The ‘preventive turn in counterterrorism’ presupposes that some relatively stable category of terrorism is governable and that known associated risks can and should be managed. Within this context, radicalisation and political extremism is framed as the key threat states must address to prevent terrorism, necessitating interventions earlier in time and extending the responsibility for managing security beyond traditional law enforcement. This enables the State to exercise expanded social control through increasingly flexible methods, many of which exist in a fraught relationship with core principles of liberal democracy (LD). Despite extensive scholarly attention to the security-liberty nexus, gaps remain regarding the conditions under which different models of policing political extremism (PPE) emerge in LDs and their implications for democracy and civil liberties. Addressing these gaps, this project investigates the democratic implications of the pre-crime approach to PPE through two overarching research questions: what constitutes ‘liberal-democratic overreach’, and how and why do some LDs demonstrate more overreach in their approaches to PPE than others? The project employs a multimethod comparative research design, yielding two key contributions: a framework for understanding and measuring liberal-democratic overreach in PPE, and empirical testing of this framework on 19 West European cases, examining variations in overreach among LDs.
Policing Political Extremism in Liberal Democracies
My project examines how liberal democracies address political extremism in their efforts to prevent political violence and terrorism. It explores how prevention in this field allows for the expansion of state control and the tensions this creates with democratic principles and civil liberties. The research aims to understand when, how, and why some democracies go further than others (liberal-democratic overreach) in their preventive efforts.
Participants
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Anders Ravik Jupskås C-REX - Center for Research on Extremism: the Extreme Right, Hate Crime and Political Violence, University of Oslo Co-supervisor
Funding
Project number: 324201
Ph.d.-program: Political Science, University of Oslo
Published
Feb. 16, 2026 11:43 AM
- Last modified
Feb. 16, 2026 11:43 AM