ABSTRACT
This book raises the question of how counterterrorism policy affects the ability of the US population to participate in politics. To provide some answers, it explores US domestic counterterrorism in the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11). It examines the forms counterterrorism takes in political discourse, legislation, institutional design and practices, the organisation of popular support to homeland security, the forms of resistance to it, and the repression it seems to entail for certain kinds of political activity. Based on this examination, it argues that homeland security effectuates important changes to the overall shape of the law (the ‘law-form’) and to state institutions and powers (the ‘state-form’). These changes affect, in turn, the ways in which the population can participate in politics. Therefore, homeland security introduces a new design for power relations. This study outlines some main features and modalities of this new design, and observes that the homeland security modalities are also employed to manage the current economic crisis. This implies that the state-and law-forms set by homeland security outlive the context of 9/11 and constitute a (relatively) permanent paradigm for doing politics. In this manner, this book seeks to raise the question – and provide some (partial and provisional) answers – regarding the overall effects of counterterrorism on US political organisation and culture. In simple, and agonising, terms, this question can be summed up as: is the twenty-first century US a democracy? In what sense?
