It thus closes an empirical gap in the literature, in which securitisation studies focus either on the global level or on single-country cases and do not reconstruct detailed securitisation dynamics. The comparative framework presented here allows conclusions to be drawn about the conditions and consequences of successful securitisation based on empirical and comparative analysis rather than theoretical debate only. The authors focus on which climate-security discourses have been dominant, which actors have been involved, which political consequences have been legitimised and what role the broader context has played in enabling the specific securitisations. By including industrialised countries (USA, Germany) and emerging economies (Mexico, Turkey) as well as climate vanguards (Germany, Mexico) and laggards (USA, Turkey), the book generates insights into how securitisation processes play out in different contexts and at the same time address the 'Western bias' in securitisation and environmental studies .

As a basis for research, the authors develop a new and systematic theoretical framework that distinguishes between different referent objects of securitisation (territorial, individual and planetary) and between a security and risk dimension. This framework clarifies and summarises the ever-increasing literature on different forms of securitisation and the relationship between security and risk. On the one hand, the book thus introduces order into a currently rather confusing debate. On the other hand, this framework allows the authors to operationalise different conceptions of securitisation and thus to trace these in the empirical studies. The book further contributes to securitisation theory by not only addressing the two different logics of security and risk, but by also re-defining and mapping the relationship between politicisation and securitisation.