Research on support for antiterrorism policies highlights the role of factors such as authoritarianism or feelings of threat and their interplay. Evidence on public opinion in this policy domain stems mainly from single-country studies. Against the background of ongoing debates on the scope of antiterrorism measures in many European countries, this papers draws attention to country contexts influencing the way citizens evaluate antiterrorism policies between civil liberties and security concerns. On the country level, we focus on contexts of threat (terrorism events) and different patterns of government intervention. The paper investigates the extent to which these conditions affect the relative weight of individual feelings of threat, demands for government intervention etc. as determinants of support for antiterrorism policies. We use multilevel structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses. Analyses are based, amongst others, on data from the 4th round of the European Social Survey and from the Global Terrorism Database.
