Theses defended

O imaginário da ameaça do terrorismo transnacional e as dinâmicas da decisão política portuguesa

Carlos Morgado Braz

Public Defence date
January 25, 2021
Doctoral Programme
International Politics and Conflict Resolution
Supervision
Paula Duarte Lopes
Abstract
The aftermath of 9/11 was marked by a growing body of academic research alongside with a remarkably political narrative justifying the fight against terrorism and helping to serve existing material and political interests projected by States' culture and security praxis. In line with this new doxa, this thesis is a case study addressing the discursive construction around the transnational terrorism threat, focusing on how international events have influenced Portuguese decision makers, regarding the model adopted to fight against terrorism. Additionally, this also involved a cross-sectional interactions design established between policy and decision makers and security forces as key role players of the Portuguese Internal Security System.

Tackling the Copenhagen School theoretical framework and Portuguese policy makers discourse analysis', contextualized by the European Union's discursive framework and French political discourse, the findings of this research allowed us describing and comparing the Portuguese model with the French counter-terrorism architecture. The comparison with France has supported our argument about the incidence of the Portuguese model.

The methodology employed established the correct epistemological and ontological considerations whilst justifying a division throughout several temporal frames, starting from the September 11 attacks in the United States to the events in Paris during the year 2015. Regarding those commitments, the research was developed within the qualitative paradigm to the extent that it was necessary to investigate the intention and purpose of the political decisions taken in the security management of the fight against terrorism. The privileged data collection techniques were documental research and semi-structured interviews. All data were treated inductively (discourse analysis) and coded through the MAXQDA program (content analysis).

Keywords: Transnational terrorism, political discourse, securitization theory, fight against
terrorism