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constituents (especially Parliament and politicians). Taking these themes together, we contend that these debates help to (re)produce a relatively straightforward antagonistic relationship between, on the one hand, a liberal, open and responsible UK self which is mindful of cultural and religious difference, and both cautious and moderate in its actions. And, on the other, a series of illiberal, irrational and extremist terrorist others steadfast in their determination to wage immoral violences. Importantly, although there are examples of genuine dissent in these debates
Zimbardo, 2006 ). Moreover, liberal democracies also rely on citizens to limit state responses to threat and to hold governments accountable for the illiberal choices they may make in the name of protecting society as a whole from threats and so there is a fundamental political ambivalence surrounding the relationship between vigilance and threat perception (Chalk, 1998 ). This contemporary focus on
receptive to the enhancement of otherwise unpopular or illiberal policies, which in turn may lead to an entrenchment and normalisation of purportedly exceptional measures. Indeed, we need only look to Western responses to international terrorism since 9/11 – and episodes in that timeline such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell Station, London on 22 July 2005 – in order to recognise that
or economic dynamism to peacefully manage what may be a whole host of different cleavages within a given polity. And whether one defines democracy in specific Dahlian terms as polyarchy, 5 or more loosely to accommodate liberal, electoral or illiberal democracies, 6 it is still difficult for the researcher to identify exactly when democracy’s supposedly peace-promoting characteristics start taking effect. To do so one must
(e.g., Burke et al., 2013 ; Motyl et al., 2010 ). A threatened public may also be more receptive to the enhancement of elite power to enact otherwise unpopular or illiberal policies (Bigo and Tsoukala, 2008 ; Chalk, 1998 ; Nacos et al., 2011 ). Indeed, the combination of threat and the belief that elites sanction punitive actions that combat threat is particularly dangerous to democracy. Instead of adapting levels of
. Just as violence is a significant component of national unification strategies, so too are decisions to utilise violence externally. In contemporary world politics, maintaining plausible deniability in the face of international criticism requires new strategies for states seeking to use violence. This is especially the case for new illiberal and authoritarian states utilising a combination of
more likely to be motivated to vote at the next national election. Chapter 3 has suggested that perceptions of more global threats, for example, may reflect a somewhat different orientation to the world than perceptions of more national threats and that we might therefore see less illiberal consequences. But only by looking at this empirically can we be more certain
the Irish parliament on 15 November 1945. This typically illiberal piece of Emergency legislation contained provisions for the confinement of infectious diseases, proposed isolating sufferers from the public sphere (streets, hotels, shops); established the right of the state to inspect citizens against their will; and imposed compulsory long-term hospitalisation. 47 Defeated
To condemn as unwise and illiberal the camp policy and the war of brutality of which it was a symptom, Hobhouse evoked, in prose and pen drawings, the tears of grieving mothers and the wasted bodies of suffering children (the ‘murdered innocents’ of her subsequent Report). Her denunciations rang out in the pages of sympathetic weeklies such as The New Age and The
stable liberal democracy. 30 Politics would become intractably partisan – irreconcilable, vindictive and illiberal. The relationship between normal politics and this account of political paranoia makes more sense in the context of the Cold War liberal understanding of populism. 31 Although liberalism had historically been a force for radical and