Introduction
International terrorism is cited as one of the most salient security threats in contemporary
security strategies of the US and the EU (NSS, 2002, ESS, 2003) and in surveys of elite
opinion among Western countries (Kirchner and Sperling, 2002, Meyer, 2006). Yet, once
one focuses on public opinion poll data from across the Atlantic as well as within Europe,
substantial differences emerge. The paper aims to advance theorising about the process of
constructing public threat perceptions regarding international terrorism and the question
of whether and to what extent this process helps us to understand political responses to
the terrorism. The paper will not address the ongoing and vigorous debate about the exact
nature of terrorism, how “new” a threat it actually is, and what the most appropriate
response to it should be (Edwards and Meyer 2008a). Not in doubt is that individual
Member States (van Leeuwen 2003; von Hippel 2005; Zimmermann and Wenger 2006)
as well as the European Union as a whole (Szyszkowitz, 2005; Zimmermann, 2006;
Spence, 2007; Edwards and Meyer, 2008b) have reacted to the perceived threat. It is
worth noting already at this stage that many of the new measures are not exclusively or
even primarily targeted at terrorist activity. In fact, most of these initiated through the
EU-led action plan had been discussed previously in the context of the combating crime
or addressing illegal immigration (den Boer and Monar 2002). Across Europe, a number
of Home Affairs Ministers have put forward an argument along the lines of the former
British Home Secretary David Blunkett: ‘Terrorists are not just involved in terrorism;
they are also involved in many other types of crime to fund and facilitate their activities.
By tackling those crimes, we can tackle terrorism.’ (quoted in Tsoukala 2006: 611)
The paper adopts a comparative approach to analyse how the emergence of
international terrorism has been perceived and reacted to in selected EU member states. It
is based on the theoretical literature positing a correlation between cognitive and
emotional reactions to threats and preferred responses. The paper draws primarily on
public opinion polls and comparative counter-terrorist policy reviews to argue that the
homogenisation thesis is theoretically and empirically misguided. The paper proposes a
three-pronged modern constructivist approach to explaining observed cross-national
differences in perception and response, combining insights from the literature on policy-
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Convention