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Author: VORTEX Doctoral Network
This output was collectively authored by the doctoral candidates and the members of the Supervisory Board.
Structures of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) are often built in crisis mode and dismantled when public and political attention shifts elsewhere. Evaluation is often commissioned project-by-project, so that what a programme learned can disappear when its funding cycle ends. Whole-of-society approaches have gained popularity but putting them into practice and facilitating cooperation among multiple actors often remains a challenge. Local actors frequently lack procedural guidance, and legal ambiguities around information-sharing compound the uncertainty. Across the field, the gap between what is known and what is done will not close through goodwill alone: it requires dedicated roles, time resources and structures to translate research into policy and practice.
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Threat assessments in the field of counter-terrorism policy have common weaknesses: a judgement formed at one moment in time is recorded, and then persists long after change has taken place. Threat assessments tend to fix an individual’s or group’s ideological profile at the point of designation and claims of moderation are read from outward-facing statements rather than tested against harder-to-revise evidence. Likewise, disengagement is judged from a single rebrand rather than from a pattern sustained over time. This policy brief addresses national governments and civil society/practitioners and recommends that threat assessments needs to be designed more flexibly as revisable judgements rather than settled facts.
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Gender narratives are woven into (sub)cultural dynamics and everyday discourses about family, lifestyle, and health, among others. Such narratives can define identities, reinforce perceptions of threat, strengthen group boundaries, and legitimize particular social or political orders. In this way, they can become bound up with broader extremist claims as they may offer simple explanations for personal and social problems. Many researchers have contributed insights into the specific role of gender in radicalization, yet systematic EU guidance and national training are needed to translate research into actionable practice. At the same time, research on the impact of gender narratives different from those intertwined with extremism remains limited, but could prove equally informative for prevention practice.
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Effective prevention of radicalisation and violent extremism depends on evidence-informed decision-making — on stakeholders being able to draw on refined, policy-relevant, and evidence-based insights to design appropriate countermeasures. Yet across the field of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE), the shared knowledge base this requires is still lacking. Much of the relevant data sits in police and intelligence files that researchers cannot access, while some of the repositories that once contained vital practical knowledge have been archived. Since national data on radicalisation is scattered and of uneven reliability also comparative work establishing which findings travel between contexts remains rare. Generally, core concepts and categories are not harmonised across EU member states, hampering such exchanges further. At the same time, the public that these institutions ultimately serve often lacks the tools and training to navigate competing sources of information about radicalisation, violent extremism and its countermeasures. This policy brief brings together recommendations for EU institutions, national governments, civil society/practitioners, and researchers regarding a common evidence base and knowledge infrastructure in P/CVE.
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