Terrorism influenced Dutch politicians, politics and policy on counterterrorism. New counterterrorism policy, reforms of the counterterrorism units, the founding of the NCTb where implemented in response to terrorism since 9/11. The master dissertation of Mr. Wouter Postma concentrated on the outcomes of counterterrorism in the Netherlands, not by evaluating the effectiveness, but by researching the performative power of counterterrorism.
Performative power of counterterrorism was introduced by Prof Dr. de Graaf in the comparative study ‘Theater van de Angst’. De Graaf used the term of performative power to evaluate counterterrorism efforts not by counting actual arrests, but by evaluating the (political) process of counterterrorism. She identified fourteen indicators of performative power of counterterrorism, which where plotted against the number of terrorist attacks and casualties in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and the Unites States in the 1970s.
In the master dissertation of Mr. Wouter Postma, the fourteen indicators were plotted against the number of terrorist attacks and casualties in the Netherlands from 9/11 until the end of 2010. This created the possibility not only to research the performative power of counterterrorism in this period but also to compare the ‘post 9/11’ era with the ‘Dutch Approach’ of the 1970s. This allowed to not only to look into terrorist attacks, incidents and trails but also into the role of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders in the discourse of counterterrorism.
The master dissertation shows that in the Netherlands, the performative power of counterterrorism was high in 2001 and became even higher in 2005 and 2006. In contrast with the performative power, the terrorist attacks and casualties were low. However, the author notes two significant points of interest. First, terrorists are not focused on committing terrorist attacks, but on creating fear, and in that they succeeded. In 2004 only 12% of the Dutch noticed terrorism as one of the major problems on the Netherlands, growing to 40% in the autumn of 2005 (Eurobarometer, nr 62; nr 64). Second, it was not Dutch terrorism but the international context of terrorism, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Madrid on 3/11 and Londen on 7/7, that triggered Dutch counterterrorism. The author therefore concludes that the predictive value of performative power of counterterrorism to predict terrorist attacks, could not be shown. It was not Dutch terrorism, but terrorism in other Western countries that simulated counterterrorism in the Netherlands.
If you want to know more about the perfomative power of counterterrorism in the Netherlands after 9/11, how the author worked, and have a full analysis of his conclusions, click here. You can also contact the author directly at ws.postma@gmail.com.