitution of the energy security notion since the International Relations discipline.