| The war against terrorism has come to define, even dominate, the current era. How should we understand the origins of policy ideas about fighting terrorism? Although terrorism is increasingly a topic of sociological inquiry the study of counterterrorism has been neglected. Following a terrorist incident, nations are faced with questions about how to protect their citizens. Such discussions have immediate impact on domestic security policy and inevitably incorporate direct or indirect questions of civil liberties, citizenship and nationhood. Not only have recent events, such as the 2005 London bombings, the 2004 Madrid subway bombings and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., brought renewed attention to terrorism, but current debates about the treatment of suspected terrorists, and specifically interrogation procedures, have highlighted the importance of state how states respond to terrorist threat. Due to the importance of such issues, conflict between political actors in occurs, as groups often disagree on the best way to solve the problem of terrorism. This dissertation examines policy approaches to counterterrorism from 1980 through 2001 in France and the United States in order to answer three broad questions: (1) how do states decide the policy response following a terrorist attack? (2) Do these responses vary over time? And if so, why? and (3)Are there cross-national differences in state responses to similar types of terrorist threat? What might explain these differences?;This work displays the need to consider national context, timing, path dependency and recent events when analyzing how policy change occurs following domestic and international crises. The findings support a three-dimensional approach to studying policy change: through discourse, legal change, and policy implementation. These dimensions are driven primarily by policy elites who conceptualize threat according to two main approaches: cultural categories of threat and functionalism. The degree of path dependency varied based on the dimensions of policy. Discourse was the most likely to change over time, according to the political and social climate. Legal change and policy implementation were more likely to shift gradually. As with many historical studies, the ability to understand past policy outcomes may give scholars a better chance to predict future policy outcomes given future crises. |
