Congress (American Politics) Research Papers (original) (raw)

Why do states respond to terrorism in the particular ways they do? The problematic of understanding the causes of the modalities taken by counterterrorism policies is central but seldom addressed by the rare counterterrorism studies. For the Realist school of thought, the differences among state responses depend on the origin of the risk and the capabilities of the state. For decision-making theorists, decision-makers are forced by a strong demand for security from the public opinion to adopt costly measures of dubious effectiveness. However, states having risks of different origin and different capabilities may have similar policies (like France and the United States) and the reverse is true too (like France and the United Kingdom). Similarly, studies on the opinion toward terrorism suggest a partial disconnection between supply and demand of security.

This dissertation postulate an influence of norms and institutions in the making of counterterrorism et asks the general question : what has been the impact of strategic culture on the making of American counterterrorist laws since 9/11 ? Since this date, constantly strengthening bills have been adopted (Patriot act in 2001and its reauthorizations), stopped one time by a partially relaxing bill (Freedom act in 2015).

This dissertation has a qualitative, explicative and rationalist scientific ambition. It aims at establishing causal inferences in order to explain the constant strengthening then the partial relaxing of counterterrorism legislation regarding civil liberties.

Theoretically, this dissertation is grounded in historical institutionalism. It shows the existence of two conflicting strategic cultures in the congressional debates on counterterrorism bills. The hypothesis explaining the resolution of this conflict is : the strategic culture of the American legislator encourages, in case it detects a security breach, the passage of a strengthening bill and, in case it detects a major legitimacy breach, the passage of a moderately relaxing bill.

The process-tracing methodology leads to the construction of a causal mechanism tracing the manifestations of this hypothesis. The mechanism is identical for the two strategic cultures. From the identification by the members of Congress of a security / legitimacy breach, we observe : (1) the strengthening / relaxing supporters produce an injunction to action ; (2) lacking quantification and data about the discussed measures, the members of Congress move the debate on the paralogic domain (invocation of identity markers, « common sense », etc.) ; and (3) they promote a principle of coercion / accountability. Then strengthening / relaxing ensues.

The method used is a manual content analysis, done with the Nvivo software, of the debates for three bills (Patriot act, Patriot sunsets extension act and Freedom act), roughly 219,000 words or 377 pages.

The dissertation shows the structuring role played by triggers (security / legitimacy breaches), which give the members of Congress a pretext to act (security / liberty), which translate into the promotion of a principle of action (coercion / accountability), action that fulfils a double function of political action : control and legitimation. Thus, the evolution of legislation cannot be desribed as a bottom-up process (irrational pressure of the public opinion on decision-makers) but as a top-down process : the members of Congress are the origin of the legislative change, which is partially matching the opinion’s leading attitudes. In this parcimonious and sufficient model offered, the main motive leading the legislator is the irreversible extension of a simulation of legitimate control by the application of powers of exception.

The scientific contribution of this dissertation is double. Empirically, it offers a (1) systematic analysis (2) of a vast overlooked corpus. Theoretically, it shows counterterrorism policy (1) is partially disconnected from security demand and security furthering but that it (2) matches the government’s desire to extend the means of its control on an environment perceived as more and more dangerous, a policy schematized as a hysteresis with a ratchet effect.

Keywords : terrorism, counterterrorism, security, legitimacy, historical institutionalism, strategic culture, process-tracing.