Economic Security as a Concept: Comparative Analysis and Strategic Definition

Abstract

This article examines the transformation of economic security from a narrowly protection-oriented policy concept into a higher-order framework of strategic governance shaped by structural uncertainty, interconnected vulnerability, and adaptive continuity requirements. Although economic security has become increasingly central to contemporary national-security discourse, its conceptual structure remains analytically fragmented across countries and institutions due to differing strategic priorities, governance traditions, and geopolitical conditions. Addressing this gap, the study reconstructs the concept of economic security through a comparative analysis of the strategic logic embedded in major national and international policy frameworks.

Methodologically, the study combines document analysis, comparative analysis, and conceptual analysis to examine strategic and policy documents from the United States, the European Union, OECD, Japan, China, Russia, and Mongolia’s national security concepts of 1994 and 2010. The analytical framework integrates strategic theory, risk theory, and conceptual analysis in order to identify recurring conceptual attributes, reconstruct higher-order conceptual abstraction, and explain how economic security is increasingly shaped by conditions of structural uncertainty and cascading vulnerability. The findings demonstrate that contemporary approaches to economic security are progressively converging around resilience, supply-chain continuity, adaptive coordination, strategic autonomy, and long-term governance continuity rather than conventional protection-centered approaches alone.

The study further demonstrates that Mongolia’s understanding of economic security has gradually evolved from sovereignty-centered protection toward broader developmental and governance-oriented approaches, although an integrated framework grounded in resilience and adaptive strategic coordination remains only partially consolidated. Based on the comparative synthesis, the article proposes a reconstructed definition of economic security as a state’s strategic capacity to sustain structural continuity, safeguard strategic sectors and supply chains, and manage interconnected vulnerabilities in pursuit of long-term development and national-security objectives.

By repositioning economic security from a policy-oriented category toward a conceptually reconstructed framework of strategic coordination, the study contributes a coherent analytical foundation for understanding economic security as an evolving strategic concept within contemporary governance environments.