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Several studies have found restrictions on minority faith-based communities to be related to the onset of violent religious hostilities. Absent from this work, though, is a consideration of the fact that minority religious discrimination can take different forms, and, consequently, may encourage violence in different ways. This paper seeks to fill this void by examining different forms of minority religious restrictions and their relationship to religious violence. Specifically, we analyze the comparative strength of three basic types of religious discrimination—restrictions on minority religious practices, restrictions on minority religious institutions, and restrictions on conversion and proselytizing —on violence carried out by both religious majority groups and religious minority groups. Interestingly, our analysis shows all three forms of restrictions encourage violence from religious majorities, but not from minorities. We supplement the statistical analysis with a case study of faith-based discrimination and violent religious hostilities in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first introduces a theoretical formalization connecting a polity's income level to terrorism. Our framework can accommodate different underlying assumptions about individual- and society-level grievances, yielding competing hypotheses. We then construct a panel database to study terrorism for 1527 subnational regions in 75 countries between 1970 and 2014. Results consistently imply an inverted U-shape that remains robust to incorporating a comprehensive set of region-level covariates, region- and time-fixed effects, as well as estimating an array of alternative specifications. The threat of terrorism systematically rises as low-income polities become richer, peaking at GDP/capita levels of ≈ US$12,800 (in constant 2005 PPP US$), but then falls consistently above that level. This pattern emerges for domestic and transnational terrorism alike. While peaks differ by perpetrator ideology, the inverted U shape also prevails across ideology-specific subsamples. In sum, alleviating poverty may first exacerbate terrorism, contrary to much of the proposed recipes advocated since 9/11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research portrays militant splinter groups as more violent than their parent organizations due to factors like more extreme preferences or capacity-building needs. Though widely held, the assumption that splinters are particularly violent has not been systematically tested. In this paper, we develop and test an alternative explanation for splinter behavior. We argue splinter groups often appear less violent than their parents due to an underlying selection effect. Splinters break away where there are large organizational barriers to internally address a faction's grievances. These barriers tend to exist in well-organized parents that are also capable of high levels of violence. Splinter groups lack this established organizational infrastructure, resulting in lower levels of relative violence. We test this logic with an original dataset on parent and splinter groups and a pair of comparative case studies. We find that splinters are less violent than parent organizations, challenging conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic terrorism. Using a cross-national, time-series analysis of 114 countries from 1991–2017, and employing structural equation modeling to test a number of mediating factors, we find that the impact of FDI on domestic terrorism depends on the host state's level of economic development. For host countries at higher-income levels, FDI boosts economic development and global integration promoting prosperity, increasing counterterrorism resources, and reducing the economic grievances that foster terrorism. Conversely, for lower-income host countries, increased FDI fuels higher domestic terrorism, as it intensifies clashes between traditional and modern elements within society, raises economic discrimination, heightens perceptions of economic insecurity, and subsequently leads to grievances directed against the state. Our results indicate a curvilinear relationship between FDI inflows and domestic terrorism, suggesting that FDI produces a double-edged sword between promoting economic development and increasing domestic terrorism in host states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between ISIS propaganda content and ISIS-inspired attacks by those outside of the group's control. We examine the content of ISIS' English language magazines, as well as speeches by two of its top leaders. We find that statements made about enemy countries in most contexts are not associated with a higher likelihood of violence in those countries. However, when a country is mentioned in ISIS propaganda in the context of its participation in the air campaign, this corresponds to an increased likelihood that the country will experience a violent attack. This suggests that propaganda highlighting key military adversaries may play a role in directing attackers that are outside the control of the organization's hierarchy to the group's preferred targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some militant organizations participate in human trafficking? We investigate this question by introducing a new dataset that records insurgent organizations' involvement in four types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, forced recruitment, slavery, and kidnapping. Marrying our data to the BAAD2I population of insurgent organizations, we uncover the organizational attributes related to human trafficking. We find that groups with wide alliance networks and territorial control are more likely to commit human trafficking. Organizations that are losing command of the territory and suffering rank-and-file losses are also more likely to turn to human trafficking. Our study sheds theoretical light on insurgent groups' involvement in crime. It also contributes to the empirical scholarship on sexual violence by violent groups by studying different forms of human trafficking in both conflict and non-conflict environments. Our paper presents an original dataset and empirical analysis of insurgent groups' human trafficking patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite alarming predications about the Covid 19 pandemic that appear to fit the literature on the impact of natural disasters on civil wars, there are reasons to be suspicious that a rise in militant violence would likely occur quickly or uniformly. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is most definitely a disaster that caught the world by surprise, this "slow-rolling" shock differs in important ways from the more commonly studied acute onset natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis that often increase violent competition among groups for scarce resources. Instead, the effects of slow-rolling disasters unfold in phases that, at least in the short run, are likely to encourage a period of relative decline in violence, as actors try and assess the effects of COVID-19 on their organization and their opponents. Both statistical and qualitative evidence from the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic supports the initial phases of our theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that intergroup conflict may result from two distinct human motives: the desire to obtain personal retributions from conflict (egoism), and the desire to sacrifice for the benefit of the ingroup (parochial altruism). Yet, the relative strength of these motives is open to debate. In this study, we compare behaviors in two Intergroup Prisoner's Dilemmas (IPD), which respectively capture altruistic and egoistic motives to generate conflict. Egoistic motives result in about 40% more conflict than altruistic motives. Yet, parochial altruism generates more conflict when three conditions are gathered: i) other ingroup members are parochial altruists, ii) the outgroup is aggressive and iii) the outgroup is rich. Implications regarding the diverging structural causes of terrorism and civil wars are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) brigade level behavior during the Northern Ireland Conflict (1970-1998) and identifies the organizational factors that impact a brigade's lethality as measured via terrorist attacks. Key independent variables include levels of technical expertise, cadre age, counter-terrorism policies experienced, brigade size, and IED components and delivery methods. We find that technical expertise within a brigade allows for careful IED usage, which significantly minimizes civilian casualties (a specific strategic goal of PIRA) while increasing the ability to kill more high value targets with IEDs. Lethal counter-terrorism events also significantly affect a brigade's likelihood of killing both civilians and high-value targets but in different ways. Killing PIRA members significantly decreases IED fatalities but also significantly decreases the possibility of zero civilian IED-related deaths in a given year. Killing innocent Catholics in a Brigade's county significantly increases total and civilian IED fatalities. Together the results suggest the necessity to analyze dynamic situational variables that impact terrorist group behavior at the sub-unit level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why did some American citizens choose to travel to fight in Syria and Iraq rather than engage in Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-inspired terrorism in the United States? We conducted a social network analysis (SNA) on a sample (n = 224) of extremists who either plotted ISIS-inspired attacks within the United States or attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to join the group between 2013-2020. We test how network size, network interconnectedness, and the importance of trusted network members impact the choice of American ISIS offenders to travel or plot terrorist attacks. Our results show that Americans were more likely to choose to travel to fight when they had access to large, dense networks that were embedded with trusted associates. Those without access to similar networks abandoned their preferences for foreign fighting and instead plotted attacks within the United States. The findings provide pertinent policy implications for countering violent extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorist designation has increasingly become an important counterterrorism tool used by intergovernmental organizations and state governments. This article examines the determinants of terrorist listing and argues that terrorist listing is driven by security as well as political concerns. While countries tend to designate groups that pose a greater security threat, terrorist listing can also be influenced by interstate relationships including alliance ties and state rivalry. We test these arguments using a dataset on 35 countries that currently maintain their own lists of designated terrorist organizations. Our findings show that governments are more likely to list groups that have a record of attacking their domestic interests. Domestic groups are more likely to be designated than foreign groups. Moreover, countries are more likely to designate groups that are designated by their allies, even when these groups do not pose a direct threat. Our study contributes to the literature on terrorism and more broadly international security by systematically examining the determinants of terrorist designation and explaining the heterogeneity of terrorist lists across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict points around the world involve government forces fighting terrorist groups. In this type of warfare, there is a danger that counterterrorist efforts may backfire, providing ammunition for additional cycles of violence. We study this issue focusing on selective and indiscriminate house demolitions employed by Israel during the Second Intifada. We exploit the temporal and spatial variation of this policy to assess its impact on Palestinians' political views. We find that the civilian population does not react to punitive house demolitions, a selective form of counterterrorism. On the contrary, Palestinians are more likely to adopt more radical political opinions in response to precautionary house demolitions, an indiscriminate form of counterterrorism. We also show that political radicalization induced by indiscriminate counterterrorism leads to an increase in future terror attacks. Overall, our analysis provides explicit empirical support to the mechanism behind the positive correlation between indiscriminate counterterrorism and future levels of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does democracy heighten or lessen the incidence of terrorism? This question has eluded a definitive answer for over three decades. Some terrorism researchers find that democracy has dampened terrorism; others that democracy has encouraged it; still others that there is a curvilinear or more nuanced relationship between the two. In this article, we contend that democracy has differential effects on terrorism, depending on the goals of particular terrorist groups. We claim that efforts to restrict democracy, by decreasing political rights and civil liberties, will effectively constrain terrorist activity from "strategic" groups but will have the opposite effect on "universalist" groups. The reason for this variance, we argue, involves the scope of ambition and underlying motivation distinguishing these very different types of terrorist movements. Because universalist groups have abstract ambitions and non-negotiable goals, they are unlikely to be deterred by crackdowns on democracy. Alternatively, because strategic groups do not see their missions as all-or-nothing campaigns of good versus evil and instead seek limited and concrete goals, anti-democratic measures are more likely to succeed against them. Our analysis of 200 countries from 1972 to 2016 finds strong support for this claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the efficacy of leadership decapitation has focused primarily on targeting the topmost leaders of groups. Yet, most organizations rely on multiple leaders with specific functional or geographical responsibilities, rather than a single symbolic leader. In this context, we pose the following question: how are the effects of leadership decapitation on a group's short-term operational capacity conditioned by the type or rank of targeted leaders? We argue that due to the risks faced by militant organizations, upper-tier leaders will delegate operational duties to lower-tier leadership for security purposes. Because of the shift of the principal-agent dynamic to lower-tier leaders, targeting of lower ranked leaders versus topmost leaders is more likely to result in a loss of control over foot soldiers, and trigger negative effects such as a rise in indiscriminate violence. We conduct our study using the case of Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan, with weekly data on the group's attacks, and multi-tier leadership losses between 2015–2019 across 72 districts. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That terrorism is a "weapon of the weak" is such deeply held conventional wisdom it has become almost a cliché. "Weak" means many different things in the literature, however, and little rigorous empirical research has tested the contention that weaker groups, however conceived, are more likely to employ terrorism. This article explores prominent weapon of the weak arguments to develop testable hypotheses about group strength and the prevalence of terrorism. Using measures of deliberately indiscriminate attacks on civilians by rebel groups in civil conflicts, as well as multiple measures of rebel strength, it examines systematically whether weaker groups are more likely to employ terrorism. I find surprisingly little empirical support for the conventional wisdom. There is no clear or consistent evidence that deliberately indiscriminate terrorism is a weapon of the weak rather than the strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between domestic terrorism and voting behavior? Past research notes the prevalence of domestic terrorist attacks in democratic regimes, but focuses primarily on such violence as a "weapon of the weak." We extend this literature by focusing on terrorism by incumbent-aligned armed groups and argue these actors use selective violence against political elites to delegitimize the political opposition and provide credible signals of the instability and unrest that is likely to accompany a transfer of power. Using data from two Argentine presidential elections in 1973, we evaluate the relationship between incidents of violence and changes in two measures of voting behavior—vote share and turnout. Consistent with expectations, left-wing political violence between elections reduced right-wing vote share but did not reduce turnout. Additional tests support the mechanism that violence increased voters' doubts about a potential right-wing government's ability to govern, and show violence is correlated with future repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A two-stage game investigates how counterterrorism measures affect within-country competition between two rival terrorist groups. Although such competition is commonplace (e.g., al-Nusra Front and Free Syria Army; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army; and al-Fatah and Hamas), there is no theoretical treatment of how proactive and defensive measures influence this interaction. Previous studies on rival terrorist groups are solely empirical concerning group survival, outbidding, and terrorism level, while ignoring the role that government countermeasures exert on the rival groups' terrorism. In a theoretical framework, alternative counterterrorism actions have diverse impacts on the level of terrorism depending on relative group sizes and government-targeting decisions. In the two-stage game, optimal counterterrorism policy rules are displayed in terms of how governments target symmetric and asymmetric terrorist groups. Comparative statics show how parameter changes affect Nash or subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violent organizations are often providers of many social services in competition with the state. We provide evidence that these organizations use the provision of social services to gain support. This strategy is only effective when it fills the void left by a weak state. We show this by studying the provision of natural disaster relief by the Pakistani state and the Taliban. We first analyze the floods of 2010 that received an inadequate response from the government and show that support for the Taliban increased in the areas affected by the flood. These effects were concentrated in places where the Taliban likely provided help and where the state under-delivered. We then study the 2005 earthquake that instead received a swift government response and show that the Taliban lost support in the affected areas. Results cannot be explained by alternate mechanisms as anger against incumbents, political competition, electoral participation, and religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An American's yearly chance of being killed by a terrorist attack sits at roughly 1 in 3.5 million. Yet, over 40 percent of Americans consistently believe that they or their family members are likely to be a terror victim. Can these inflated estimates of the risks of terrorism be brought closer to reality? With trillions of dollars spent on the "War on Terror," this question is not just theoretically but practically important. In order to investigate, we use an experimental approach assessing whether people update their beliefs about terrorism when given factual information about the relative risks it presents. We find that public fear of terrorism and demand for countering it can be sharply reduced with better information, dropping essentially to pre-9/11 levels after the treatment and staying that way two weeks later. These results suggest that countering the indirect costs of terrorism may largely require providing more context and perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments build walls to curtail a range of illicit activities like immigration, crime, and terrorism. We argue that while physical barriers effectively prevent specific unwanted behavior, they induce actors to respond strategically and develop new tactics, changing the nature of illicit activity and leading to new threats. We test this argument in the context of Israel's security barrier. Using an instrumental variable unrelated to the underlying threat of attack, we analyze short-term changes in the barrier's porousness. Terror attacks in Israel are less likely when the barrier is more secure. However, we also observe evidence of changing strategies. Attacks are most likely immediately after the government eases temporary restrictions on movement, suggesting that previously-planned attacks were delayed, not prevented. Furthermore, when the barrier is more secure, terrorists select weapons that are less affected by it and carry out attacks in systematically different locations. Ultimately, walls' impacts on any challenge depend not just on how well they prevent movement but also on illicit actors' strategic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational terrorism is an inherently international phenomenon as it involves attacks where the perpetrators are from a different country than the victims. Accordingly, a growing literature explains patterns in transnational attacks with a focus on international variables, for example, the presence of a border wall or alliance patterns. Despite the importance of the topic, no common empirical framework with theoretical basis has emerged to analyze the flows of transnational attacks. We propose that recent versions of the structural gravity model of transnational flows, long the workhorse model in trade economics, can be modified to provide a theoretically motivated model of the flows of transnational terrorist attacks among countries. The gravity model provides several empirical advantages for the study of international variables and transnational terrorism, for example, recent specifications allow the researcher to estimate count models that condition out all time-varying country-level confounders with fixed effects. This facilitates sidestepping the typical problem that any international variables associated with transnational flows are often correlated with omitted or imprecisely measured domestic factors, which draws their estimates into question. Moreover, we demonstrate that the structural gravity model does a much better job in predicting outcomes, particularly when multiple attacks flow across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the effects of terrorism mostly focuses on the coercive effects of violence on the macrolevel, while other effects like provocation, particularly on the microlevel, do not receive the same attention. In this article, we seek to address previous omissions. We argue that terrorism can provoke ordinary people into a violent reaction. By reducing perceived security and creating a desire for revenge terrorism may lead civilians to attack uninvolved members of the terrorists' constituency. Using geo-referenced data on terrorism (Global Terrorism Database) and violent riots (Social Conflict Analysis Database), we assess with a matched wake analysis if the treatment of terrorist violence against civilians causes an increase in violent behavior. The results of our analyses show that terrorism significantly increases violent riots. We thus conclude that terrorism can not only provoke governments but also civilians into an overreaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what circumstances does terrorism repel foreign investment? The negative effect of terrorism on foreign investment identified in current scholarship masks heterogeneity across host markets and industries. Foreign investment ought to react less to political violence when host markets match firms' input requirements, when firms lack viable alternative hosts, and when assets are immobile across markets. We model the endogenous codetermination of terror and investment to derive these comparative statics, highlighting empirical challenges in identifying the effects of terror on foreign direct investment. To overcome these obstacles, we use an instrumental variable estimator which exploits differences in the networks along which terror and investment spread. Using industry-level data on the activities of US multinationals, we test our model and conclude that foreign investors that find it hard to leave particular host markets are doubly penalized: their lack of outside options makes them tempting targets for terror. Our findings have implications for other forms of violent and nonviolent political tactics which affect multinationals and for understanding how foreign investment reacts to heightened risk in host markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to a single report about terrorism in the mass media can trigger a range of emotional and political reactions. The consequences of exposure to several terrorism reports in row, however, are a matter of controversy. We examine the effects of prolonged terrorism coverage using an experimental design that combines self-report measures of emotions and political attitudes with instantaneous biometric data on emotions. Consistent with research on nonassociational learning, we find that exposure to multiple videos habituates people to depictions of terrorism: the longer people watch terrorism coverage, the less intense their reactions are to the images of terrorism they see. Some images and videos, however, contribute to this result more than others. This suggests that the ultimate effects of terrorism coverage depend on the interplay between the quantity and quality of reporting, not the quantity alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between terrorist activities and states of emergency has never been explored in a cross-country perspective. This article is a first step to change that. Given that a terror act has been committed, what are the factors that lead governments to declare a state of emergency (SOE)—or refrain from declaring it? And given that a SOE has been declared, what are the effects thereof? On the basis of seventy-nine countries all having Western-style constitutions, we find that more terrorist incidents increase the likelihood of a SOE. Interestingly, emergencies are less likely to be declared in election years, supposedly because governments believe them to be unpopular. Once a SOE is declared, it generally leads to substantially more government repression. Finally, countries already under a SOE are more likely to suffer from additional terror attacks, challenging the effectiveness of states of emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By facilitating the flow of information in society, communications technology (CT; e.g., newspapers, radio, television, the Internet) can help terrorists to (i) spread their message, (ii) recruit followers, and (iii) coordinate among group members. However, CT also facilitates monitoring and arresting terrorists. This article formulates the hypothesis that a society's level of CT is systematically related to terrorism. We introduce a simple theoretical framework, suggesting that terrorism first becomes more attractive with a rise in CT, but then decreases, following an inverted U shape. Accessing data for 199 countries from 1970 to 2014, we find evidence consistent with these predictions: terrorism peaks at intermediate ranges of CT and corresponding magnitudes are sizable. Our estimations control for a range of potentially confounding factors, as well as country fixed effects and year fixed effects. Results are robust to a battery of alternative specifications and placebo regressions. We find no evidence of a potential reporting bias explaining our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars demonstrate a consistent negative relationship between gender equality and violence, the effect of women's rights on the quality of terrorism and the type of victims targeted remains unexplored. This article introduces a new model of terrorists' strategic targeting by examining the trade-off between the ease of a civilian-oriented attack and the negative public reaction these attacks invoke. Within this framework, gender equality increases the costs of civilian targeting by inducing public opinion costs. As gender equality increases, the costs of attacking civilians increase relatively more than government-oriented attacks. Using data on domestic terrorism between 1970 and 2007 and a subnational examination of a randomly implemented gender quota in India, this study demonstrates that as gender equality increases, the ratio of civilian-oriented to government-oriented attacks decreases. Overall, this study refines our understanding of terrorists' strategic targeting and identifies heterogeneity in the Women, Peace, and Security theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can counterterrorism security be counterproductive? We argue that it can be when the at-risk population acts strategically. We model a two-stage game where the government first chooses the defensive security level for a public place. The second stage is a simultaneous-move game with terrorist choosing terror effort and members of the population deciding whether or not to attend the public place. Our key measure of the efficiency of the counterterrorism security is the expected number of casualties. Under very standard and general assumptions, we show that it is possible that more security leads to an increase in that number. This is because increasing security both discourages and encourages the terrorist. On the one hand, more security makes a successful terror attack less likely (discouragement). On the other hand, more security motivates more people to attend the public place which makes the attack more valuable to the terrorist (encouragement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some terrorist organizations provoke their targets into deploying massive countermeasures, allowing terrorists to mobilize a greater share of their audience. Why would a government pursue such a costly strategy if it only strengthens the opponent? I develop a signaling model of terrorism, counterterrorism, and recruitment. If a target government is unsure whether the terrorists' audience is sympathetic to the cause, weaker groups sometimes bluff strength by attacking. To check this bluff, governments sometimes respond to attacks with large-scale operations, even though they know they might be overreacting. Comparative statics reveal that overreaction regret is most likely when the target is wealthy and large operations are more effective. Thus, a selection effect creates the false impression that provocation is most effective against geopolitically privileged targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prominent view in the terrorism literature is that democracies make soft targets for terrorists due to their citizenry's low tolerance for civilian casualties. This study tests this claim in the context of hostage taking terrorism, which is a unique form of violence that coerces the target state into negotiating over its citizens' lives under public scrutiny. I argue that democratic accountability generates softer responses to hostage crises only in mature democracies, where leaders' concern over being held accountable for the human costs of a no-concessions policy outweighs the reputational costs of conceding to terrorists' demands. Using data on government responses to hostage incidents from 1978 to 2005, I find that regime type becomes a significant predictor of target concessions only at higher levels of regime stability. To test the accountability mechanism proposed by theory, I examine the effect of electoral cycles on target response; as expected, while nearing elections soften democratic responses to hostage crises, in general their positive effect on the likelihood of concessions is stronger in consolidated democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorist attacks in Brussels (May 2014) and Paris (January and November 2015) highlight the threat related to the arrival of foreign fighters (FFs) from civil wars elsewhere. We develop an argument suggesting that terrorism at home is systematically affected by the exit of the so-called FFs out of civil wars abroad. We contend that foreign civil conflicts ending in success for rebel groups can result in a surplus of well-trained FFs, increasing the risk of terrorism at home. By contrast, when rebel groups are defeated in foreign civil conflicts, we anticipate a restriction in the flow of FFs, which reduces the likelihood of terrorism at home. Empirical analyses on most countries for the years 1970 to 2006 support these hypotheses. Our tests also demonstrate that the flow of FFs is associated with the creation of new terrorism campaigns rather than the exacerbation of existing operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is foreign aid effective in reducing terrorism? The existing evidence is mostly negative. We argue that this pessimistic outlook on the efficacy of aid as a counterterrorism tool is partly a function of focusing on only one type of aid: economic aid. Governance and civil society aid can dampen the participation in and support for terrorism by altering the political conditions of a country. We expect countries that receive high levels of governance and civil society aid to experience fewer domestic terrorist incidents than countries that receive little or none. Using a sample of aid eligible countries for the period from 1997 to 2010, we find that governance and civil society aid is effective in dampening domestic terrorism, but this effect is only present if the recipient country is not experiencing a civil conflict. Our findings provide support for the continued use of democracy aid as a counterterrorism tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how the chief executive’s political party affects domestic terrorism within democracies. In particular, I contribute to the literature on terrorism within democracies by arguing that domestic terrorist groups prefer attacking when right-wing parties hold office. I find evidence for this claim as well as results indicating that left-wing executives are more likely to cut deals with domestic terrorist groups. These trends suggest that domestic terrorist groups attack during right-wing governance to build their reputation and reduce violence during left-wing governance to appear moderate and get a deal. These results contribute to literatures on differences between left and right parties, how political institutions affect terrorism, and differences between domestic and transnational terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars often find that highlands and rural areas foster insurgencies. However, others have argued that cities can also be centers of insurgent activity and that nonterritorial insurgencies are different from territorial guerilla wars. We expect that in a nonterritorial insurgency, the high quality of local knowledge makes populated rural areas inhospitable to nonterritorial insurgent activity. Using data from a random sample of about 750 Médaille de la Résistance Française recipients, we find that departments with more residents in cities and large towns had more medal recipients than rural departments. Analyses of repression patterns (finding that insurgent arrests are less likely in cities than rural areas) and the historical record provide further evidence for the information mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there an association between oil and terrorism? If so, how are they linked to each other? While there are literature and anecdotes about oil money financing terrorism, this article identifies three mechanisms through which oil is linked to terrorism: funding, targeting, and motivating. Oil-producing countries are prone to terrorism because they are important targets of terrorists who may attack oil facilities to cause greater impact and to harm powerful countries’ overseas interests and also because oil often generates grievances or greed among local people who may in turn engage in terrorist activities. Using data on terrorist incidents and oil income, this article finds a strong, positive relationship between oil and terrorism. To test the mechanisms, this article uses both large-N and small-N data analyses, and the findings suggest that while all three mechanisms appear to explain the oil–terrorism linkage, the targeting and motivating mechanisms are more likely than the funding mechanism. Oil-producing countries have a higher tendency to sponsor terrorism, but no direct evidence indicates oil money flowing to terrorists except for money from kidnapping or extorting oil workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a country panel from 1995 to 2013, this study examines the relationship between state failure and transnational terrorism with respect to perpetrator’s proximity to the target and logistical complexity of attacks. Using concentration curves and generalized estimating equation negative binomial models, the study shows that failed states experience significantly more transnational terrorism when the perpetrators are from the home country. But these states do not produce terrorists who cross borders and carry out attacks in other countries, neither do they attract foreign perpetrators. The latter suggests that conditions in failed states present major operational challenges to foreign terrorists. State failure also causes more logistically complex attacks due to lack of effective counterterrorism measures by failed states. The main results hold true for both relative and dichotomous measures of state failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how externalities and cooperation affect nations’ efforts to counter transnational terrorism activities. Our model captures three factors whose interplay determines counterterrorism (CT) efforts and terrorist activity: the size of the spillover effect, the degree of internalization of the externality, and whether nations’ CT efforts have an asymmetric or symmetric effect on the security of other nations. In our symmetric model, preemptive CT efforts and terrorist activities decrease with the size of the externality regardless of the degree of cooperation between nations. In our asymmetric model, as the externality of the “smaller” nation increases, the “larger” nations reduce their efforts, and the smaller nation reacts by increasing its own efforts. We also investigate coalition stability and show that (a) in the preemptive case, the full coalition is not stable and partial coalitions are stable for sufficiently small externalities; and (b) in the defensive, symmetric case, only the full coalition is stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long held that Islamism—defined as a political ideology that demands the application of Islamic holy law and the deepening of religious identity—is in part a response to Western domination of Muslim lands. Drawing on the literatures on nationalism and international relations theory, we argue that Islamism is one of a menu of options that Muslims may adopt in response to Western hegemony—a menu that includes Arab nationalism and pro-Western accommodation. We hypothesize that a Muslim’s ideological response to Western domination is a function of the type of domination experienced—that is, military, cultural, or economic—as well as of individual-level characteristics such as intensity of religious practice. We test this hypothesis with a nationally representative survey experiment conducted in Egypt. We find that, among subjects in our study, pro-Western responses to Western domination were more common than “Islamist” or “nationalist” ones and that these were particularly driven by reminders of the West’s economic ascendancy. These findings suggest that foreign domination does not always yield defensive responses and often produces desires for greater cooperation with the hegemon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prominent theory holds that groups may use terrorism in order to provoke governments into undertaking repression that alienates the population. However, virtually no studies have addressed the central puzzle of this provocation logic: why states would actually fall into this trap, if doing so can backfire. This study seeks to address this puzzle by suggesting conditions under which states would respond to terrorism with repression. I argue that states with limited bureaucratic capacity are more prone to using repression after terrorist incidents, as their ability to selectively crack down is inhibited by their more limited capability for controlling, monitoring, and collecting revenue from their populations and for collecting intelligence on suspected terrorists. Using a cross-national analysis with data from 1981 to 2011, I find it is low-capacity states which are most likely to respond to terrorism with repression, while constraints on executive authority have no clear effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does international public support via social media influence conflict dynamics? To answer this question, I construct a unique, extremely disaggregated data set drawn from social media sources to examine the behavior of Israel and Hamas during the 2012 Gaza Conflict. The data set contains conflict actions and international audience behavior at the hourly level for the full 179 hours of the conflict. Notably, I also include popular support for each side from international audiences on social media. I employ a Bayesian structural vector autoregression to measure how Israel’s and Hamas’s actions respond to shifts in international public support. The main finding is that shifts in public support reduce conflict intensity, particularly for Israel. This effect is greater than the effect of the key international actors—United States, Egypt, and United Nations. The results provide an important insight into how information technology is changing the role of international audiences in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops expectations about the use of military force by democracies facing domestic terrorism. Due to the necessity of balancing effective counterterrorism with liberal acceptability, domestic terrorism typically represents a significant but nonexistential threat to democracies that is ineradicable via repression; as such, it is likely to generate appreciable diversionary incentives. Moreover, the use of force abroad, coupled with counterterrorist strategies that seek to safeguard democratic legitimacy, allows leaders to provide benefits both to citizens who seek retribution against terrorists and to those who value the preservation of liberty. Tests of the correlates of dispute initiation across all democracies, 1970–2000, provide support for this hypothesis. Further analyses reveal that diversion from domestic terrorism is most likely by democratic governments with relatively greater diversionary capacity and with lesser repressive capacity and incentive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High rates of missing perpetrator information in political violence data pose a serious challenge for studies into militant group behavior and the microdynamics of conflict more generally. In this article we introduce multiple imputation (MI) as the best available method for minimizing the impact of missing perpetrator information on quantitative analyses of political violence, a method that can easily be incorporated into most quantitative research designs. MI will produce unbiased attributions when the reasons for missingness are known and can be controlled for using observed variables, rendering responsibility for unclaimed attacks, “missing at random” (MAR) – which we show is a reasonable assumption in the case of political violence based on current theory of militant group claiming. We lay out the logics and steps of MI, identify variables and data sources, and demonstrate that MI produced better results in the case of the Pakistani Taliban’s response to drone strikes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether transnational terrorist attacks impact the political survival of leaders. We argue that external security threats, such as those from transnational terrorist incidents, can undermine incumbent target governments by exposing foreign policy failures and damaging society’s general well-being. Yet, terrorism may not destabilize democratic governments as a result of citizens rallying around their elected leaders in threatening times. Focusing on Archigos’ survival leadership data and International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events’ terrorism data for the 1968–2004 period, we find that autocrats who experience higher instances of transnational terrorist attacks are more likely to exit power. Democrats, however, are relatively secure to the destabilizing influence of transnational terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research suggests that the use of harsh repression can exacerbate the incidence and duration of terrorism. Micro- and macro-level analyses have shown that coercive government responses to terrorism can radicalize sympathizers, increase recruitment, and undermine community support for counterterrorism policies, leading to backlash and increased terrorist activity. Focusing on torture techniques, this article aims to establish mechanisms implicit in the backlash hypothesis. These arguments imply that information about government transgressions is available to potential group sympathizers, but have not examined whether and how variation in the visibility of different torture techniques affects the likelihood of backlash. Scarring torture, a technique that is both more visible and less plausibly deniable than other forms of torture, is expected to produce higher volumes of terrorism. Using disaggregated data on allegations of torture from the Ill-Treatment and Torture project for 1995 to 2005, the analysis shows that scarring torture is consistently associated with increases in terrorism, whereas stealth torture has no statistically discernable effect on terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When rebels provide social services, do they have more leverage negotiating the terms of a peace deal? The literature suggests service-providing groups may, on average, have a wider base of support and a more centralized organizational structure. We argue that these features deter potential spoilers from breaking away from the organization during negotiation processes. This, in turn, makes governments more willing to enter negotiations since the threat from spoilers is smaller. Thus, compared to nonproviders, service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and these processes are likely to be more stable. This article analyzes these propositions by gathering service provision data on nearly 400 rebel groups and their involvement in and behavior during peace talks. It also serves as an introduction to a larger project about the implications of rebel service provision on conflict outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences regarding support for the use of force average around 8 percent and are twice the size of differences on non-force issues. This article investigates a related gender gap in support for the use of torture. I investigate threat perceptions as a possible explanation for the gap and find strong support for this hypothesis. Specifically, increased threat perceptions lead men but not women to be more likely to support the use of torture. In addition to providing an explanation for the gender gap in support for torture, this extends prior work that finds increased threat perceptions with respect to terrorism lead to greater support for aggressive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effect of foreign military interventions on the incidence of suicide attacks. It presents three theoretical explanations. Foreign military interventions may boost insurgent use of suicide attacks by (a) fomenting a nationalist backlash that sanctions the use of more extreme and unconventional tactics like suicide attacks, (b) providing more and better targets against which suicide attacks can be launched, or (c) prompting insurgents to use suicide tactics in order to overcome their power asymmetries and to confront better defended targets that are enhanced by interventions. We test these competing explanations using a battery of statistical tests on cross-national, time-series data for 138 countries during the period from 1981 to 2005. We find that only foreign interventions with specific features -- pro-government interventions involving larger numbers of ground troops -- boost suicide attacks in countries experiencing interventions. This finding suggests that by tipping the balance of power against insurgents and hardening targets in the context of assisting a local government, foreign military interventions are likely to increase the use of suicide attacks by regime challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey has been suffering from separatist terrorism and the political conflict it implies since the mid-1980s, both of which are believed to have a negative impact on economic welfare. This article investigates the economic costs of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorism, particularly in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces of Turkey by invoking the synthetic control method. We create a synthetic control group that mimics the socioeconomic characteristics of the provinces exposed to terrorism before the PKK terrorism emerged in the mid-1980s. We then compare the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the synthetic provinces without terrorism to the actual provinces with terrorism for the period 1975 to 2001. Causal inference is carried out by comparing the real per capita GDP gap between the synthetic and actual provinces against the intensity of PKK terrorist activity. Extended over a period of fourteen years (1988 to 2001), we find that after the emergence of terrorism, the per capita real GDP in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia declined by about 6.6 percent relative to a comparable synthetic Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia without terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asserts that countries with large internally displaced populations (IDPs) are more likely to experience a higher rate of suicide terrorism. After demonstrating this, the study tests four intervening factors hypothesized to drive the relationship between IDPs and suicide attacks: IDPs are expected (1) to increase the pool of potential suicide recruits, thereby lowering the labor costs for suicide terrorist groups; (2) to increase local ethnic conflicts that foster a favorable environment for suicide terrorism; (3) to worsen the human rights conditions in countries, prompting aggrieved people to support suicide terrorist tactics; and (4) to raise the counterterrorism and policing costs of the state, enabling terrorists to plan and execute suicide attacks. Results from negative binomial regression and Tobit models show evidence for the IDPs-suicide terrorism connection. When recursive models are employed to evaluate the effects of four intervening variables, the results most consistently support human rights violations as a significant and substantive mediator between IDPs and suicide attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the behavior of the Guantánamo detainees in terms of collaboration and disobedience and how it influences their chances of getting a release recommendation. Joint Task Force Guantanamo–authored memoranda on 765 detainees are used to create a network of accusations between detainees and an attribute data set, which are analyzed using multivariate regression and Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests. It is found that while the distribution of incriminating statements obeys a power law, 62.6 percent of all detainees do not incriminate anyone. Yemenis and Saudi Arabians heavily overcontribute regarding incriminating statements and disobedient actions, whereas Afghans and Pakistanis undercontribute. Disobedient behavior does not affect the likelihood of getting a release recommendation, except for hunger striking, which has a negative effect. By releasing information, detainees don’t improve their own chances of getting release recommendations but impair those of the detainees they implicate. Three different groups of detainees are identified whose behavioral patterns seem to follow distinct logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]