Managing the Interface: Regional Security and Substate Politics in Africa
The relationship among Interpol, Africa’s police chiefs, and their regional cooperation organizations offers a means to explore two long-standing issues in secu rity studies: How should the interface between the various levels of security be charac terized? Is the notion of regional security mean...
Shock and awe: Military response to armed banditry and the prospects of internal security operations in Northwest Nigeria
Insecurity has worsened in Northwest Nigeria, due to the threat of armed banditry, necessitating the deployments and operations of the military. While there is increasing academic attention on the origins, causes, and nature of this threat, the conduct, achievements, prospects, and challenges o...
Matters of care or matters of security: feminist reflections on prosecuting terrorism financing
International treaties and European directives have put new legal responsibilities on EU member states to pre-emptively monitor and prosecute terrorist activities and offences. In particular, the prosecution of terrorism financing has been an important focus to prevent material and ideological ...
Security knowledges: circulation, control, and responsible research and innovation in EU border management
European Union (EU) through its Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation and other funding streams is significantly shaped by different forms of epistemic control exerted by the EU itself. Through the promotion of industry-research-policy cooperation in EU-funded research, and in light...
Needs or Interests: Drivers of China’s Peace Engagement in Conflict-affected Countries
What drives China’s peace engagement in conflict-affected countries: does China provide peacebuilding support where its help is needed the most or to advance its own interests? Despite a growing body of literature addressing this question, the analytical scope remains limited to China’s shor...
Stuck on the stairway of change: the EU’s enlargement and security and defence policies post 2022
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Union (EU) has taken a number of unprecedented decisions. These decisions and policy measures have involved key EU policies, above all the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the Common Security and De...
A Faulty Prescription? Critiquing Joint Security Units after Peace Agreements in Sudan, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic
This article critiques the prescription of joint security units called for by civil war peace agreements as a means to integrate armed forces previously in conflict. Drawing on cases from Sudan, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, this article offers a comparative assessment of the j...
Combatting insecurity in the everyday: the global anti-street harassment movement as everyday security practitioners
Street harassment renders countless women, girls and others insecure in their everyday lives. Over the past two decades a global grassroots move ment developed to combat street harassment and its attendant insecu rities. But neither phenomenon has excited the attention of Security Studies, critica...
The ‘security paradoxes’ of the Black Sea region
The international order has entered a new era that is characterized by dramatic changes, in terms of both structure and process. Within this evolving non-polar world, the emergence of the Black Sea as a region and as a geopolitical hub is undeniable; yet the issues at hand are many, complex and ...
Brazilian alliance perspectives: towards a BRICS development–security alliance?
Scholars studying BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have traditionally argued that it is a development-focused partnership and not a military/security-based alliance. Yet BRICS members have been deepening their security integration, and Russia and China have been creating a...
Military intervention and its impact on governance, peace and security in the Kingdom of Lesotho
This article investigates the military intervention impacting political stabilisation, peace as well as security. The nature of this intervention is unmasked by tracing the ill-discipline within the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) and its past of politicisation. The LDF not only interfered in govern...
Flows and modalities of global Islamophobia
This editorial introduces the Special Issue on Global Islamophobia. Discussing the seven articles in the Special Issue, we critically assess current theorizations that contend that US imperialism and racialization are fundamental to Islamophobia. The scholarship collected in this Special Issue demon...
In defence of multiculturalism – theoretical challenges
Although it seems that multiculturalism has been dismissed as a failed experiment or sham in the public debate, there has been an ongoing internal academic discussion of theoretical approaches to multiculturalism. This theoretical dialogue is, of course, parallel to and affected by developments in s...
Challenging the youth assumptions behind P/CVE: acknowledging older extremists
Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) interventions are largely based on theories that young people (especially young men) are particularly vulnerable to radicalisation leading to violent extremism. Youth is seen as a vulnerable time of identity formation, separation from family and openne...
Interreligious Literacy Learning as a CounterRadicalization Method: A New Trend among Institutions of Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia
Extremism and radicalization have become serious problems that are spreading rapidly around the world, penetrating even institutions of higher education in Indonesia. In response, institutions of Islamic higher education in Indonesia have developed interreligious literacy (IL) learning. To analyse t...
Studies on Religion and China’s National Security in the Globalization Era
Since the 1970s, the global resurgence of religion, the politicization and internationalization of religion, as well as the raging violent religious extremism, have posed a severe challenge to national sovereignty and international order. The impact of religion on national security has become an ine...
The China–India–Pakistan Nuclear Triangle: Consequential Choices for Asian Security
Asia-Pacific is the new locus of global power politics. To contain the rise of China, India has joined the United States in shaping a “geopolitical” response to China’s “geo-economic” outreach. A “maritime dimension” has been added to the complex “continental” contestations between...
Russia’s use of semi-state security forces: the case of the Wagner Group
This article provides a definitive, in-depth case-study, using primarily Russian sources, of Russia’s use of the informal “Wagner Group” private military company (PMC) and its antecedents (from 2012 to 2018) in Nigeria, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic...
The Ukraine Conflict: Russia’s Challenge to European Security Governance
This essay uses the concept of security governance to explore the implications of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine for the rules-based security order in Europe. It outlines key ideas in the literature about the post-Cold War European security order with respect to Russia’s role and examines Russ...
The polycrisis and EU security and defence competences
From the 2009 sovereign debt crisis to the 2022 Russian full-scale war in Ukraine, the EU has experienced a succession of intersecting crises, or a ‘polycrisis’. We examine how this polycrisis has impacted the EU’s role in security and defence. While the EU’s competences in security and defe...
Drones have boots: Learning from Russia’s war in Ukraine
Before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, security studies scholars were myopic about small drones’ enabling functions and tactical benefits. They were preoccupied with drone impacts on international security and the ethical dimensions of counterterrorism drone strikes. Similarly, literature on ...
Decolonialisation and the Terrorism Industry
ABSTRACT Decolonising academia has gained much traction in some glo bal north and global south countries over the last few years, resulting in initiatives such as decolonising the curricula. However, the terrorism industry as a whole has so far escaped such calls. The industry has a long and de...
Was the 1982 Lebanon War a Deviation from Israeli Security Doctrine?
On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the aim of destroying the military infrastructure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was serving as a launching pad for terrorist infiltrations and Katyusha attacks into northern Israel. From its outset, the Israeli public consider...
Ulsterisation vs De-Baathification: Precedents in Local Security During Counterinsurgency
The controversial conflicts of both Northern Ireland and Iraq saw military figures make a series of blunders that undermined security efforts. In this article it is forwarded that the Northern Ireland security precedent should have been leveraged to avoid unforced errors in Iraq. The lessons and exa...
Geographies of Islamophobia
Islamophobia often refers to systemic racism against Muslims and the lived experiences of discrimination against people who are perceived as Muslim. These forms of racism and discrimination have intensified in the last couple of decades, especially since the War on Terror. This introduction argues t...
The digital euro: a materialization of (in)security
The European Central Bank (ECB) has entered the preparation phase for the potential issuance of a digital euro. The digital euro under consideration represents a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital representation of central bank money that is intended for use by the general pu...
Variations within the Norwegian far right: from neo-Nazism to anti-Islamism
ABSTRACT Since 2011, we have witnessed both the worst terror attack ever on Norwegian soil as well as an attempted act of terror. Both actions were conducted by right-wing extremists, who were radicalized by inspiration from, but not actual participation in, far right anti-Islamist groups. Eve...
Theorizing Buddhist anti-Muslim nationalism as global Islamophobia
In the wake of anti-Muslim violence in Buddhist majority states in Asia, increased scholarly attention is paid to anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism. These studies have paid particular attention to historical legacies within the confines of state borders, be they colonial or post-colonial. However, as...
Report of Panel on Peace and Security of Northeast Asia (PSNA) 2017
The Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki University (RECNA) published a report entitled, “A Comprehensive Approach toward Northeast Asia-Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ)” in March 2015. Since then, the RECNA has been organizing activities to follow up its own recom me...
A dialogue with Dostoevsky: extremism, media and polyphony
In this article, I aim to demonstrate how a contemporary novelist can write about extremism in the social media age and in the process engage with the literary consciousness of the past. Although several novelists have written about extremism in recent years – notably Kamila Shamsie in Home Fire (...
Extreme parallels: a corpus-driven analysis of ISIS and far-right discourse
In this study, we examine key psychological dimensions in the manifestos authored by the perpetrators of the Christchurch and Utøya massacres, the right-wing extremists Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik, and the ISIS propaganda magazine Rumiyah. All texts were authored and disseminated virtua...
What can European security architecture look like in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine?
The paper outlines the most likely scenarios of the future European security architecture based on an analysis of several drivers, such as Russia’s leadership’s perception of Ukraine, the mindset of the Putinist elite, Russia’s state geopolitics, the domestic situation and prospects of a...
Online extremism and Islamophobic language and sentiment when discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation on Twitter
This paper looks at the profiles of those who engaged in Islamophobic language/extremist behaviour on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. This two-part analysis takes into account factors such as anonymity, membership length and postage frequency on language use, and the differences in sentiment e...
The Release and Community Supervision of Radicalised Offenders: Issues and Challenges that Can Influence Reintegration
This paper explores the challenges that correctional authorities encounter when dealing with the transition of offenders back into the community after the completionofterrorism-relatedsentencesorafterdemonstrating extremist views or associations. It draws on research conducted in the Australian ...
Anti-Muslim discrimination and support for violent extremism: evidence from five large-N surveys
Both academic and public policy accounts often draw a link between perceived anti-Muslim discrimination and support for violent Islamist extremism. However, robust empirical evidence is lacking. Such a link would be particularly worrying, given that anti-Muslim discrimination has been on the rise in...
Jihadi fiction: radicalisation narratives in the contemporary novel
As Ulrich Beck suggests in World at Risk, fear of Islamist extremism has become a dominant strand in contemporary perceptions of risk. In the media, a set of ‘stock’ radicalisation narratives have emerged in which, typically, a misguided loner is brainwashed into embracing a violent perversi...
China’s security force assistance in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and its implications for peacebuilding
This article examines the peacebuilding implications of Chinese military support to Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. It is based on primary and secondary sources. The article mainly argues that China’s security force assistance in Zimbabwe, premised on the security-development approach, shows th...
Preventing violent and hateful extremism: comparing the experiences of domestic Swedish and international humanitarian-development NGOs
In Sweden, local authorities are encouraged to cooperate with civil society to promote resilience to violent extremism. However, some (mostly Muslim) organisations are approached with suspicion and sometimes accused of not subscribing to basic democratic principles. Along with cooperation and resili...
Beyond instrumentalisation: gender and agency in the prevention of extreme violence in Kenya
Since the adoption of UNSCR 2242, which calls for the integration of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) agendas, feminist scholars and activists have cautioned that such a move instrumentalises and securitises the WPS agenda and its o...
“Zeitenwende” as coming of age? EU foreign & security policy through war & peace
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought war back to the European continent and led to considerable change in EU member states’ foreign policies. The consequential degree of EU foreign policy unity, as well as shifts in long-lasting national and collective security and defence taboos, has r...
Linking Conspiracy Beliefs and Violent AntiGovernment Extremism: Mitigating the Threat with Procedurally Just Governance
Conspiracy theories, political polarisation and anti-government sentiment have proliferated in recent years. Similarly, trust in institutions is eroding, and forms of conspiracy-fuelled violence are now more widespread. While our understanding of how and why people come to believe in conspiracy theo...
Why Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation Happened between Islamists and Anti-Islamists in Britain but Not in Norway
Between 2009 and 2015, both Islamist and anti-Islamist protest groups were active in Britain and Norway. However, while these opposing groups regularly clashed violently in the U.K., such interactions never occurred in Norway. This paper seeks to explain why seemingly similar group dyads produce...
Cyber intelligence and international security: breaking the legal and diplomatic silence?
In cyberspace intelligence agencies, rather than militaries, are the most prominent security actors. However, many cyber operations conducted by intelligence agencies are not ‘classic’ espionage activities, but may be best described as digital covert action (sabotage, subversion, information...
The case of WikiIslam: scientification of Islamophobia or legitimate critique of Islam?
In this article we introduce and utilize the concept scientification of Islamophobia to analyze a website called WikiIslam, and the way that its contents are used by websites and online users in a complex global ecology of knowledge production and consumption regarding Islam and Muslims. We have use...
Assessing chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats to the food supply chain
The food supply chain may be intentionally compromised. Potential devastating effects of attacks with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) agents are particularly emphasised and the ease with which such an attack may take place is described in numerous sources. Yet, using the foo...
Holding to account or amplifying extremist hate? A mixed methods analysis of newspaper reporting on far-right crime in Australia
This article explores how Australian print media has reported on the legally contentious activities of far-right actors, using evidence from newspaper articles and court documents. It builds on prior crimin ological research that has examined how media representations contribute to the rise of i...
Toward an Integrated Psychological Model of Violent Extremism
The global threat of violent extremism (VE) has intensified in recent years, evidenced by a significant increase in violent incidents. Despite numerous theoretical and empirical explanations across disciplines, a lack of cross-fertilisation between these research domains has hindered the development...
When Security Imperatives meet Sectarian Temptations: the Tehran-Riyadh rivalry
This paper discusses how security considerations and sectarianism have served Iran and Saudi Arabia as mutually reinforcing tools in their strife to secure their positions in the struggle for regional influence and standing. It premises that no single factor can explain this conflict and that its...
Comparing the Different Behavioral Outcomes of Extremism: A Comparison of Violent and NonViolent Extremists, Acting Alone or as Part of a Group
Presented here is an exploratory study that compared four kinds of extremists (violent lone, nonviolent lone, violent group member, and nonviolent group member). Thematic analysis of 40 case studies identified five key themes and a number of subthemes that comprised a range of underlying variables. ...
Why Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation Happened between Islamists and Anti-Islamists in Britain but Not in Norway
Between 2009 and 2015, both Islamist and anti-Islamist protest groups were active in Britain and Norway. However, while these opposing groups regularly clashed violently in the U.K., such interactions never occurred in Norway. This paper seeks to explain why seemingly similar group dyads produce...
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