Occasional Papers Series

On October 12 1984, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also referred to as the ‘Provisionals’, staged ‘the most audacious attack on a British government since the Gunpowder Plot’, attempting to kill the British Prime Minister (PM), Margaret Thatcher, and all of her cabinet ministers (Hughes, D. 2009; Carroll, R. 2023). The attack, known as the Brighton Bombing, occurred at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference and was part of the…

While the increasing possibilities for end-to-end encrypted communication constitute a technical advance for general data protection, new challenges arise for law enforcement and intelligence agencies in monitoring terrorist communications. To work around the problem of terrorists ‘going dark’ and evading authorities’ surveillance, German authorities have come to employ controversial methods of communications interception through equipment interference using state spyware. In this paper, I reflect on the proportionality of such measures in light of their implications…

Counter-radicalisation has emerged as a nascent and prioritised sub-field of countering terrorism, particularly as Western governments shifted from the ‘Global War on Terror’ to confronting domestic or ‘home-grown’ challenges. While counter-radicalisation public policies contain varied ‘toolkits’ with a range of options for interventions to reduce risks of individuals being susceptible to radicalisation, a sustained trend across policymakers and public debate is the focus on social media sites and internet communication technologies. 

This study explores the ethical considerations that are encountered by Danish journalists when covering stories about terrorism and whether there is a perceived need for more editorial guidelines. An online questionnaire with multiple-choice, Likert scale and open text box questions was distributed to a sample group of Danish journalists using the snowball method in March 2021. The survey gathered quantitative and qualitative data from a total of 74 Danish journalists who all remain anonymous. Their…

Recent research on terrorism and political violence has sought to better conceptualize the far-right. Specifically, various studies have contributed hypotheses regarding the White nationalist movement within the United States. Nevertheless, additional reflection is imperative to ensure the production of resonant counternarratives, the proper implementation of counterterrorism and counterextremism measures, and the overall reduction of racial hate and conflict. As such, this paper will provide further insight into the American White nationalist movement by determining how…

Consociational democracy has become a dominant model for post-conflict democratisation, making an understanding of its dynamics and outcomes important for practitioners and scholars of peacebuilding. This paper explores the quality of consociational governance in the long term in societies transitioning from conflict, and asks whether this imperfect system is viable in the long term despite the absence of adequate transition mechanisms to a more efficient and normatively adequate system. A comparative analysis of Northern Ireland…

In late 1993 Israel and what is now recognised as Palestine came to a peace agreement, the Oslo Accords, over the Palestinian self-governance of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In response to this carving up of the perceived Zionist holy land, religious groups and individuals reacted violently and aggressively to to the Accords and changed the political agenda in Israel over the following years. This paper explores the impact and cause of this explosion…

The rise of populism and the far-right has been a growing trend in the global north in the past decade, and with it there has been a rise in far-right political violence. This paper compares the rise of far-right politics and violence in two European societies.

This paper takes a case study approach to explore sources of restraint on state political violence. It explores a period when violence by the Zimbabwean state was widespread, but not absolute, and when various forces sought to restrain violence. This paper identifies a series of dualities underlying issues of violence and restraint by the Zimbabwean state. It finds that the ruling party was concerned to retain legitimacy as well as power and that this conflicted…

This paper examined framing of online news reporting on terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom. The sample consisted of the articles published on three British news websites about six major terrorist attacks that took place in Europe between 2015 and 2017. The research aimed to identify and compare dominant news frames on the websites and discuss to what degree online reporting on terrorism contributes to the promotion of terror and violence. The study employed an…

In his influential work Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali argues that when democracies use torture, they tend to resort to the use of stealthy torture techniques in order to avoid detection. Using primary archival sources, this paper examines Rejali’s hypothesis by looking at torture in the British Mandate in Palestine up to 1945. First, looking specifically at torture it will show that the case study fits the hypothesis, as torture was generally stealthy, but also systemic…

Counter-terrorism (CT) has since 9/11 become a leading component of intelligence work, alongside mainstays like political analysis and counterintelligence. The emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and new dimensions like extreme right wing (XRW) threats are placing heavy demands on intelligence. This paper addresses three questions. Firstly, whether and how intelligence agencies perform CT roles that go beyond disseminating information. Secondly, whether and how intelligence agencies are involved in CT policymaking.…