Everyday Security Threats

'While citizens are asked to involve themselves increasingly in the management of ‘security’, practitioners and theorists have paid scant attention to public attitudes to security. This book addresses this issue, systematically exploring the attitudes of British citizens to security threats and their management, with some fascinating findings. Bringing together international relations and political psychology, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods, this important book is a fine example of the insights that can be developed through cooperative research beyond our academic silos.'


Matt McDonald is Associate Professor in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia

Daniel Stevens and Nick Vaughan-Williams have provided the most detailed account yet of the ways in which people identify and respond to a range of factors that can pose threats to themselves, the country they live in, and the world. This is a critically important focus of research in a contemporary world experiencing threats from terrorism, globalization, the environment, and much else. Using a creative combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors determine the range and scope of threats that people confront in their lives, the factors that help to explain why people perceive different threats, and the political consequences of different perceived threats. This book is must reading for scholars and others who want to understand how people identify and respond to security threats that governments are increasingly expected to manage.


Stanley Feldman, Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University