Radicalization revisited: violence,politics and the skills of the body

For more than a decade, ‘radicalization’ has been a keyword in our understanding of terrorism. From the outset, radicalization was conceived of as an intellectual process through which an individual would increasingly come under a spell of extremist ideas. This ideological understanding of radicalization still prevails. In a 2015 speech on extremism, British Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, claimed that the ‘root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself’. But the way we understand radicalization has specific consequences for the way we manage and fight the scourge of terrorism. Considering recent events, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, the present article sets out to reassess the above‐mentioned intellectualist understanding of radicalization and come up with new suggestions as to how radicalization may be understood today. Initially, the article suggests that ideology is not necessarily a precondition for violence, but that a prior experience with violence is more often a precondition for engaging an extremist ideology. Such experience with violence can be both domestic and international, obtained in Europe or Syria and other conflict zones. In the second part of the article it is argued that although radicalization is often conceived of as an individual process, pathways towards terrorism are inherently social and political. Finally, the article argues that by stressing the importance of ideology and ideological processes, concepts of radicalization have abstracted away from another factor that is pivotal for understanding pathways towards terrorist violence: the skills and capacities of the body.     

Community engagement for counterterrorism: lessons from the United Kingdom

This article explores the development of community engagement within the UK's strategy to tackle international terrorism linked to and inspired by Al‐Qaeda, commonly known as CONTEST. It focuses mostly on the ‘Prevent’ strand of the strategy which seeks to prevent radicalization towards violence, reduce tacit support for violence, and increase the resilience of communities to tackle radicalization and extremist messages themselves. Community engagement for counterterrorism also relates to certain aspects of the ‘Pursue’ strand of CONTEST, and these are highlighted. The article outlines the case for a community‐based approach to counterterrorism and outlines a number of the key developments in its emergence from 2005 onwards. It analyses the performance of this aspect of the counterterrorism strategy, pointing to a number of shortcomings in relation to the establishment of partnerships, the integration of the approach, capacity shortfalls at the local level, and the wider challenges of a hostile political and media environment. Written as the new UK coalition government announces a review of the ‘Prevent’ strategy, it offers a number of recommendations for the future direction of this area of policy. It calls for an overhaul in working styles, a focus on people rather than projects, and the need to draw a much clearer line between downstream and targeted ‘Prevent’ work and the broader and longer‐term community development work, with the latter encapsulated within the government's Big Society Programme and aimed at all fragile communities, not just Muslims.     

The problem with ‘radicalization’: the remit of ‘Prevent’ and the need to refocus on terrorism in the UK

This article questions the utility of the term ‘radicalization’ as a focus for counter‐terrorism response in the UK. It argues that the lack of clarity as to who the radicalized are has helped to facilitate a ‘Prevent’ strand of counterterrorism strategy that has confusingly oscillated between tackling violent extremism, in particular, to promoting community cohesion and ‘shared values’ more broadly. The article suggests that the focus of counterterrorism strategy should be on countering terrorism and not on the broader remit implied by wider conceptions of radical‐ization. This is not to diminish the importance of contextual or ‘root cause’ factors behind terrorism, but, if it is terrorism that is to be understood and countered, then such factors should be viewed within the terrorism‐counterterrorism discourse and not a radicalization‐counter‐radicalization one. The article goes on to consider the characterization of those presenting a terrorist threat to the UK as being ‘vulnerable’ to violent extremism. While it argues that the notion of vulnerable individuals and communities also lends itself to a wider ‘Prevent’ remit, it cautions that the impetus towards viewing terrorism as the product of vulnerability should not deflect us from what has generally been agreed in terrorism studies—that terrorism involves the perpetration of rational and calculated acts of violence.     

Why conventional wisdom on radicalization fails: the persistence of a failed discourse

Politicians, the media, and some academics are getting it wrong about radicalization. Relying on simple narratives to explain how an individual departs from point a (‘a good Muslim boy’) to point b (‘a suicide bomber’), too many recent contributions to academia rely on assumptions and ‘conventional wisdom’ rather than testable and falsifiable empirical research and methods. Through specific cases, this article seeks to demonstrate how the over‐simplification of ‘conventional wisdom’ privileges convenient political narratives over the complex realities of such situations. In light of this failure to account for reality, this article seeks to challenge current thinking on radicalization by exposing its limitations, as currently being used, as a meaningful basis and departure point for rigorous social science research. The article concludes by showing how the current persistence of this ‘conventional wisdom’ approach to radicalization ultimately betrays the normative political assumptions of those who insist on using this term, and how this adherence to ‘conventional wisdom’ now deprives radicalization from being a relevant and useful academic or policy discourse. This is because radicalization as an area for study has been corrupted by its instrumental political application.     

The Islamic State lexical battleground: US foreign policy and the abstraction of threat

This article suggests that President Obama's consistent references to the extremist Sunni group as ‘ISIL’ (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is not a trivial matter of nomenclature. Instead, the Obama administration's deliberate usage of the ISIL acronym (as opposed to other commonly‐used terms such as ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ or ‘ISIS’, ‘Islamic State’, ‘IS’, ‘so‐called Islamic State’ and ‘Daesh’) frames the public perception of the threat to avoid engagement with the requirements of strategy and operations. Both the labelling and the approach could be defended as a response to the unique challenge of a transnational group claiming religious and political legitimacy. However, we suggest that the labelling is an evasion of the necessary response, reflecting instead a lack of coherence in strategy and operations—in particular after the Islamic State's lightning offensive in Iraq and expansion in Syria in mid‐2014. This tension between rhetoric, strategy and operations means that ‘ISIL’ does not provide a stable depiction of the Islamic State. While it may draw upon the post‐9/11 depiction of ‘terrorism’, the tag leads to dissonance between official and media representations. The administration's depiction of a considered approach leading to victory has been undermined by the abstraction of ‘ISIL’, which in turn produced strategic ambiguity about the prospect of any political, economic or military challenge to the Islamic State.     

British Muslims,multiculturalism and UK foreign policy: ‘integration’ and ‘cohesion’ in and beyond the state

After the 7 July and 21 July 2005 attacks on London the government‐sponsored effort to ‘prevent extremism together’ has repeatedly acknowledged the central role of anger at UK foreign policy in the radicalization of some British Muslims. This acknowledgement has been incorporated into a ‘comprehensive framework for action’ centring upon the need for increased ‘integration’ and an effort, critically, to re‐work British multiculturalism as a means to combat terrorism. Examining the history of multiculturalism in Britain and the tradition of living and acting ‘together’ that it suggests, however, raises a set of questions about the society into which integration is supposed to occur, what integration might involve and its real efficacy for combating terrorists. In addressing these issues, this article suggests that the debate over contemporary multiculturalism should be situated within a much wider social and political crisis over the meaning of ‘community’ in the UK, to which questions of global order and foreign policy are central. Comparing the ‘ethical’ basis of Al‐Qaeda's attacks with Tony Blair's invocation of ‘values’ as the foundation for military intervention reveals that both seek to realize models of community through violence and a shared process of ‘radicalization’ which in both cases precedes 9/11 and which might be traced back to the Gulf War of 1991. The article concludes that debate over the future of multiculturalism in the UK is being conducted alongside and is implicated within a second, violent global conflict over community: one which is central to, but essentially unarticulated within the domestic context.     

From terrorism to ‘radicalization’ to ‘extremism’: counterterrorism imperative or loss of focus?

This article argues that there has been an increasing convergence of the discourses of terrorism, radicalization and, more lately, extremism in the UK and that this has caused counterterrorism to lose its focus. This is particularly evident in the counterterrorism emphasis on non‐violent but extremist ideology that is said to be ‘conducive’ to terrorism. Yet, terrorism is ineluctably about violence or the threat of violence; hence, if a non‐violent ideology is in and of itself culpable for terrorism in some way then it ceases to be non‐violent. The article argues that there should be a clearer distinction made between (non‐violent) extremism of thought and extremism of method because it is surely violence and the threat of violence (integral to terrorism) that should be the focus of counterterrorism. The concern is that counterterrorism has gone beyond its remit of countering terrorism and has ventured into the broader realm of tackling ideological threats to the state.     

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy‐makers as their agents, and policy‐makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms.     

Ambiguous immigrants? Examining the changing status of the English in New Zealand

Drawing on a qualitative interview‐based study of English migrants in New Zealand, this article examines, if and how, overseas migration triggers national sentiments that were previously relatively amorphous in their country of origin. In those cases where this occurs, it analyses the diverse and contextual orientations migrants display, and discusses the empirical and analytic challenges posed when seeking to conceptualise a category of persons that have been described as ‘ambiguous immigrants’. The study concludes that research on this ambiguity contributes to debates about the relationship between dominant ethnicity and national identity while highlighting the simplicities of many concepts used to describe and analyse ‘the English’.     

Entangling alliances? The UK's complicity in torture in the global war on terrorism

The global war on terrorism gives rise to a range of legal, political and ethical problems. One major concern for UK policy‐makers is the extent to which the government may be held responsible for the illegal and/or unethical behaviour of allies in intelligence gathering—the subject of the forthcoming Gibson inquiry. The UK government has been criticized by NGOs, parliamentary committees and the media for cooperating with states that are alleged to use cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT) or torture to gain information about possible terrorist threats. Many commentators argue that the UK's intelligence sharing arrangements leave it open to charges of complicity with such behaviour. Some even suggest the UK should refuse to share intelligence with countries that torture. This article refutes this latter view by exploring the legal understanding of complicity in the common law system and comparing its more limited view of responsibility—especially the ‘merchant's defence’—with the wider definition implied in political commentary. The legal view, it is argued, offers a more practical guide for policy‐makers seeking to discourage torture while still protecting their citizens from terrorist threats. It also provides a fuller framework for assessing the complicity of policy‐makers and officials. Legal commentary considers complicity in relation to five key points: identifying blame; weighing the contribution made; evaluating the level of intent; establishing knowledge; or, where the latter is uncertain, positing recklessness. Using this schema, the article indicates ways in which the UK has arguably been complicit in torture, or at least CIDT, based on the information publicly available. However, it concludes that the UK was justified in maintaining intelligence cooperation with transgressing states due to the overriding public interest in preventing terrorist attacks.     

People in Between: Conversion and Conservation of Forest Lands in Thailand

The analysis of ‘ambiguous lands’ and the people who inhabit them is most revealing for understanding environmental deterioration in Thailand. ‘Ambiguous lands’ are those which are legally owned by the state, but are used and cultivated by local people. Land with an ambiguous property status attracts many different actors: villagers hungry for unoccupied arable lands in the frontiers; government departments looking for new project sites; and conservation agencies searching for new areas to be protected. This article shows, first, how two types of ambiguous land — state‐owned but privately‐cultivated land, and communal lands — were created. It then examines how the Karen, one of the hill peoples living on the ambiguous lands, have been struggling to survive between the forces of capitalistic development and forest conservation. Using a detailed study of forest use and dependency conducted in two Karen villages, I argue that the state’s efforts to reduce the Karen’s forest dependency, or even to evict them from the forests, are not leading to the stated objective of conservation. Finally, I draw some wider implications with reference to James Scott’s thesis on state simplification.     

Authoritarianism and the securitization of development in Africa

Debate on the ‘securitization’ of aid and international development since 9/11 has been anchored in two key claims: that the phenomenon has been driven and imposed by western governments and that this is wholly unwelcome and deleterious for those in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. This article challenges both of these assumptions by demonstrating how a range of African regimes have not only benefited from this dispensation but have also actively encouraged and shaped it, even incorporating it into their own militarized state‐building projects. Drawing on the cases of Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda—four semi‐authoritarian polities which have been sustained by the securitization trend—we argue that these developments have not been an accidental by‐product of the global ‘war on terror’. Instead, we contend, they have been the result of a deliberate set of choices and policy decisions by these African governments as part of a broader ‘illiberal state‐building’ agenda. In delineating this argument we outline four major strategies employed by these regimes in this regard: ‘playing the proxy’; simultaneous ‘socialization’ of development policy and ‘privatization’ of security affairs; making donors complicit in de facto regional security arrangements; and constructing regime ‘enemies’ as broader, international threats.     

Transitional Justice and Political Economies of Survival in Post‐conflict Northern Uganda

This article explores the interplay between transitional justice and ‘everyday’ political economies of survival in post‐conflict Acholiland, northern Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, that transitional justice — as part and parcel of conventional liberal peacebuilding packages — promotes a repertoire of normatively driven policies that have little bearing on lived realities of social accountability in post‐conflict settings. Second, that in transcending the epistemological and ontological boundaries of transitional justice and using concepts developed in the critical peacebuilding literature — the ‘everyday’ and ‘hybridity’ — a nuanced understanding of this dissonance emerges. Based on extensive fieldwork in Acholiland in the period 2012–14, using a range of qualitative research methods, the author examines the means through which people negotiate social and moral order in the context of post‐conflict life and analyses the tensions between these forms of ‘everyday’ activity and current transitional justice policy and programming in the region.     

The rise of the Indo-Pacific: understanding ideational change and continuity in India's foreign policy

In 2011, the concept of the Indo-Pacific began to appear in India's foreign policy discourse. This article argues that rather than signalling a dramatic shift in India's foreign policy, however, the way in which the Indo-Pacific has been interpreted by the Indian leadership suggests significant continuity as well as change, which is contrary to the goals of the concept's most fervent proponents in India. The article seeks to develop a framework for understanding ideational change and continuity in foreign policy by theorising the interplay between ideas, political and economic flux, and social expectations related to effective and legitimate state-building. It is argued that the Indo-Pacific concept has instigated a new emphasis on regional architecture-building to manage the ongoing regionalisation in the area between the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a result of heightened trade flows and production and investment linkages. Yet, the Indo-Pacific concept, like the new policy ideas on regional engagement that preceded it—the Look East policy and the ‘extended neighbourhood’—has been articulated in ways that are also compatible with long-standing ideas—such as non-alignment—about what constitutes appropriate international behaviour. This reflects the nature of the broader state project that has emerged since 1990, which, while encompassing a new focus on economic growth and competitiveness as being essential to effective state-building, continues to prioritise older ideas about what constitutes effective and legitimate state-building.     

‘There Was A Third Man…’: Tales from a Global Policy Consultation on Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals

This article reflects on the experience of the two authors as ‘experts’ during consultations on justice and security indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals. The authors examine how the tension between the indeterminacy of the concepts to be measured — justice and security — and the concreteness of indicators shaped the politics of the consultations. Participants used this tension strategically to destabilize notions of time, space and identity on which knowledge production rests. In doing so, they blurred the distinction between academics, advocates and policy makers. They did this to lay claim to some aspects of implementation while distancing themselves from others. The authors then juxtapose this with personal experience of researching South Sudanese citizens, who challenged and deconstructed that distinction. At the same time, experts at the consultations incorporated an image of these citizens as an ethical justification for the discussion. The authors argue that a more complex sociology of knowledge is required to understand how these global knowledge practices work from the global to the local. Such a sociology of knowledge acknowledges fluidity and grapples with how knowledge practices defer and delimit moments of decision; it requires an ethico‐political — rather than just a political — critique.     

Reconciliation and research in Afghanistan: an analytical narrative

This article examines the evolution of western policy towards the idea of pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, or ‘reconciliation’, in Afghanistan and the role that research and expert opinion played in that process. The official western position has evolved iteratively from initial rejection to near complete embrace of exploring the potential for talks. It is widely assumed that the deteriorating security situation was the sole determinant of this major policy reversal, persuading decision‐makers to rethink what had once been deemed unthinkable. Moreover, given the politicized and sensitive nature of the subject, we might expect the potential for outside opinion to influence decision‐makers to be low. Nevertheless, this article demonstrates that it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that research and expert knowledge played—the story is more nuanced and complex. Research coalesced, sometimes prominently, with other key drivers to spur and shape policy change. Importantly, it often took experts to make sense of events on the ground, especially where the failure of the military approach was not recognized, understood or palatable to those in official circles. Research interacted with changing events, policy windows, the emergence of new personalities and the actions of various intermediaries to shape emerging positions. More broadly, the case of reconciliation in Afghanistan reveals the difficulties and challenges, but also the variety of opportunities and techniques, for achieving research influence in conflict‐affected environments.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

President Obama at mid‐term

This article provides an analysis of President Obama at mid‐term. It looks at the mid‐term elections from the perspective of the political issues that informed the debate, the implications of Republican control of the House of Representatives for both legislation and relations between the administration and Congress, and the policy areas where cooperation and possible progress is possible. The article looks at the Tea Party movement as a collection of single issue and multi‐issue political groups ranging from ‘nativists’ to Christian fundamentalists to the eclectic and unprecedented combination of fiscal and social conservatives seen at Glen Beck's ‘honoring America’ event at the Washington Monument. This broad movement may be seen as a classical revitalization movement, not unlike those described by Anthony F. C. Wallace. It is opposed by another ‘revitalization movement’ namely the ‘American renewal’ promised by Obama as he ran for office in 2008. These countervailing narratives—in effect two different versions of America, one reflecting the Tea Party broadly conceived and the other reflecting Obama's ‘promise’—are seeking political traction among independents. The implications of this struggle are momentous. The prevailing narrative will frame policy going forward on a range of domestic issues and on selected foreign policy questions, which will include the present debate on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia and the upcoming debate on China, which will have even further reaching effects. Finally, this article describes Obama's struggle to frame his policy successes and the ensuing debate in a favourable light. His opponents have sought to limit his progress by presenting him as ‘the other”, an effective but destructive technique that could have longer term effects on the domestic political discourse. However, the author remains an optimist; he believes, together with 50 per cent of Americans, the president is likable, logical and gives a good speech, and that he will be re‐elected in 2012.     

Securing China's core interests: the state of the debate in China

As China has grown stronger, some observers have identified an assertive turn in Chinese foreign policy. Evidence to support this argument includes the increasingly frequent evocation of China's ‘core interests’—a set of interests that represents the non‐negotiable bottom lines of Chinese foreign policy. When new concepts, ideas and political agendas are introduced in China, there is seldom a shared understanding of how they should be defined; the process of populating the concept with real meaning often takes place incrementally. This, the article argues, is what has happened with the notion of core interests. While there are some agreed bottom lines, what issues deserve to be defined (and thus protected) as core interests remains somewhat blurred and open to question. By using content analysis to study 108 articles by Chinese scholars, this article analyses Chinese academic discourse of China's core interests. The authors’ main finding is that ‘core interests’ is a vague concept in the Chinese discourse, despite its increasing use by the government to legitimize its diplomatic actions and claims. The article argues that this vagueness not only makes it difficult to predict Chinese diplomatic behaviour on key issues, but also allows external observers a rich source of opinions to select from to help support pre‐existing views on the nature of China as a global power.     

Civil Society in African Contexts: Reflections on the Usefulness of a Concept

This article considers the usefulness of the concept of civil society — both as an analytical construct and as a policy tool — in non–Western contexts, drawing on a selected review of literature on Africa from anthropology and development studies. Rejecting arguments that the concept has little meaning outside its Western origins, but critical of the sometimes crude export of the concept by Western development donors seeking to build ‘good governance’, the author examines different local meanings being created around the concept as part of an increasingly universal negotiation between citizens, states and markets. The article seeks to clarify different theoretical traditions in thinking about civil society, and suggests distinguishing the use of civil society as an analytical term from the set of actually existing groups, organizations and processes which are active on the ground. The concept is therefore useful in the analysis of contemporary politics, but is also important because it has a capacity to inspire action.