Countering Violent Extremism Globally: A New Global CVE Dataset

Following 9/11, the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reiterated the realization that terrorism could not be defeated solely by a military response. Instead, countries began to expand their counterterrorism toolkits by including “soft approaches” to counterterrorism also known as countering violent extremism or CVE programming. However, a global approach to CVE does not currently exist. Rather, countries have either chosen to pursue different CVE strategies or none at all. This paper asks, what CVE approaches are countries pursuing and how robust are domestic CVE programs? To answer these questions, this paper presents a new global CVE dataset that analyzes global CVE strategies across time. This Research Note finds that CVE programming is still in its infancy and more robust CVE strategies are needed to mitigate the various terrorist threats that countries face.