ABSTRACT
When friends and relatives ask me what my PhD research is about, I usually answer in layperson terms, that I am studying the effectiveness of countering violent extremism (CVE). The immediate response is then generally, “So, does CVE work?” Unfortunately, I have to disappoint those people, and any readers, who were hoping to get a quick answer to that question. Quite simply, we as a scientific community are unable to answer the question of ‘what works in CVE’. CVE is a relatively new and very complex phenomenon. The term itself has become a – contested – catch phrase for a broad array of interventions targeting different populations at different stages in the radicalization process. Most common evaluation methods have proven unsuitable for dealing with the complexity of CVE. As a result, there is a serious lack of evaluations in the field. Those few evaluations that we can draw upon are very heterogeneous, both in terms of evaluation method and the type of interventions that they address. It is therefore impossible to make any grounded statements on the effectiveness of CVE. Academia thus has little theoretical basis for adequately advising the policy and practitioner community on the best course of action.
