Regulatory Counter-Terrorism: A Critical Appraisal of Proactive Global Governance

Regulatory Counter-Terrorism explores an emerging terrain where the global governance of terrorism is expanding. This terrain is that of proactive regulatory governance, which attempts to minimise vulnerability to terrorism pre-emptively by continually standardising and managing the day-to-day activities of individuals, private entities and governmental bodies. Overshadowed by the more publicised dimensions of military and criminal justice responses to terrorism, regulatory counter-terrorism has grown in size and impact without stirring as much academic debate. This book intervenes in this gap.

Through a critical assessment of international rules and institutions in three issue-areas of counter-terrorism – financial services, the control of arms and dangerous materials, and the cross-border movement of persons and goods – this book shows the ways in which a dynamic regulatory counterterrorism at the global level is affecting societies across the world in new ways and in the process unravelling settled understandings of transnational governance. Through in-depth analysis of the UN Counter-Terrorism bodies and the Financial Action Task Force, Ali illustrates that the monitoring of this regime is, contrary to common understanding, in the main friendly and managerial. But that is a reason for concern: the softening of monitoring encourages regulatory adventurism in tackling terrorism, while the substantive dynamism, in the form of continued adaptiveness, helps silence calls for institutionalised space for contestation and answerability.