Security policy preferences of EU citizens: Do terrorist events affect them?

This article examines whether terrorist attacks affect citizens’ policy preferences by focusing on attitudes toward EU security and defense policy as recorded by the 2016 Eurobarometer survey. The survey was conducted a few months after the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Both the January and November terrorist incidents captured worldwide attention, claimed many lives, and caused France to declare a state of emergency. To identify the presence or absence of a statistically traceable and significant effect on security policy preferences, expressed by French citizens in the Eurobarometer survey, we compare and contrast the responses from survey participants in an aggregate EU sample and in two other EU member states. In broad terms, our results indicate that the effect of the terrorist attacks was rather weak and short-lived, and affected only a limited number of policy preferences.