Normalizing the exception in the counterterrorism response: The case of France

Abstract

Following the 2015 attacks in France, the country’s government decreed a state of emergency for two years, which was subsequently repealed in favor of a new counterterrorism law in October 2017. When analyzing the counterterrorism law, the implementation of certain measures taken from the state of emergency can be observed in the period of social and political normality. The objective of this paper is to determine which measures have been transferred from one period to the other. According to the analysis, new French counterterrorism legislation has been confirmed since the normalization of the 2015 state of emergency.