the state can defend its borders. Insofar as border instruments perform different functions, we cannot anticipate that states will stiffen policies across the board. Given these differences, the balance between economic and security incentives will depend on the functions that border instruments serve.
The trade-off between security and economic gain has come to light time and again after fatal transnational terrorist events. Politicians face mounting pressure to seal borders after attacks. After the Brussels attacks, for example, criticism turned to the Schengen system, which allows individuals to cross borders within the Schengen bloc of twenty-six countries without passport checks or immigration controls. Some commentators wondered if it should be scrapped and replaced with a tougher system. Despite pressure to seal off borders, politicians must also bear in mind economic security. Responding to calls to reinstate border checks within the Schengen zone, Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group’s president, stressed the possible ill effects of such a move: “There’s going to be a lot of social instability that comes with that. It will tear at the fabric of what we think Europe is. It’ll certainly hurt the economies.” On the flip side, Bremmer further noted, “With Paris, suspending Schengen became a question of national security. Brussels fits into this latter category” (Wang 2016). Politicians are stuck between a rock and a hard place: they know that the economy depends on open borders, but this can create insecurity and increase the risk of terrorism. This leads to the second question that animates the book: How do states balance economic and security interests when crafting border-control policies?
My argument is three pillared. First, I distinguish between global and directed (or targeted) terrorist threats. Terrorism does not translate into blanket policy tightening because threats elsewhere and against others do not ignite fears as acutely as do threats on the state’s own soil and against its own citizens. Second, economic interdependence offsets pressures toward tighter policies. States face the opportunity costs of diminished commerce resulting from tighter policies and fear backlash from partners. Liberal lobbies further stay the government’s hand when it comes to tougher controls. Third, policy change is not uniform because different border-control instruments have varied functions. Take border barriers, for example. Walls assuage fears because they are overt manifestations of state power. They also do so by reassuring domestic audiences that the state can defend its borders. In comparison, visa restrictions may fly under the radar, unless the government enacts them with fanfare. If such differences exist by virtue of how a particular state chooses to control its borders, we cannot always expect terrorism to predict stiffer policies across the board.
The Argument
Terrorist violence does not always result in harder borders. I argue that security incentives dominate policymaking when targeted attacks are the issue. In contrast, economic interdependence effectively tames fears over security when attacks are global. In the face of foreign attacks, economic interests hold sway over policymaking and make for open borders.
In order to unpack this argument, I emphasize that attacks do not trigger the same level of response across all states. Some attacks matter more than others. Much has been written about the discrepancy in the public response to international terrorist events that took place in 2015. Attacks on European soil received greater attention than did attacks in Kenya and Turkey. Whereas European countries lit up their national monuments in the colors of the flags of France and Belgium after the bombings in those countries, terrorist events elsewhere did not evoke the same level of outrage (Ahmed 2016). Commentators speculated that the discrepancy resulted from an empathy gap whereby people identified with victims they viewed as similar. This affinity functioned regardless of geographical distance. For instance, from the perspective of the United States, the London tube bombing on July 7, 2005, was more threatening than the Bali attacks in the same year because the latter incident was culturally distant to U.S. interests. The contrasting public responses to international events also clue us in on a simpler distinction: that between directed and diffuse threats. Violence that is geographically or culturally proximate strikes closer to us. More simple than that, however, attacks in our own backyard and against our compatriots strike closest to us. Terrorism is more likely to produce harder borders if the state’s own interests are involved, that is, if its own nationals are hurt in attacks or if terrorists execute attacks on the state’s own territory. Thus if threats strike close to home, they more readily effectuate policy change.
Terrorist events sow fear and are effective to the extent that they do so. In the absence of fear, violence would not elicit a response from targeted states. Fear affects whether and when governments respond and the shapes that responses take. Threat perception forges the implicit link between terrorist event and policy response (Rudolph 2006).3 Along these lines, scholarship has shown that public perceptions of terrorist violence affect a range of policy outcomes (Huddy et al. 2002; Huddy et al. 2005). Public attitudes toward terrorism affect who comes to power in democracies and, more generally, reshape the political and social climate. Heightened threat perceptions generate support for right-wing parties, who may then enact more draconian policies. These perceptions also correlate with intolerance toward minorities, paving the way to restrictions on civil liberties and the rights of foreigners (Peffley, Hutchison, and Shamir 2015). If we apply these insights to borderand migration-control policies, several effects on policy stand out. First, heightened threat perceptions will translate into greater support for tougher border policies. Scholars have shown that fears and anxieties surrounding terrorism ratchet up support for harsher counterterrorism policies. This support is likely to accompany toughness on border and migration control, especially insofar as controlling borders is couched in counterterrorism terms. Second, electorates may bring to office candidates who are eager to toughen border control. In addition, a fearful public grants more leeway to politicians with a tougher agenda. How terrorism impacts threat perceptions thus affects the shape that border and migration policy takes.
Terrorist events heighten threat perception to differing degrees. Quite intuitively, we would expect terrorist violence occasioned on a country’s own soil to matter more than events that transpire abroad. We might also expect threats to be more salient if a country’s own nationals are hurt. To assess these expectations, I differentiate between global and targeted (or directed) threats. Targeted threats directly imperil state interests by victimizing its nationals and endangering territorial integrity. Attacks on the state’s soil showcase that violent non-state actors can not only cross borders unnoticed but also mobilize and launch attacks within its territory. Transnational terrorist events that transpire on other countries’ soil but hurt the state’s own nationals also incentivize policy stringency. Terrorist incidents executed on a country’s territory or that involve its citizens, even when they occur abroad, strike at the core of state sovereignty.
Table 1 synthesizes these insights, posing threat perception as an intermediary link between the terrorist threat and policy impact. Assaults that victimize citizens and/or transpire on the state’s own territory are both targeted against state interests and expected to have a more pronounced impact on policies. Global attacks are defined as events that transpire abroad and do not involve the state’s own citizens. Such attacks are diffuse and remote; they do not stoke anxiety as cogently as do targeted terrorist events. We also expect attacks abroad to have a moderate impact on policies insofar as personal proximity trumps geographical distance. Incidents within the state’s borders sometimes only involve foreigners, but these events are likely to impel tighter policies simply because of physical proximity. Contrarily, foreign attacks that victimize others’ nationals are geographically and personally remote.
Table 1. Terrorist Events, Threat Perception, and Policy Impact
Why doesn’t terrorism always produce harder borders and tougher migration polices? After all, terrorism is designed to strike fear into the hearts of an audience broader than the immediate victims (Hoffman 1998). By extension, transnational terrorism terrorizes not just the victims or even the targeted populace but the global audience. We might then
