Staff Profiles

Modules taught

 

Undergraduate

• U23122    The Government and Politics of the USA
• U23176    Counter Terrorism in Comparative Perspective

Postgraduate

• P23120    Critical Approaches to Terrorism

 

Supervision

Michael is currently supervising two research students within the department and is keen to supervise promising candidates.  He would particularly welcome proposals on any aspect of citizenship, political participation, community cohesion and the politics of anti-terrorism policies.

Michael's research coalesces around a concern with the ways that the state influences citizens' behaviour. This happens directly, (coercively even), but also indirectly. State actions support and propose norms of behaviour which influence how individuals behave as the norms that policies and actions propagate and support have effects beyond those intended by the original action or initiative.  These interests take in areas such as Citizenship, Political Participation, Comparative Welfare State analysis, (New) Institutionalism and State theory.  

He has worked on an ESRC funded project entitled 'Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security in the UK', with Dr Lee Jarvis (University of East Anglia), which aims to examine to what extent citizens of the United Kingdom feel that their security has been enhanced (or even diminished) by contemporary anti-terrorism measures.

He is currently working on a project which examines the influence of public opinion on UK counter terrorism policy.

 

Books

• Lister M, Ed., Critical Perspectives on Counter Terrorism, Routledge (2015)
  ISBN: 9780415855471
  
• Jarvis L, Lister M, Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security, Manchester University Press (2015)
  ISBN: 9780719091599
  Abstract This book explores how different publics make sense of and evaluate anti-terrorism powers within the UK, and the implications of this for citizenship and security. Drawing on primary empirical research, the book argues that whilst white individuals are not unconcerned about the effects of anti-terrorism, ethnic minority citizens (including, but not only those identifying as Muslim) believe that anti-terrorism powers have impacted negatively on their citizenship and security. This book thus offers the first systematic engagement with 'vernacular' or 'everyday' understandings of anti-terrorism policy, citizenship and security. It argues that while transformations in anti-terrorism frameworks impact on public experiences of security and citizenship, they do not do so in a uniform, homogeneous, or predictable manner. At the same time, public understandings and expectations of security and citizenship themselves shape how developments in anti-terrorism frameworks are discussed and evaluated. This important new book will be of interest to researchers and students working in a wide range of disciplines including Political Science, International Relations, Security Studies and Sociology.Website 
• Lister M, Pia E, Citizenship in contemporary Europe, Edinburgh University Press (2008)
  ISBN: 9780748633425
  Abstract This book seeks to analyse the impact of globalisation, European integration, mass migration, changing patterns of political participation and welfare state provision upon citizenship in Europe. Uniting theory with empirical examples, the central theme of the book is that how we view such changes is dependent upon how we view citizenship theoretically. The authors analyse the three main theoretical approaches to citizenship: [1] classical positions (liberal, communitarian, and republican), primarily concerned with questions of rights and responsibilities; [2] multiculturalist and feminist theories, concerned with the question of difference; and [3] postnational or cosmopolitan theories which emphasise how citizen rights and behaviours are increasingly located beyond the nation state. Using these theoretical perspectives, the second section of the book assesses four key social, economic and political developments which pose challenges for citizenship in Europe: migration, political participation, the welfare state and European integration. These, it is argued, represent the most significant challenges to and for citizenship in contemporary Europe. Key Features Emphasises the importance of theories of citizenship in the analysis of key issues affecting contemporary Europe Offers a clear, accessible introduction to key themes and debates in citizenship theory Combines a broad theoretical and empirical focus Includes primary material in the empirical sections, contributing new ideas to the understanding of key issues in European politics
• Hay C, Marsh D, Lister M, Ed., The state: theories and issues, Palgrave (2005)
  ISBN: 1403934266 eISBN: 978023080227
  Abstract Broad-ranging in its coverage and truly international in scope, this major new text introduces all the main competing theoretical approaches to the study of the state as well as key contested issues in relation to globalization, new forms of governance, the changing public/private boundary, changes in the powers and capacities of states, and the differences between advanced liberal democratic and other states. Chapters have been specially commissioned to a common format and are written by an international cast of leading authorities.

Journal articles

• Lister M, 'Explaining Counterterrorism in the UK: Normal politics, securitized politics or performativity of the neoliberal state?'
  Critical Studies on Terrorism 12 (3) (2018) pp.416-439
  ISSN: 1753-9153 eISSN: 1753-9161
  Abstract

  This paper seeks to explore the politics of counter terrorism in the UK. It argues that for a number of reasons, counter terrorism policy has been separated off from other policy areas and seen as securitised, exceptional or just different. The paper argues that such a separation from “normal” politics is problematic, both conceptually and empirically. It argues that much can be gained by considering counter terrorism policy through the lenses, concepts and debates which feature in other areas of British politics. The paper then examines two such lenses/debates – depoliticisation and neoliberalism. An argument is developed that counter terrorism policy is not, in the main, depoliticised, but rather overt, politicised and visible. This prominence, it is argued, is due to the ways in which neoliberalism has reduced many of the traditional roles of the state. Drawing on the work of Wacquant and Hall, the paper argues that in the absence of such traditional roles, counter terrorism offers the state an opportunity to perform its own “stateness”, to visibly display its sovereign power in a context of ever more (self-imposed) diminished powers.
  

  Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, '‘As a woman…’; ‘As a Muslim…’: Subjects, positions and counter-terrorism powers in the United Kingdom'
  Critical Social Policy 37 (2) (2017) pp.245-267
  ISSN: 0261-0183 eISSN: 1461-703X
  Abstract This article presents findings from original focus group research on the importance of identity claims within public understandings of counter-terrorism across the UK. Following a review of existing literature on the terrorism/counter-terrorism/identity nexus, the article introduces four prominent subject positions inhabited within public articulations of counter-terrorism powers: the ‘Muslim’, the ‘target’, the ‘woman’ and the ‘unaffected’. Positions such as these, we argue, both enable and inhibit particular normative, political and anecdotal claims about counter-terrorism frameworks and their impact upon the body politic. This, we suggest, is demonstrative of the co-constitutive role between counter-terrorism and identity claims. Thus, on the one hand, counter-terrorism initiatives work to position individuals socially, politically and culturally: (re)producing various religious, ethnic and other identities. Yet, at the same time, specific subject positions are integral to the articulation of people’s attitudes toward developments in counter-terrorism. The article concludes by thinking through some of the implications of this, including for resistance toward securitising moves and for citizenship more generally.Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, 'What would you do? Everyday Conceptions and Constructions of Counter-terrorism'
  Politics 36 (3) (2016) pp.277-291
  ISSN: 0263-3957 eISSN: 1467-9256
  Abstract This article explores findings from focus group research in which UK publics were asked, If you were in government, what would you do about terrorism? After situating our research within contemporary ‘bottom-up’ work on counter-terrorism, we discuss the diversity of answers we received to this question, which included improving education, addressing social fracture, and the need for more punitive counter-terrorism powers. These exercises in public political imagination are important, we argue, for several reasons. These include the questions they pose for widespread claims about public disconnection from (security) politics as well as their likely impact on the everyday lives of our research participants.Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, 'State terrorism research and critical terrorism studies: an assessment'
  Critical Studies on Terrorism 7 (1) (2014) pp.43-61
  ISSN: 1753-9153 eISSN: 1753-9161
  Abstract

  This article explores the value of scholarship on state terrorism for the critical study of terrorist violences. The article begins by identifying four primary contributions of this scholarship: first, a rethinking of the status and significance of terrorism; second, an unsettling of broader assumptions within International Relations (IR) and terrorism research; third, an ability to locate state violences within pertinent, but potentially camouflaged, contexts; and, fourth, a prioritisation of critique as a responsibility of scholarship. The article’s second section then argues that the purchase of this work could be further extended by greater conceptual engagement with the state itself. In particular, we point to the value of contemporary approaches to the state as a terrain and outcome of social and political struggle, rather than as a singular actor of unitary purpose. Rethinking the state in this way has value, we argue, first, for moving research beyond the identification and typologising of state terrorisms; and, second, for circumventing the perennial problem of identifying intentionality in efforts to designate violences as (state) terrorism.

  Website 
• Lister M, 'Citizens, doing it for themselves? The Big Society and Government Through Community'
  Parliamentary Affairs 68 (2) (2014) pp.352-370
  ISSN: 0031-2290 eISSN: 1460-2482
  Abstract Since its launch, David Cameron's flagship Big Society agenda has attracted hostility and incomprehension in roughly equal measure. An important criticism of the Big Society is that it contains a rather confused view of motivations. In attempting to correct an overmighty state, the Big Society urges involvement in different ways: through market mechanisms (where profit is the prompt to action), increasingly, through ‘nudges’ and, finally, citizen exhortation (where civic duty is the motivation). These represent, I argue, dissonant views of the individual and what motivates them, with the former two representing ‘anti-political’ positions, as they discourage debate, contestation and authorship. Yet, placing it in a longer line of initiatives aimed at prompting greater levels of citizen engagement and responsibility, I argue that the Big Society represents the most recent iteration of a process that has a much longer heritage in British politics. Governments from the late 1970s onwards have sought to mobilise citizens to take on ever greater responsibilities. From this perspective, attempts to mobilise citizens, particularly through incentives and nudges, should be seen less as prompts to civic participation and more as diverse governance techniques to prompt self-government and responsibilisation.Website 
• Lister M, Jarvis L, 'Vernacular securities and their study: a qualitative analysis and research agenda'
  International Relations 27 (2) (2013) pp.158-179
  ISSN: 0047-1178
  Abstract

  This article draws on primary focus group research to explore the differing ways in which UK publics conceptualise and discuss security. The article begins by situating our research within two relevant contemporary scholarly literatures: The first concerns efforts to centre the ‘ordinary’ human as security’s referent; the second, constructivist explorations of security’s discursive (re)production. A second section then introduces six distinct understandings of security that emerged in our empirical research. These organised the term around notions of survival, belonging, hospitality, equality, freedom and insecurity. The article concludes by exploring this heterogeneity and its significance for the study of security more broadly, outlining a number of potential future research avenues in this area.

  Website 
• Lister M, Jarvis L, 'Disconnection and resistance: anti-terrorism and citizenship in the UK'
  Citizenship Studies 17 (6/7) (2013) pp.756-769
  ISSN: 1362-1025
  Abstract

  The corroding impacts of anti-terrorism measures on citizenship have been much discussed in recent years. Drawing on qualitative research from the UK, this article argues that citizens do indeed frequently feel that aspects of citizenship – such as rights, duties, identity claims and the ability to participate in the public sphere – have been significantly dampened by developments in this policy area. At the same time, however, participants in our research also articulated a number of strategies through which they or others have sought to resist the logics, exercise and impacts of anti-terrorism powers. These included voicing explicit opposition to particular measures, resisting ‘outsider’ or ‘victim’ subject positions, and a refusal to withdraw from established forms of political engagement. Whilst such resistance should not be overstated, we argue that these strategies emphasise the co-constitutive rather than linear relationship between public policy and citizenship. Anti-terrorism powers do indeed impact upon citizenship claims, for instance in the curtailment of formal rights. Equally, the everyday, lived, experiences and practices of citizenship contribute to, and help shape, the perceptions and understandings of anti-terrorism policy from within the citizenry

  Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, 'Disconnected citizenship? The impacts of anti-terrorism policy on citizenship in the UK'
  Political Studies 61 (3) (2013) pp.656-675
  ISSN: 0032-3217 eISSN: 1467-9248
  Abstract

  This article draws on primary focus group data from the UK to offer three contributions to recent debate on the impact of anti-terrorism measures on citizenship. First, it presents a qualitatively rich account of citizens' own perspectives on this relationship. Second, it explores the significance of ethnic identity in relation to public attitudes. Finally, it traces the implications of anti-terrorism initiatives upon multiple dimensions of citizenship including participation, identity and duties as much as rights. The article argues that citizens from a range of ethnic minority backgrounds, and thus not only Muslims, believe that anti-terrorism measures have directly curtailed and diminished their citizenship. This is in contrast to white participants who, while not untroubled about the impact of these measures, generally viewed this as a concern distanced from their everyday lives. This difference suggests that anti-terrorism measures may be contributing to a condition of disconnected citizenship in the UK.

  Website 
• Lister M, Otero-Iglesias M, 'New problems, old solutions? Explaining variations in British and Spanish anti-terrorism policy'
  Comparative European Politics 10 (5) (2012) pp.564-584
  ISSN: 1472-4790
  Abstract

  This article seeks to examine the differing responses of Spain and the United Kingdom to recent terrorist violence. While both experienced an al-Qaeda inspired attack on their soil, the legislative response has been very different, with Spain enacting virtually no legislative changes, whereas the United Kingdom has passed four pieces of new anti-terrorism legislation since 2001. The article argues that to account for this variance, the historical roots and evolution of anti-terrorism legislation in both countries should be considered alongside more narrow institutional factors. In Spain very stringent permanent law was introduced under Franco, and has since been reformed and rolled back to accommodate the democratic era. This sees terrorism dealt with within the existing legal framework and combined with a lingering scepticism of security services and the legal system suggests that increasing anti-terrorism powers are less politically viable (or legally necessary). In contrast, the United Kingdom, owing to its penchant for temporary law to deal with terrorism, has produced a situation where Parliament has become habituated to legislating on terrorism matters. These policy paradigms, along with differing attachments to civil liberties, help to understand the different responses by these countries to a seemingly common pressure.

  Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, 'Stakeholder security: the new western way of counter-terrorism?'
  Contemporary Politics 16 (2) (2010) pp.173-188
  ISSN: 1356-9775 eISSN: 1469-3631
  Abstract

  This article explores the ways in which Western states have adapted their counter-terrorism strategies to meet the demands of a post-9/11 era. Focusing on the USA and UK as illustrative case studies, this article charts the emergence of a new, complex topography of security measures aimed at confronting the threat of unconventional violence from above and below. Of particular interest is the construction of a raft of initiatives heavily reliant on the continued participation of citizens for their functioning; a reliance persistently justified by claims to uncertainty, even ignorance, among political elites. To better understand these initiatives and their implications, this article introduces the concept of stakeholder security to refer to the conscription of ordinary individuals into the state's security apparatuses; a conscription that positions citizens precariously as simultaneously technologies, subjects and objects of security. The article concludes with a first attempt to trace some of the political and normative issues raised by this new policy framework.

  Website 
• Lister M, 'Methods, Theories and Evidence: a Reply to Arzheimer'
  British Journal of Politics and International Relations 11 (2009) pp.518-525
  ISSN: 1369-1481 eISSN: 1467-856X
  Website 
• Lister, M, 'Marshall-ing social and political citizenship: towards a unified conception of citizenship'
  Government and Opposition 40 (4) (2005) pp.471-491
  ISSN: 0017-257X eISSN: 1477-7053
  Abstract Marshall's work on citizenship has become a cornerstone of most contemporary discussions of citizenship. Yet, in this article, it is argued that his work is frequently misunderstood, or misinterpreted. I argue that Marshall presents a normative argument that citizenship should be seen as a unified but dynamic concept. The unified nature of citizenship should not, however, obscure the tensions within the concept. These tensions are negotiated, so that citizenship should be seen as a complex relationship where tensions and webs of interdependence co-exist. This, it is argued, is an important theoretical framework with which to consider a issues such as the impact of the restructuring of welfare.Website 
• O’Toole T, Lister M, Marsh D, Jones S, McDonagh A, 'Tuning out or left out? : participation and non-participation among young people'
  Contemporary Politics 9 (1) (2003) pp.45-61
  ISSN: 1356-9775 eISSN: 1469-3631
  Website 

Book chapters

• Legrand T, Lister M, 'From Precaution to Prejudice: Mistakes in Counter Terrorism' in Kruck A, Opperman K, Spencer A (ed.), Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations, Palgrave (2018)
  ISBN: 9783319681726 eISBN: 9783319681733
  Abstract This chapter disaggregates the mistakes, errors and miscalculations around counter-terrorism policy. We note the difficulties in assessing when ‘something goes wrong’ in counter-terrorism which centre around the issue of uncertainty. We reflect on how to calculate the impacts of counter-terrorism in objective and subjective terms, before considering specific aspects of counter-terrorism in examples from British counter-terrorism policing and measures. We distinguish three types of ‘mistakes’: ‘genuine’ errors, misapplication of policy and unintended consequences. We consider the effects of such mistakes, in the form of ‘suspect communities’ and the ways in which high-profile mistakes come to shape perceptions of counter-terrorism practices. Given the inherent uncertainty and the seeming decision to prioritise precautionary logics, ‘mistakes’ in counter-terrorism are inevitable.Website 
• Jarvis L, Lister M, 'For the record: (Re)constructing Obama’s foreign policy legacy' in Bentley M, Holland J (ed.), The Obama Doctrine, Routledge (2016)
  
• Lister, M, ''"It’s all in the game": Citizenship as the "Missing Middle"'' in Keeble A, Stacy, I (ed.), The Wire and America's Dark Corners, McFarland (2015)
  
• Jarvis L, Lister M, ''"I read it in the FT": ‘Everyday’ knowledge of counter-terrorism and its articulation'' in Jarvis L, Lister, M (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Counter Terrorism, Routledge (2015)
  

Other experience

 

Education and work

• 2013-Present Reader in Politics, Oxford Brookes University
• 2007-2013 Senior Lecturer in Politics, Oxford Brookes University
• 2005-2007 Lecturer in Politics, University of Surrey
• 2004-2005 ESRC/ODPM Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Birmingham
• 2000-2004 PhD in Political Science, University of Birmingham
• 1999-2000 MA in Research Methods (Political Science), University of Birmingham
• 1996-1999 BSocSci Political Science, University of Birmingham