Why is there no IR scholarship on intelligence agencies? Some ideas for a new approach

Abstract

Scholarship on intelligence studies suffers three key limitations: 1) it fails to grasp that the knowledge-production of agencies is value-laden and thus political in itself; 2) scholarship disregards most of the non-English speaking world and 3) focuses nearly exclusively on foreign intelligence. I suggest that these limitations are due to a broader theoretical poverty of intelligence studies, and present three concepts through which a richer analysis may emerge: 1) "security" in the sense of understanding the meaning of security that intelligence agencies use as a basis for operating; 2) "secrecy" to investigate the concrete measures that agencies use to create and manage secrecy and 3) "bureaucracy" to investigate the day-to-day work done by the bulk of intelligence employees. These concepts turn the gaze towards the concrete, institutional processes of intelligence production, rather than towards abstract models such as the intelligence cycle, which dominate current scholarship. Intelligence studies needs to borrow from the rich tradition of organizational sociology and critical IR to develop a more thorough understanding of what intelligence agencies actually do, and what their effect on international politics is.