Securitization across borders – commonalities and contradictions in European and Arab counterterrorism discourses

ABSTRACT

As securitization often involves transnational issues, we need a better understanding of how such securitization processes mutually reinforce or contradict each other. Differences in political systems and political cultures increase the risk that audience reactions as well as routinizations run counter the interests informing the initial securitizing move. In the case of relations between European and Arab countries, the overlap and tensions associated with different political calculi behind such transnational processes are particularly relevant in terms of the fallout, which the securitization of the so-called Islamic State’s terrorism produces for political reform in the Arab world as well as for political discourses on Islam and Islamism in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab world
• authoritarianism
• counterterrorism
• islamism
• terrorism
• securitization

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Lars Berger

Lars Berger is Professor of International Politics and Terrorism Studies at the Federal University of Administrative Sciences in Berlin and Academic Adviser to the Intelligence College in Europe. His research on terrorism, Islamism, the international relations of the Middle East and US foreign policy has been published in leading journals such as Conflict Management and Peace Science, Democratization, Journal of Peace Research, Political Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, and West European Politics.