How democratic governments abridge civil liberties after terrorist attacks -- and why sometimes they don't

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation is driven by the following question: "What explains the variation in governments' civil liberty-abridging responses to terrorist attacks?" In the United States, it was not until a year after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing-and three years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing-that Bill Clinton signed major civil liberty-limiting, counter-terror legislation in the form of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. By contrast, George W. Bush passed the much more comprehensive and repressive Patriot Act through a divided Congress in a month-and-a-half after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In Great Britain, Tony Blair's own party blocked clauses in his anti-terrorism legislation that would have created national ID cards and extended the duration terror suspects could be held without charge to 90 days after the July 7, 2005 London bombings. Yet liberty-reducing counter-terror laws were easily passed time and again after IRA terror attacks in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. In Israel, Yitzchak Rabin's government largely forewent abridging liberties during the Oslo peace process, but Ariel Sharon passed numerous liberty-abridging laws such as one prohibiting the granting of citizenship to Palestinians that marry Israelis during the second intifada.(cont.) This work forwards the theory that chief executives in government, be they presidents or prime ministers, drive civil liberty-abridging responses to terrorist attacks, but that they are constrained by public opinion and institutional factors. Spikes in public fear levels after terror attacks, along with other factors, create a window of opportunity for executive action that can lead to the passage of civil liberty-reducing counter terror legislation. This work looks at cases where such legislation is passed, blocked and not pursued in order to decipher the factors that best explain the variation in passage of liberty-abridging legislation after terror attacks.by Gabriel Rubin.Ph.D