Effectiveness of Countering Violent Extremism and De-radicalisation Strategy: A comparative analysis between the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Different states have taken a significant number of countering violent extremism and de-radicalisation strategies all over the world. However, the effectiveness of these policies does not discuss so much. Sometimes governments claim success regarding their strategies. Nevertheless, these claims are questionable because of the lack of empirical evidence. The literature on CVE significantly highlights the importance of CVE campaigns with different programmes: de-radicalisation, disengagement, rehabilitation, and reintegration. However, the research on the evaluation of CVE and de- radicalisation programme around the world is limited. Therefore, this research has tried to contribute to this issue. This research has used the comparative case study method and selected the cases of the CVE and de-radicalisation strategies of the United States and the United Kingdom. This research finds that both US and UK CVE strategies predominantly focus on the Muslim, which stigmatised the Muslim community and reinforced Islamic stereotypes. Therefore, it creates 'Muslim' as a 'suspect community' that is alienating Muslims. For the US case, the right-wing extremism is increasing especially against Muslim and Jewish religious figures and institutions, but the government are giving less attention to this issue. The...