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What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Recent attempts to un- pack the similarities between these types of political violence have either focused on creating actor-based categories (terrorists vs. insurgents) and elucidating the different reasons for being one or the other or comparing and contrasting each to discern whether they have similar etiologies. In contrast to previous approaches, we use geo-referenced terror event data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to show where and when terror happens and whether it occurs inside or outside of civil war zones. We investigate in detail six separate violent campaigns to illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war events. While the study of terrorism and civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer an exciting possibility for future research by merging geo-referenced terror and civil war data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent explosion of work has occurred seeking to understand under what conditions groups use terror to pursue their goals. Regime type is one condition that is prominently discussed. Democratic regimes have been linked to terrorism for contending reasons with some scholars claiming that constraints on the executive and free civil rights increase the likelihood of these regimes experiencing terror while other scholars claim that democracy promotes nonviolent political participation thus reducing the likelihood of terror.Corroborating evidence has been used for both relationships leading to the following puzzle: why do some democratic regimes seem to foster terrorism while others do not? We offer three contributions to this debate. Beginning with the assumption that terror groups want to change government policy, we argue that the more veto players present in a political system, the more likely the system is to experience deadlock. Given the inability of societal actors to change policies through nonviolent and institutional participation, these regimes will have a greater likelihood of experiencing terror events. Second, we argue that the terrorism data generating process has been misidentified. In short, two types of zeros exist in terrorism data that are different but have been treated the same in previous models.Some states across the entire period of most samples never experience terror while other states only experience terror in a few years and thus have some probability of experiencing terror in the future. We use zero-inflated count models to model this process. Third, we use new data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) that was previously unavailable. Unlike previous terrorism databases, this new data incorporates both domestic and international incidents of terrorism while spanning from 1970 to 1997. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What counterinsurgent tactics pursued by governments lead to the pacification of insurgents? Some governments pursue iron fist techniques, or repressive counterinsurgent tactics to reduce the capabilities of insurgents. An alternative, velvet glove operations, have the same goal of pacifying the opposition, but are implemented using less aggressive tactics. Case studies of counterinsurgent techniques often demonstrate that more aggressive tactics may actually increase participation in insurgencies as indiscriminant violence pushes potential rebels into active rebellion. Empirical evidence, however, reveal the brutal efficiency of iron fist tactics when unrestrained by domestic or international audiences. In this paper, using events data from Iraq, I evaluate the relative efficacy of these approaches in the current insurgency facing the US and its partners. I also identify the implications for counterinsurgency in other contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which actions by governments stoke or pacify an insurgency? Scholarly research on the topic has often been relegated to the country level, comparing across large units and rarely looking inside the state. Our research focuses on the primary actors in a contest for authority within a state: the government, dissidents, and the population. In contrast to extant subnational work, we address the difficult question of how population dynamics affect the rise and fall of insurgency. We investigate the question in the context of India and its subnational administrative districts. India is particularly well suited to this research as it presently experiences varying levels of terrorism, insurgency, ethnic conflict, riots and other actions that threaten the stability of the state. Using an agent-based model (ABM), geographic information systems (GIS), data on public sentiment, and events data, we address this question from a multidisciplinary approach. The agent-based model formalizes the interactions of states, dissidents, and the population, the GIS framework allows for actual demographic and geographic information to influence this interaction, and the events data and sentiment data allow us to test empirical implications from the model directly. As the NSF-Minerva grant is midstream, this paper reports our ongoing efforts to couple the ABM and empirical analysis. We expect the results to have important implications for the study of political violence, order, and state-building. The approach is policy relevant, furthermore, and can be adapted to other regions and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]