The war in Iraq in spring 2003 was a further indication of the 'resecuritisation' of international relations triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, the new (or renewed) primacy of security will be of a rather different nature as compared to the Cold War period.

The underlying assumption of the essays in this volume is that security issues will increasingly be approached from a governance perspective and that, in this context, the internal dimension of security governance - security sector governance - is an issue whose rapidly growing importance has not yet been duly recognized.