ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a typology of backfire mechanisms in regard to hard counterterrorism policies and soft radicalization prevention instruments. The typology conceptualizes and categorizes causal mechanisms that have been shown in the literature to obscure/pervert policy intentions upon implementation in the field of counterterrorism within liberal, democratic settings. The term backfire has been used most extensively in social movement studies. The chapter explains a modified version of Hess and Martin's concept of backfire and focus on backfire caused by the ongoing implementation of counterterrorism policies rather than singular repressive events. Backfire mechanisms then refer to certain types of causal mechanisms, which assemble into combinations or sequences of events, which constitute larger scale backfire processes. Thus, backfire mechanisms are the recurrent ways that different types of counterterrorist policies, events and target group reactions under different circumstances alter target groups behavior in counterproductive ways.
