Exploring the Governance Authority of Civil Society Organisations in EU Preventive Counter-Terrorism Governance

Civil society organisations (CSOs) play a particularly important role in preventive counter-terrorism as they are a core feature of the whole-of-society approach of prevention. They exert a particular form of authority in counter-terrorism governance, which I preliminarily call ‘ambiguous governance authority’. By this, I refer to CSOs drawing their legitimacy both from being active contributors and partners in counter-terrorism governance and from challenging and contesting the governmental power that they are a partner of. At the same time, policy-makers delegate authority towards CSOs for precisely this legitimacy. This dual-nature governance authority draws on two important elements: the expert authority of CSOs as consultants and implementers and their normative authority as critics. In this contribution, I examine how CSOs negotiate and manage their authority with regards to different, sometimes conflicting, perceptions of public interests in international governance. I examine this process in transnational and localised preventive counter-terrorism governance within the context of the EU. CSOs have become important actors in implementing preventive counter-terrorism policies, in particular when it comes to human rights or social work. Many CSOs have redirected their project work towards preventive counter-terrorism while adapting their focus on human rights promotion or social work. At the same time, they also criticise EU counter-terrorism policy and deviate from counter-terrorist tools and discourses in their on-the-ground work. I trace how these CSOs negotiate their governance authority and position themselves between embedding themselves in preventive counter-terrorism frameworks and at the same time contesting the respective policies, for example with regards to counter-terrorism’s discrimination of Muslim communities. I focus on (potentially) differing perceptions of CSOs and policy institutions with regards to what constitutes public interests in counter-terrorism. This difference in perception of public interest might help us understand the dual ambiguous interplay of expert and normative authority of CSOs in preventive counter-terrorism governance and in global governance more generally.