The Discourse and Practice of Counter‐Terrorism in Liberal Democracies

Abstract

This article examines the post‐Cold War tendency to broaden the counter‐terrorism mandate to include other phenomena such as organised crime, drug‐trafficking and illegal immigration. This redefinition has important implications for democracy, both at the level of discourse and at the level of practice. At the level of discourse, the plasticity of the word “terrorism” and its application to a wide variety of phenomena is a form of claims making activity by a variety of agencies fighting for budgetary allocations in an era of cost‐cutting and deficit reduction. At the level of practice, the counter‐terrorism mandate is being expanded to include the range of phenomena covered in the widening discourse and this, in turn, has led to a blurring of boundaries between internal and external security, police and military models of control, and public and private sectors. All this has an impact on the openness of government, the accountability of agencies of social control, the adherence to the rule of law in the fight against terrorism and related phenomena, and the possibility of informed consent by a public made fearful by the claims‐making discourse as it is disseminated through the mass media.