Title:	The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in Politicising European Security
Authors:	Liedlbauer, Lina
ORCID of the author:	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1213-6357
Thesis advisor:	Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneckener
Thesis referee:	PD Dr. Daniel Lambach
Abstract:	The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in politicisation and European security is highly undertheorised and suffers from a lack of research. The realisation that little is known about those organisations engaging in the EU policy field (empirical interest) and their involvement in politicisation (conceptual interest) is the main driver of the thesis and was transferred in the following research question: “What role do NGOs play in politicising European security?” The thesis responds to this question with taking a) Brussels-based and national NGOs and b) the subfield of EU counter-terrorism into account. In concrete, the dissertation project analyses the involvement and engagement of these organisations in regard to three counter-terrorism legislations: The EU data retention directive, the EU PNR directive and the EU terrorist content online regulation. With recourse to the prominent literature, politicisation is understood as a process of drawing an issue discussed behind closed doors in the public sphere and making it part of public deliberation. To study the role of NGOs, three strategies present in interest group literature voice (outside lobbying), access (inside lobbying) and litigation (as legal means) are scrutinised in detail and linked to the conception of politicisation. A final comparison of the introduced cases demonstrates that politicisation processes are distinct with regard to the three legislative acts examined. While NGOs succeeded in drawing the EU data retention directive into the public sphere, the politicisation connected to terrorist content online was characterised by a debate between experts, who work with the affected technology, while the issue of passengers’ flight data was only hardly publicly deliberated. The main finding of the project is, that privacy and data protection NGOs play a role in politicisation, but that role is highly context-dependent: It depends on whether a favourable political-security culture is in place, whether the issue is conducive (“intrusive”) and provides an anchor for framing as well as whether NGOs have sufficient (financial and human) resources to become active as politicisers. The innovative theoretical framework to study NGO-driven politicisation processes can be regarded as a basis for future research focusing on NGOs working in EU security (e.g. EU migration and border management), different oriented NGOs (e.g. with a focus on environmental, trade, LGBTQ policy) or on other types of non-state actors (e.g. interest groups, social movements).
URL:	https://doi.org/10.48693/409 https://osnadocs.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de/handle/ds-202310069841
Subject Keywords:	Politicisation; Non-Governmental Organisations; EU Security; EU Counter-terrorism
Issue Date:	6-Oct-2023
License name:	Attribution 3.0 Germany
License url:	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/
Type of publication:	Dissertation oder Habilitation [doctoralThesis]
Appears in Collections:	FB01 - E-Dissertationen

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