Abstract
The police force is one of the few institutions still trusted by the public today. Yet, whilst the recent waves of terrorism have “stimulated” academic activity on the determinants of public fear of terrorism, much less academic effort has been focused on measuring and assessing the effectiveness of anti-terrorism strategies. The present article makes some contributions towards addressing this gap by investigating what shapes public attitudes towards the effectiveness of terrorism policing. Using Eurobarometer data, our results demonstrate that objective national economic, societal and political indicators do not tend to influence popular opinion on the effectiveness of the police in dealing with terrorism. They also show that individuals’ perceptions about the national socio-economic situation are better predictors of public opinion on terrorism policing than individuals’ financial and social positions or levels of education. The influence of these perceptions on public attitudes towards the effectiveness of counterterrorism seems to be more potent than the one on public fear of terrorism found in the extant literature. The implications of these findings are then considered.
Highlights
In the aftermaths of 9/11 and the recurrent waves of Islamic terrorism in Europe and beyond, counterterrorism practices and policies around the world have experienced dramatic changes, especially policing strategies and organisations
An analysis of variance is first conducted to determine whether there is a significant variation in public opinion on terrorism policing at the individual and national levels
There is similar variance at the national level in the 2015 and 2017 data. This implies that the level of terrorist violence does not seem to impact on public opinion about counterterrorism—terrorism violence being more significant in 2015 than in 2017
Summary
In the aftermaths of 9/11 and the recurrent waves of Islamic terrorism in Europe and beyond, counterterrorism practices and policies around the world have experienced dramatic changes, especially policing strategies and organisations (see, for example, Deflem and Chicoine 2019). This context has inter alia stimulated academic activity on terrorism and its impact on nations and citizens (Echebarria-Echabe and Fernández-Guede 2006; Akhtar et al 2010; Edling et al 2016). We contend here that the related factors could influence the latter
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