Description
The extent to which security politics is closed and elite-driven preserve, or a more open, “political” process has been the subject of recent debate (e.g. Neal 2019). In these terms, the underexplored relationship between public opinion and security politics like counterterrorism is, the paper argues, deserving of more attention. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with political elites, the paper argues that political elites view public opinion as vital to counterterrorism policy, but, following the work of Herbst (1998) and others, it is argued that political elites as much construct public opinion as they do straightforwardly “respond” to it. These constructions take two forms; (i) indirect, where political elites construct representations of what they think the public wants and (ii) direct, where political elites actively engage in dialogue with sections of the public and thereby shape the nature of public views. These findings suggest (a) public opinion plays a more significant role in counterterrorism policy than is generally allowed for but (b) this is a complex, mutually constitutive relationship, rather than a simple causal one.
