Flattening the international: producing financial intelligence through a platform

Abstract

This paper engages in 'flat' International Relations (IR). Inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), it studies how geographically dispersed security actors produce shared understandings of financial intelligence on the EU-FIU Platform, a European Commission expert group. Studying the Platform enables empirical observation of how 'the international' is not a natural given nor a static analytical framework, but instead is actively made to exist in everyday practice, entailing numerous human and nonhuman actors. Engaging the Platform with a flat ontology allows the significance of materiality to be drawn out and key IR concerns such as power and governance to be readdressed. The paper examines the publicly accessible minutes of the EU-FIU Platform meetings and traces the development of the phrase 'for intelligence purposes', demonstrating both its interpretive flexibility, allowing actors to cooperate across heterogeneous understandings, and its flexible scalability, allowing actors to assign and navigate several scales concurrently.

The preferred type of financial intelligence for early detection of terrorist financing activities

“…This intervention function of the financial intelligence tools can overcome the limitations of the financial control approach of reactive financial intelligence. For example, suspicious transaction reporting can intervene in the financial system through interpretive flexibility and flexible scalability to overcome the limitation relating to the detection of the small amount of funds (Lagerwaard, 2020). Interpretive flexibility allows for sharing financial intelligence amongst various agencies whilst the clarification of the intelligence data is subject to flexible interpretation at both the sending and receiving ends.…”

The existing financial intelligence tools and their limitations in early detection of terrorist financing activities

“…However, the explanatory power of the existing financial intelligence tools are confined within reporting and description only (Gordon, 2011), which does not help in early detection of terrorist financing activities. Moreover, Amicelle and Iafolla (2017) and Lagerwaard (2020) argue that subjective judgement and interpretive flexibility weakens the explanatory power of the tools that also constrain the early detection potential of the financial intelligence tools. Therefore, it can be argued that the lack of adequate explanatory power makes the tools ineffective for the early detection of terrorist financing activities.…”

Taking the trouble: science, technology and security studies

“…Indeed, methodological insights stemming from STS have been used to analyse world politics beyond the realm of science and technology. As contributions to this Special Issue demonstrate, STS can be of value for a range of themes not primarily associated with STS such as disinformation (Monsees 2020) or financial regulations (Lagerwaard 2020). What emerges from reading across the diverse contributions to this Special Issue is that the relation between researchers and research objects is of special concern when we take the trouble to analyse the roles of science and technology in security practices (see also de Goede 2020).…”