Policy-Timing Nach 9/11

Political actors develop temporal action strategies to pursue policy preferences. They try to apply a dual timing strategy for initiating reforms: actors use time periods to keep options for actions open, and they make targeted choices of points in time for decision-making. Hence, policy timing means the strategic use of time; it is less dependent on focusing events as argued by leading policy theories. This publication tests that alternative action-theoretical concept by means of two case studies of Inner Security reforms which were adopted after September 11, 2001: the abolition of the religion privilege from the Law of Association, and the legitimation of the IMSI-Catcher as an investigative tool used by intelligence services and law enforcement authorities. On the basis of these least-likely cases, it is shown that even here, political processes are structured by the cost and benefit expectations of political actors, and less so by exogenous events such as 9/11.