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Introduction

The post-9/11 era continues to raise questions about how to manage transnational security threats directed against Western liberal democracies like the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France. As Jihadi terrorism has been catapulted to the forefront of states’ security agendas, national governments have had to find new political and legal instruments to detect and counter these threats. This book posits that the nature of countries’ responses is shaped by the particular governmental framework and process within which counterterrorism measures are decided. Understanding the nature, scope, and trends of national decision-making processes in Western democracies is imperative to identifying new mechanisms for containing transnational terrorist networks beyond national borders.

The purpose of this book is to examine how political structures, both horizontal and vertical, affect processes and policy outcomes in liberal democracies. In particular, it tries to understand counterterrorism responses in each of four countries by examining variations among presidential and parliamentary systems and various degrees of federalization and centralization in the United States (presidential and federal), France (semipresidential and unitary), Great Britain (parliamentary and unitary), and Germany (parliamentary and federal). The two central research questions this book focuses on are how government structures influence counterterrorism policies in these Western democracies and how similar or different the responses have been on both sides of the Atlantic.

The examination of government structures places this book at the center of an ongoing debate about the domestic sources of foreign policy/national security. Specifically, scholars of world politics disagree about the level of analysis in foreign policy/national security decision-making processes. One school of thought has focused on how different domestic governmental structures produce variations in decision-making processes and the policy output.¹ Other scholars over the past forty-five years have shifted their focus from state level analyses to organizations and individual decision-makers. The latter approach stresses the importance of the perceptions and motivations of decision-makers, bureaucracies, and organizations.² Structural proponents, by contrast, place particular importance on the question of how executive and legislative branches stand in relation to each other, and (in federal systems) to lower levels of government, and how power is allocated within the various branches and levels of government.

Decision-making works since 9/11 have used a bureaucratic or organizational perspective to explain counterterrorism outcomes. There is no current book available that measures and compares structural effects on decision-making in the national security arena after 9/11. This book is designed to fill this gap in the literature and contribute to the ongoing debate about the domestic sources of foreign policy/national security decision-making. I further argue that the bureaucratic focus does not suffice to explain reform outcomes, precisely because it cannot account for the structural underpinnings that shape policy-making processes. The transnational nature of the challenge makes the focus on government structures all the more imperative. Transnational terrorist networks not only transcend international borders but also go beyond jurisdictions and stove-piped hierarchies. While counterterrorism responses include measures designed to debilitate terrorist networks directly, states also have to find ways to complement traditional vertical organization and communication lines with more flexible, networked interactions. Governments have introduced new information-sharing policies and institutional arrangements so that government hierarchies (intelligence and law enforcement agencies, among others) on all levels can be better linked to detect and prevent terrorist activities at home and abroad.³ In some instances, governments reorganized and attempted to strengthen the coordination of structures and processes within their own executive and legislative branches. While reorganization needs can be and have also been addressed at the bureaucratic level, the changes in the security policy realm have been so fundamental (as they often affect the traditional balance between security and civil liberties) that they involve legislative actions in all Western democracies. For example, all governments have shifted from mostly reactive to more preventive law enforcement approaches, broadened data collection, created new partnerships between intelligence and law enforcement services, and begun breaking down other long-established foreign-domestic or executive-judicial divides.

Beyond this primary purpose, this book contributes to a debate within the structural school. Ever since Charles de Secondat Montesquieu formulated the theory of the separation of executive, legislative, and judicative powers, the members of this school have argued about the most efficient and effective ways of translating the principle into government structures. In Montesquieu’s view, the interlocking branches of the British constitution embodied his ideal, as executive power is checked by its dependence on legislative support. Ironically, the principle of checks and balances had the most visible influence on the American framers, who adopted it as the core of the U.S. presidential separation of powers system. With specific reference to the British system, James Madison warned about the “danger from legislative usurpations; which by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.”⁴ Like Montesquieu, British journalist Walter Bagehot in the nineteenth century advocated the merits of the centralized British government, contrasting it to the American presidential system with its “many sovereign authorities” and the hope “that their multitude may atone for their inferiority.”⁵ Following Alexis de Tocqueville’s line of argument, American power-sharing government structures are particularly ill-equipped to “fix on one plan and follow it through with persistence” and are “not capable of devising secret measures” in the foreign policy realm.⁶ Indeed, in the longstanding debate between advocates of parliamentary and presidential systems, the shortcomings of the U.S. separation of powers system are typically taken for granted. On the domestic stage, so the critics claim, the fragmentation of power leads to stalemate and gridlock—as the number of decision-makers increases, buck-passing is more common than consensus-building and policy-making.⁷ Because of the lack of centralized power, the argument continues, the U.S. government finds it difficult to follow a coherent course in the foreign policy arena and often cannot operate with the speed and resolve needed to face international challenges.⁸

However, contemporary literature on foreign policy/national security decision-making lacks a systematic analysis of countries’ varying parliamentary and presidential designs and their effects on policymaking capabilities and outcomes.⁹ One reason for this lack of systematic analysis is that the discussion has frequently centered on the comparison of Anglo-Saxon government attributes. To this day, “the British party government model serves as the implicit, if unattainable, ideal for many critics of existing American political institutions.”¹⁰ The study of reorganization à la Britain has not been limited to the scholarly realm. Evaluating the British war cabinet experience during World Wars I and II, and the Committee of Imperial Defense in particular, the Eberstadt Report of 1945 noted that “there are certain features of the British experience (such as the Committee of Imperial Defense) which offer a sound development of a similar organization within the framework of our own Constitution.”¹¹ It went on to recommend a National Security Council for the United States. U.S. lawmakers proceeded to import the British cabinet traditions in 1947—despite the differences between presidential and cabinet government that are also noted in the report.¹² Constitutional or procedural reforms have typically been discussed in the context of adopting Westminster-style parliamentary attributes.¹³ Before and especially after the 9/11 attacks, British-style domestic intelligence organization has often been viewed as possibly helpful in bridging U.S. law enforcement and intelligence stove-pipes (hierarchically organized bureaucratic pillars resistant to sharing information with each other).¹⁴

As the Westminster system cannot function as a model for all parliamentary systems, two non-Anglo-Saxon cases, Germany and France, provide additional opportunities to assess how variations in government structure affect counterterrorism policymaking in these countries. At the national level, the type of legislature and electoral system, inter alia, determines the balance of power between the branches of government and results in varying degrees of centralized parliamentary or presidential systems of representation. While state and local governments have little independent power in France or Britain, they possess significant veto powers in the federal system of Germany. Moreover, the existence or absence of vertical power-sharing arrangements determines how national governments connect and coordinate reforms with their regions and states.

So far, existing literature also does not provide for this kind of comprehensive cross-national analysis of how government structures shape policy responses in one specific policy area. This issue-specific focus can help distinguish variations in structural effects across all four countries as well as differences in government capabilities within systems. That executivelegislative balances and decision-making processes can change depending on the nature of the policy issue¹⁵ is particularly obvious in the French and German cases. Issues regarding national security policy translate into more informal powers for the French president and result in higher structural barriers in the German case, where the Länder (states) gain important veto powers through the upper house, the Bundesrat.¹⁶

Systematic research on the effects of government structures and capabilities has been hampered by the fact that they cannot be “observed and measured directly.”¹⁷ As noted by Peter Gourevitch, only “big events in world politics provide students of international relations and comparative politics with the closest thing to a natural experiment.”¹⁸ Recognizing that the cataclysmic events of 9/11 offer a unique opportunity for such a quasiexperimental research design, this book uses the attacks as a benchmark for comparative analysis. Indeed, the attacks offer an unusually clear opportunity to see government structures at work. Confronted with a new level of terrorist threat, Western-style democracies have been reorienting their focus toward the same problem at the same time. Beyond their initial counterterrorism responses in 2001, an examination of domestic counterterrorism reforms adopted between 2002 and 2013 offers additional insights on structural effects and opportunities for weighing political and bureaucratic factors vis-à-vis structural explanations. During this twelve-year time frame, inter alia, two additional terror attacks occurred in Madrid and London; various other terrorist plots were staged; new governments came to power in all four countries; and the Bush and Obama administrations governed under both unified and divided government conditions in the United States.

The focus on domestic counterterrorism is neither arbitrary nor coincidental. The research opportunity provided by the 9/11 events is further enhanced by the fact that—while reorienting their focus—all four states have paid particular attention to reforming their institutional and operational counterterrorism capacities.¹⁹ Specifically, these four states have all targeted their own domestic policies and institutional designs to improve (1) intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination; (2) information sharing within the intelligence and counterterrorism community; and (3) coordination among security agencies. The domestic focus is all the more relevant, as international counterterrorism responses are not only often decided outside the legislative realm but also tend to be more classified and less affected by civil liberty restraints.

Policy literature typically describes the broad evolution of domestic and foreign counterterrorism responses in individual countries, highlighting methods that are unique to national counterterrorism arsenals, but the literature lacks a systematic comparison of their approaches.²⁰ By contrast, I seek to identify corresponding institutions and practices in all four countries and point out those that exist in some but not all national counterterrorism arsenals. A comprehensive analysis of decision-making processes and resulting security architectures, as well as the political cultures they represent, further helps determine whether certain best practices represent appropriate or viable solutions for other government systems. Dissecting domestic decision-making processes and resulting responses should help improve mechanisms needed to forge counterterrorism responses within and among these four allies and NATO member states. However, it is also crucial with regard to counterterrorism cooperation within Europe. European Union counterterrorism institutions lack executive authorities and remain mostly excluded from day-to-day counterterrorism matters, as operational cooperation remains based on bi- or multilateral arrangements between countries.

To this effect, I also seek to clear up common misperceptions about domestic counterterrorism efforts that—depending on the U.S. or European perspective—are considered too lax or over the top. From a European standpoint, the 2001 U.S.A. Patriot Act and colossal bureaucratic creations like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security represent examples of executive power grabs after the 9/11 attacks and a checks-and-balances system gone awry. On the other side of the transatlantic divide, U.S. officials and lawmakers have continuously warned about “extremists from visa-waiver countries, who are merely an e-ticket away from the United States”²¹ and the threats to the United States that come from Europe due to countries’ lax security provisions.²² According to popular opinion, overall U.S. and European approaches to terrorism since the 9/11 attacks could not be more different. However, a closer look at post-9/11 responses in the domestic counterterrorism arena illustrates that reform objectives have actually been very similar in the United States and three of its closest NATO allies (also known as Europe’s “Big Three”), Great Britain, Germany, and France.

While European states did not suffer an attack on 9/11, the impact of the events was considerable; subsequently, there have been more attacks in Europe. Indeed, since 9/11, Jihadi terrorism is viewed as a major security threat in all four countries.²³ The number of casualties and the way the attacks were executed showed a new threat requiring new methods and answers. Even though the three European states have dealt with domestic terrorism in the past²⁴ and these experiences resulted in reforms, they have reviewed or even revised these “older” institutional arrangements and policies.

Whereas I recognize that some of their policy inheritances and past experiences may have affected French, British, and German responses after 9/11, it is important to note that countries’ approaches are not judged by the quantity and scope of their responses per se. Rather, the focus is on the question of what the nature and extent of the reforms can tell us about the workings of government structures. Interestingly, the list of domestic counterterrorism reforms continues to grow in all three countries—not only after 9/11 but also long after the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London attacks. That being said, the latter observation is not supposed to indicate a preference for government action or other prescriptive considerations. I do not assume that any responses are needed, nor am I seeking to provide normative judgments regarding the effectiveness or extremeness of countries’ counterterrorism policies.

The rest of the book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 synthesizes the conceptual approaches of the structural school, outlines the theoretical models of the bureaucratic and cognitive schools of thought, and explains methodology and definitional considerations. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 are devoted to the case studies, which recap and analyze counterterrorism decision-making in the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France. Each case study consists of three parts. The first part reviews formal constitutional powers and relationships between executive and legislative branches and how they have translated into practice and changed over time.²⁵ Second, each case study outlines the decision-making processes leading to counterterrorism policies and reforms that have been reviewed and/or adopted since the 9/11 attacks. In a third step, each case study chapter concludes with a summary analysis of how structural factors influenced decision-making processes and outcomes. Chapter 6 synthesizes the individual findings of the case studies in a comparative analysis to illustrate the different nuances in structural effects on decision-making and policy outcomes and to evaluate alternative explanations. The findings are then discussed in the context of the existing “structural” literature, followed by the concluding chapter.