Counter-radicalisation Policies: Are the Policies of the EU, Norway and the Basque Country effective?

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of 11 counter-radicalisation policies presented by the European Union, Norway, and the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country in Spain. In order to do so, two tasks are carried out, where the first is to analyse the overlapping between the measures proposed in the policy documents and the contributing factors of the radicalisation phenomenon. The second task is to discuss the compatibility of the aforementioned measures and the liberties presupposed in a western liberal democracy. The study makes use of a conceptualisation of radicalisation based on contemporary scholarly literature on the topic together with content analysis, Boolean logic and fuzzy set logic in order to accomplish these tasks. The main findings of the study are that out of a potential maximum of 1 grade of membership, the policies COM 1, SCRRT 1, EUCTS, SCRRT 2 and ColSec have a 0.89 grade of membership in the effectiveness notion and 0.11 in the exacerbation notion. Concerning the RAN documents, they have a membership grade of 0.78 in effectiveness and 0.11 in exacerbation. The PPC has a grade of 0.67 in effectiveness, whilst the policy COM 3 has 0.56 in effectiveness and 0.11 in exacerbation. The policies COM 2 and NorCOM 2 have a grade of membership of 0.45. In addition, NorCOM 2 has 0.11 in exacerbation, and finally, NorCOM 1 has a grade of membership of 0.23. Further, the second main finding is that the policy documents are context specific.