The Political Economy of Terrorism (2019) (original) (raw)

The goal of this chapter is to apply political economy metaphors to examine the EU’s measures to contain and defeat terrorism. The remainder of this chapter is organised as follows. Section 2 considers the ‘political economy of terrorism’ to depict the public policies that aim to integrate both counter-terrorist (supply-side) and prevention efforts (demand-side) into a coherent response. According to this approach an effective response to terrorism needs to involve the arrest and prosecution of those actively involved in acts of violence against civilians but also the development of an effective counter-recruitment strategy that deals with the driving forces of terrorism, also known as ‘root causes’, and prevents rank and file replenishing. Societies affected by terrorism need to engage with the social, political, religious, economic and ethnic ‘grievances’ motivating terrorists and do something about them. Section 3 discusses the EU’s counter-terrorist response to the ongoing threat of Salafi jihadism, particularly since 2014 when Islamic State started to claim responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks outside Iraq and Syria. The European ambition is to integrate both ‘hard’ counter-terrorist measures and ‘soft’ preventive measures designed to stop vulnerable individuals from becoming radicalised, joining extremist groups and carrying out acts of violence. The integration of supply- and demand-side approaches is far from perfect but it is providing fruitful responses in the fight against Salafi jihadism, perhaps even a blueprint that could be implemented in a variety of contexts experiencing the threat of both home-grown terrorists as well as returnees from combat zones. Section 4 pays special attention to the so-called ‘radicalisation agenda’ and the prevention of violent extremism, which includes measures such as the dissemination of counter-narratives to bring about attitudinal and behavioural change. The goal of prevention strategies is to delegitimise the use of violence means for political purposes and isolate the violent radicals from their supporters and sympathisers. Terrorist cells often hide in neighbourhoods where relative deprivation and criminality are rife and where their criminal activities go undetected. Ultimately, the goal of preventive strategies is to make it difficult for European jihadists to continue disguising themselves within communities of immigrants and diasporas. Section 5 discusses whether counter-terrorism and prevention efforts can be successfully integrated into a single strategy, for example at city level. As many as 75% of European citizens live in urban centres and existing evidence indicates that attacks on cities may continue in the future. Thus, cities have been at the forefront of a comprehensive strategy to integrate counter-terrorist and preventive strategies at the municipal level in order to stop terrorist attacks against civilians. Cities are obvious settings in which to implement the motto “think globally and act locally”. Finally, section 6 provides a set of concluding remarks and directions for future research.