Jytte Klausen

Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

Social media have played an essential role in the jihadists’ operational strategy in Syria and Iraq, and beyond. Twitter in particular has been used to drive communications over other social media platforms. Twitter streams from the insurgency may give the illusion of authenticity, as a spontaneous activity of a generation accustomed to using their cell phones for self-publication, but to what extent is access and content controlled? Over a period of three months, from January through March 2014, information was collected from the Twitter accounts of 59 Western-origin fighters known to be in Syria. Using a snowball method, the 59 starter accounts were used to collect data about the most popular accounts in the network-at-large. Social network analysis on the data collated about Twitter users in the Western Syria-based fighters points to the controlling role played by feeder accounts belonging to terrorist organizations in the insurgency zone, and by Europe-based organizational accounts associated with the banned British organization, Al Muhajiroun, and in particular the London-based preacher, Anjem Choudary.

British Counter-Terrorism After 7/7: Adapting Community Policing to the Fight Against Domestic Terrorism

After the Madrid and London train-bombings, perceptions of the sources of Islamic terrorism changed. The British response to domestic jihadism was to apply community-policing principles to counter-terrorism enforcement. This essay describes the origins and intentions of the community-based policing of terrorism and partnership programmes with Muslim faith organisations. Collaboration with Muslim partners has helped to build confidence within government agencies that Muslim leaders are keen to curb terrorism, but has failed to build trust among the general Muslim public. The application of community-policing principles is, it is argued, an effort to bridge steep trade-offs between effective prevention and the social and political integration of Britains Muslims.

Social Rights Advocacy and State Building: T. H. Marshall in the Hands of Social Reformers

This article argues that it is a fallacy to regard “social citizenship” as granting social rights equivalent to civil rights and suffrage. The argument is based partly upon a textual analysis showing that in formulating his influential “trinity” of citizenship, T. H. Marshall obfuscated differences between the distributional logic of redistributive policy and political and civil rights. The second part of the argument is based upon an empirical discussion of how social citizenship arguments have been applied to create comprehensive social reform. The Scandinavian welfare states play a central role in the discussion as examples of the inclu-sionary benefits of social citizenship. Three instances of welfare state expansion are discussed: the passage of legislation establishing flat-rate retirement benefits, the institution of supplementary earnings-related retirement benefits, and feminist mobilization in the 1980s for a “woman-friendly” welfare state. It is shown that claims to social citizenship are used by out-groups to demand inclusion in electoral coalitions aiming at welfare state expansion. The article concludes that social citizenship is inextricably linked to redistributive political conflict between in-groups and out-groups and depends upon state capacity to raise revenues and to police entitlement. A key difference between social rights and political and civil rights is that consumption of the former hinges on both the consent of the community and the willingness of others to pay for such consumption, while consumption of the latter does not impose direct costs upon others.

Toward a Behavioral Model of “Homegrown” Radicalization Trajectories

This research note presents a dynamic risk assessment model of homegrown terrorists. The model was tested in a study of convicted “homegrown” American terrorism offenders inspired by Al Qaedas ideology. The New York Police Department model developed by Silber and Bhatt was chosen as the basis for creating a typology of overt and detectable indicators of individual behaviors widely thought to be associated with extremism. Twenty-four specific cues associated with each stage of radicalization were used to code and estimate the sequencing of behaviors and the duration of the average radicalization trajectory. Sixty-eight cases have been analyzed thus far. A decision was made to publish the initial results when it became apparent that the model was an effective tool for the evaluation of terrorist offenders.

War and welfare : Europe and the United States, 1945 to the present

Reconstruction and Capitalist Reform Great Britain: Labours Spoils of War Great Britain: The Socialist Economy in the Free Society Sweden: War and Economic Thinking From the Planned Economy to Societal Coordination Planning the Social Market Economy War, Citizenship, and American Exceptionalism The Postwar State and National Economic Development Bibliography Notes Tables and Graphs

Al Qaeda's London Branch: Patterns of Domestic and Transnational Network Integration

This article seeks to shed light on the ongoing debate about the extent of Al Qaedas involvement in homegrown jihadist conspiracies in the West. Focusing on the London-based jihadist movement in the 1998–2008 decade, the article uses network analysis to test the domestic and transnational integration of Western networks. The evidence stems from an extensive database of individuals involved in jihadist terrorist conspiracies in the West compiled by the authors. Results show that Al Qaeda developed a branch organization in the United Kingdom during that period. A sociogram of U.S.-based networks is indicative of a dispersed topography, and a comparison shows the British model may not be representative of Western networks overall.

The Re-Politicization of Religion in Europe: The Next Ten Years

In the coming decade religion will become an increasingly salient issue in European politics. This prediction runs counter to the conventional wisdom that Europeans are “post-Christian.” When comparing Europe to the United States, observers note that church pews are empty, that fewer people profess to believe in God, and that Europeans are moral relativists who shy away from principled positions against authoritarian countries. In the European view, modernization implies secularization, and by this standard Europeans are modern while Americans are, depending on who the observer is, either postmodern or irrational. Why then are we flooded with evidence of the “re-Christianization” of Europe? Jytte Klausen is associate professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University (klausen@brandeis.edu).

The Two-way Street to Integration for Europe's Muslims

Abstract NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN THE PRINT EDITION ONLY. The current tensions in Europe regarding Islamic expressions in public life are not so much a clash of civilizations but a struggle for Europes secularists and conservatives to come to terms with religious pluralism. While there has been significant legislation to curb Islamic expression and practices in Europe, some recognize that European Islam has positive potential for emphasizing reform and the interpretative license of ijtihad, and some countries are instigating imam training initiatives to encourage balanced religious education. While assimilation suggests that immigrants must adjust, integration implies give and take on both sides.

Introduction: New Perspectives on the Use of Parity Mandates and Quotas to Guarantee Equality between Men and Women

This book presents to English-speaking readers a concept for assuring group representation—one based on gender, however, not race or ethnicity—advocated by many in Europe, but generally rejected out of hand in the United States. Contributors discuss the theory and experience of mandating quotas for the presence of women candidates for national office, whether by compelling electoral procedures that will return a fixed number to elective office or by requiring parties to nominate a minimal percentage. The rough analogue in the United States has been “affirmative action,” which has been applied prevailingly to educational admissions, employment opportunity, job contracts, and only indirectly to voting. Quotas for guaranteed representation provide one among several possible measures available to boost the presence of underrepresented groups in public office. Even before the courts began to dismantle affirmative action as constitutionally suspect, advocates of affirmative action in the United States often separated the procedures they supported from the imposition of fixed quotas.