States and ontological security: A historical rethinking - Ayşe Zarakol, 2017

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• Ontological security’ comes from having a consistent sense of ‘self’, and having that sense affirmed by others, an outcome that requires shared ontological structures. This concept was imported nearly two decades ago into the international relations (IR) literature from Psychology and Sociology, and later used to argue that states, just like individuals, care about their ontological security and act in ways in order to maintain a stable sense of ‘self’

• modern’ understanding of the State often assumes that the state provides ontological security, that is, it acts as a shared ontological structure for citizens’ security: ‘Ultimately the legitimacy of the state rests on its capacity to provide order—not a particular content of order but the function of ordering, of making life intelligible’ (Huysmans, 1998: 242).