Opening through closure: Selectivity and organisational coupling at Germany’s Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS)

Abstract

Security organisations are increasingly expected to ‘open up’ through participation, transparency, and public engagement. Yet such initiatives rarely lead to a straightforward expansion of inclusion. Instead, they often generate new forms of selectivity and control. How can this coexistence of opening and closure be explained? This article argues that opening and closure are not opposing dynamics but rather mutually constitutive features of organisational life. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, it conceptualises security organisations as operationally closed decision systems that relate to their environment through selective structural couplings. Opening, from this perspective, does not reduce organisational boundaries but instead reconfigures the conditions under which external expectations become decision-relevant. The argument is developed through a longitudinal case study of the German Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS), based on archival research and semi-structured interviews. Tracing its development from the 1970s to the present, the analysis shows that expanding engagement – through interministerial integration, inclusion of non-state actors, spatial relocation, and public communication – was consistently stabilised through structured selectivity. Participation remained mediated through elite-oriented formats, while increased visibility generated new forms of boundary control. The article thus explains why opening initiatives tend to produce more differentiated – rather than diminished – forms of closure.