9/11 and Paris Compared: The Same Old Securitization Story?

Similarities between the Bush administration and the French government under President Hollande seem hard to find: they operate(d) in different systems of government and their ideological orientation is totally at odds. The ideological contrast between American Republicans and French Socialists alone should give reason to expect very divergent reactions to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the Paris terrorist strikes in November 2015, especially since the Bush administration’s reaction seemed to have become largely discredited, above all in Western European countries. Puzzling, though, the French reactions seem to be copied in large parts from the Neoconservatives’ playbook. In both cases we see drastic restrictions of civil liberties only days or weeks after the attacks. The “USA PATRIOT Act” constitutes a central institutional element of the U.S. “War on Terror;” the French legal reactions were also substantial and even include intended changes of the constitution. Three days after the attacks in Paris, President Hollande declared that France was at war (“La France est en guerre.”). This paper aims at a first comprehensive comparison, exploring the reactions in a focused and structured manner. Securitization Theory will provide the comparison with a suitable analytical framework to carve out differences and similarities in the immediate aftermath of both situations. Are the parallels as strong as hypothesized or perhaps only at first glance? In which areas do we find the most substantial differences? In keeping with the theoretical terms and tradition, the emphasis of the paper will be placed on securitizing moves, exposed through discourse analysis, and emergency measures, analyzed through screening of new legal prescriptions (domestic level) and foreign policy decisions. The empirical focus lies on the French case (in light of the well-documented case of the Bush administration).