ABSTRACT
In the fi rst decade of the 21st century, security institutions in Western nation-states have been preoccupied with attempting to limit and reduce the terrorist threat. After the September 11, 2001 (9/11), attacks, national security issues have ascended the political agenda, embedding terrorism as an axial political concern (Furedi 2005; Mythen and Walklate 2008; Ould Mohamedou 2007). Given that terrorist acts effectively undermine the neoliberal premise that the state is able to secure order, governance, and control over its territory, it is easy to see why the regulation of terrorism has become a focal topic. Post-9/11, political elites, intelligence experts, and establishment academics have posited that the extraordinary nature of the terrorist threat requires extensive legal and military measures, alongside intensifi ed modes of policing and surveillance1 (Clarke 2007; Lesser at al. 1999). In defi ning the actions of ‘new’ Islamist terrorist organizations as a radical departure from the past, a political narrative bound up with future threats demands that legal, military, and security responses be pre-emptive and embracing.
