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Do Targeted Assassinations Work? A Multivariate Analysis of Israel's Controversial Tactic during Al-Aqsa Uprising 1
Studies In Conflict & Terrorism
Abstract
We assess the impact of Israel's targeted assassinations policy on rates of Palestinian violence from September 2000, the beginning of Al-Aqsa uprising, through June 2004. Literature concerning the relationship between repression and rebellion suggests four plausible effects of targeted assassinations on insurgents: deterrence, backlash, disruption, and incapacitation. Using differenced and lagged time-series analysis, this article utilizes multiple and logistic regression to evaluate the effect of targeted assassinations on Palestinian violence. It is concluded that targeted assassinations have no significant impact on rates of Palestinian attacks. Targeted assassinations do not decrease rates of Palestinian violence, nor do they increase them, whether in the short or long run. Targeted assassinations may be useful as a political tool to signal a state's determination to punish terrorists and placate an angry public, but there is little evidence that they actually impact the course of an insurgency.
... the targeted killing research, Hafez and Hatfield (2006) did not find it to be a factor in Palestinian violence. Nevertheless, other researchers have suggested it may operate through alternative mechanisms, like the increased recruitment of suicide bombers (David, 2003) or instead through complex insurgency-counterinsurgency relationships (Condra and Shapiro, 2012;Fielding and Shortland, 2010;Linke, Witmer, O'Loughlin, 2012). ...
... A more limited pool of the targeted killing literature includes evaluations of its effectiveness on a variety of outcomes, yielding mixed results (Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Hepworth, 2014;Price, 2012;Wilner, 2010;Zussman and Zussman, 2006). The use of targeted killings within the Israeli-Palestine conflict has been examined in much of this research (Benmelech et al., 2015;Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Kaplan, Mintz, Mishal, and Samban, 2005;Zussman and Zussman, 2006). ...
... A more limited pool of the targeted killing literature includes evaluations of its effectiveness on a variety of outcomes, yielding mixed results (Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Hepworth, 2014;Price, 2012;Wilner, 2010;Zussman and Zussman, 2006). The use of targeted killings within the Israeli-Palestine conflict has been examined in much of this research (Benmelech et al., 2015;Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Kaplan, Mintz, Mishal, and Samban, 2005;Zussman and Zussman, 2006). For example, Hafez and Hatfield (2006) assessed Israeli targeted killings on rates of Palestinian violence from September 2000 to June 2004 during the Al-Aqsa uprising. ...
Research Summary
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing “war on terrorism,” the U.S. government has engaged in a series of controversial counterterrorism policies. Perhaps none is more so than the use of targeted killings aimed at eliminating the senior leadership of the global jihadist movement. Nevertheless, prior research has yet to establish that this type of tactic is effective, even among high‐profile targets. Employing a robust methodology, I find that these types of killings primarily yielded negligible effects.
Policy Implications
Given the immense controversy surrounding the policy of targeted killings, it has become that much more vital to assess whether such measures are effective. This study's findings, that most of these high‐profile killings either had no influence or were associated with a backlash effect, have important implications for future counterterrorism efforts. All in all, the U.S. government's investment in the policy of targeted killings seems to be counterproductive if its main intention is a decrease in terrorism perpetrated by the global jihadist movement.
... Some authors conclude that targeted leader killing is effective because it speeds up the decline of terrorist organizations (Price 2019) or diminishes the number or intensity of terrorist attacks (Jaeger and Paserman 2009;Johnston 2012). Others conclude that it has no effect or an adverse effect (Abrahms and Mierau 2017;Abrahms and Potter 2015;Hafez and Hatfield 2006;Jordan 2019;Kaplan et al. 2006;Mannes 2008). Existing studies offer several theoretical explanations for success or failure of targeted leader killing. ...
... The former commonly revolve around the importance of leadership for terrorist groups' survival and capacity to commit attacks (Jaeger and Paserman 2009;Price 2019). The latter emphasize martyrdom effects, revenge, or the effect of drone strikes on terrorist recruitment (Hafez and Hatfield 2006;Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal 2006;Price 2019). Several authors develop theoretical arguments explaining why targeted leader killing would be effective against some terrorist groups, but not others, depending on for example their organizational structure (Jordan 2019; Price 2019). ...
This paper investigates how counterterrorism targeting terrorist leaders affects terrorist attacks. This effect is theoretically ambiguous and depends on whether terrorist groups are modeled as unitary actors or not. The paper exploits a natural experiment provided by strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) “hitting” and “missing” terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Results suggest that terrorist groups increase the number of attacks they commit after a drone “hit” on their leader compared with after a “miss.” This increase is statistically significant for 3 out of 6 months after a hit, when it ranges between 47.7% and 70.3%. Additional analysis of heterogenous effects across groups and leaders, and the impact of drone hits on the type of attack, terrorist group infighting, and splintering, suggest that principal-agent problems—(new) terrorist leaders struggling to control and discipline their operatives—account for these results better than alternative theoretical explanations.
... Since targeted killings may yield divergent impacts for the threats posed by both individual terrorist organizations and the terrorist threat more generally (Carvin, 2012), exploring the potential for heterogeneous impacts is of primary concern. Because a single targeted killing may simultaneously decrease some terror threats while increasing others (Carson, 2017) and unexamined heterogeneity can mask counterterrorism impacts (Fisher and Meitus, 2017), previous null findings from studies examining the impact of targeted killings on subsequent terrorism may be due to unexamined variation (see Hafez and Hatfield, 2006). Indeed, recent examinations exploring this potential heterogeneity have revealed that the targeted killing of high-profile Al Qaeda leaders 'may have rallied support for the global jihadist base' despite the null findings from some quantitative approaches (Carson, 2017: 213). ...
... These findings have been echoed in longer-observation longitudinal studies, with Hafez and Hatfield (2006) suggesting either null findings or increased terrorism in the wake of targeted killings within Israel. In examining globally the impact of the killing of top terrorist leaders, Mannes (2008) and Jordan (2009) find little evidence supporting deterrent impacts, and instead find an increase in the lethality of attacks in the wake of targeted killings and political resurgences for groups targeted by these methods. ...
The United States has adopted the targeted killing of high-ranking members of terrorist organizations to disrupt terrorist networks and exert general deterrence. The most salient of these killings occurred on 2 May 2011, when US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Although general deterrence suggests this should result in decreased subsequent terrorism, high-profile targeted killings can also result in increased terrorist violence through backlash. This study uses dual trajectory analysis to examine the divergent influence that the killing of bin Laden had on global terrorism trends between November 2007 and May 2014. These analyses reveal that killing bin Laden did not have the desired deterrent impact on global terrorism or on terrorism committed by Al Qaeda.
... Previous quantitative evaluations have produced mixed results regarding the influence of this tactic on a variety of outcomes. Studies within the contexts of Northern Ireland (Asal, Gill, Rethemeyer, & Horgan, 2015;Gill, Piazza, & Horgan, 2016), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Benmelech, Berrebi, & Klor, 2015;Hafez & Hatfield, 2006;Zussman & Zussman, 2006), and counterinsurgency (Condra & Shapiro, 2012;Fielding & Shortland, 2010;Linke, Witmer, & O'Loughlin, 2012) have yielded evidence on both sides. Related work on leadership decapitation, or the removal of high-level members, is similarly complex (Abrahms & Mierau, 2017;D'Alessio, Stolzenberg, & Dariano, 2014;Johnston, 2012;Jordan, 2009;Mannes, 2008;Price, 2012), as are the recent contributions that directly examine the U.S.'s use of this strategy (Carson, 2017;Hepworth, 2014;Johnston & Sarbahi, 2016;Wilner, 2010). ...
... This researcher also contended that targeted killings have caused certain operatives to voluntarily surrender to authorities, whereas others are forced to take considerable precautions including sleeping in a new place every night. Hafez and Hatfield (2006) hypothesized that resource mobilization could be affected as terrorists reallocate their efforts to aspects such as safe houses and network realignment, rather than attack planning and preparation. Wilner (2010) noted that eliminating senior leadership should cause an organization a great amount of "disarray," with their ability to perpetuate violence substantially decreased as communication and tactical planning suffer. ...
Although there has been research assessing the effectiveness of targeted killings in a variety of contexts, there remains important gaps in the literature. This study addresses these gaps by evaluating previously established nuanced effects together in one analysis, while at the same time incorporating vital country-level controls. This investigation utilizes two types of analytic strategies, ZINB and series hazard models, with multiple independent and dependent variables. Overall, this study fails to find any clear evidence that targeted killings are correlated with terrorism outcomes in the three countries in which they are most commonly used: Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
... Extensions (ix) and (x) deserve separate attention, as they affect the interpretation of our results. In extension (ix), preemptive repression may also be interpreted as surveillance, where security forces use random checks to identify active dissidents; countermeasures may be interpreted as countersurveillance (e.g., using coded communication, using alternative routes to go to a meeting ;Boykoff 2007;Hafez and Hatfield 2006;Starr et al. 2008). 9 In extension (x), investment in countermeasures continues to be a driving factor, as shirking by not investing in countermeasures is more tempting than shirking by not participating (the latter undoes the benefits of protest in any case, the former need not undo these benefits), and for this reason, our results are maintained. ...
... Dissidents may substitute between effort put in countermeasures and effort put in the protest. Given the presence of preemptive repression, the fact that dissidents need to invest in countermeasures may leave them with fewer remaining resources for the actual protest (Hafez and Hatfield 2006). Apart from this, dissidents facing preemptive repression may change the type of dissent they engage in (Starr et al. 2008), and preemptive repression may imply that only radical dissidents act as instigators (Ritter and Conrad 2016b), which may in turn affect the type of mobilization that takes place. ...
We present a game-theoretic model of the repression–dissent nexus, focusing on preemptive repression. A small group of instigating dissidents triggers a protest if each dissident participates. The dissidents face random checks by security forces, and when an individual dissident is caught while preparing to participate, he or she is prevented from doing so. Each dissident can invest in countermeasures, which make checks ineffective. For large benefits of protest, higher preemptive repression in the form of a higher number of checks has a deterrence effect and makes dissidents less prone to invest in countermeasures, decreasing the probability of protest. For small benefits of protest, higher preemptive repression instead has a backfiring effect. Both myopic and farsighted governments avoid the backfiring effect by setting low levels of preemptive repression (velvet-glove strategy). However, only a farsighted government is able to exploit the deterrence effect by maintaining a high level of preemptive repression (iron-fist strategy).
... empirical studies of terrorist leadership decapitation have focused on large-N quantitative analyses of its effectiveness as a strategy (e.g. Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Johnston, 2012;Jordan, 2009;Mannes, 2008;Price, 2012). While these studies have undoubtedly enhanced what we know about the effects of leadership decapitation on terrorist organizations, the failure to conduct sufficient comparative or mixed-methodological research that hybridizes findings from macro-, meso-, and micro-level analyses has effectively contributed to the division of scholars into two camps "for" and "against" the effectiveness of the strategy, based largely upon methodological and epistemological criticisms (e.g. ...
... The extent to which the style and nature of leadership differs across terrorist organizations has yet to be analyzed or integrated into any existing research model on leadership decapitation (e.g. Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Johnston, 2012;Jordan, 2009;Mannes, 2008;Price, 2012). In other words, existing studies assume that the terrorist leaders being examined are strategically, culturally, operationally, and inspirationally homogeneous. ...
Purpose
Despite the recognition of the importance of leaders to the formation and ongoing success of social and political movements, the study of leadership in terrorist groups remains underdeveloped. This article therefore aims to stimulate additional research into terrorist leadership in three main ways: (1) by providing a broad overview of the theoretical perspectives that scholars have used to examine terrorist leadership, (2) by critically reviewing the current state of the academic literature on terrorist leadership, and (3) by presenting various ways in which future research on terrorist leadership can be improved.
Design/methodology/approach
This article takes a conceptual and critical approach to reviewing the scholarly literature on terrorist leadership, and draws upon the author’s expertise with the wider multi-disciplinary literature on leadership to make methodological and conceptual recommendations to improve related future research.
Findings
There is a paucity of empirical and theoretical research devoted to understanding important social and strategic aspects of terrorist leadership, and existing scholarly research is largely conducted in isolation with differing methodological and epistemological starting points. This has hampered efforts to measure, operationalize, and understand key concepts involving leadership in terrorist groups.
Practical implications
This article provides several methodological and conceptual recommendations by which future research on terrorist leadership can be improved from insights taken from the wider scholarly literature on leadership. By virtue of being (considered for publication) in a criminology journal, this article helps disseminate and expose key concepts in the study of terrorism to related disciplines.
Originality/value
This article provides a general overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the study of terrorist leadership to scholars and students interested in the topic. It provides a foundational discussion of how the current literature on terrorist conceives of and utilizes the concept of leadership. It also provides methodological and conceptual recommendations to improve future research on terrorist leadership.
... However, decapitation is less successful if there is external support for the rebel group. Hepworth (2014) and Hafez and Hatfield (2006) find no significant association between targeted killing and civil war termination. Similarly, Jordan (2009) asserts that decapitation does not significantly affect the older, larger, religious, and separatist groups. ...
Why do peace agreements work in several democratic countries but not in several other democratic countries? This study addresses this puzzle by investigating the impacts of government turnover, measured by leader turnover and government ideological turnover, on the implementation of peace agreements in democratic countries. The idea is that the alternation of power - which political party comes to power - influences policy continuity. Generally, a completely new government, whose policy preferences differ from the preceding government, is less likely to implement inherited policies. The central theoretical framework of this study offers four explanations concerning the relationship between government turnover and the performance of peace agreements in democratic countries. First, insider leaders continue the incumbent governments' policy and facilitate the implementation of peace agreements. Second, outsider leaders come to power with the support of different electoral bases and impede the implementation of peace agreements which can force rebels to rearm themselves. Third, the left-wing government parties favor peaceful conflict resolution and facilitate the implementation of peace agreements. Fourth, the right-wing government parties prefer hawkish policies and hinder the performance of peace agreements. This study tests the assumptions of its central theoretical framework using a panel dataset and three illustrative cases: Colombia, Israel, and the Philippines. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the positive impacts of insider leader turnover and the adverse effects of outsider leader turnover on the implementation of peace agreements in the sampled countries. The performance of peace agreements becomes better following left-wing chief executives assume office. The sampled countries have witnessed an increase in the implementation of peace agreements following the largest left government parties taking office. These findings suggest that the performance of peace agreements in democratic countries largely relies on government turnover. Hence, this study contributes to the democratic civil peace thesis literature, which has overlooked why democracies differ themselves. Why do some democratic leaders negotiate peace agreements with rebels while other democratic leaders oppose peace agreements? The empirical evidence of this study might benefit international peacebuilding policy. A wide range of actors, from local NGOs and powerful states to intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, European Union, and African Union, administer international peacebuilding missions in conflict-affected countries. A debate remains on why international peacebuilding missions sometimes fail to achieve their core objectives and establish sustainable peace. This study suggests international peacebuilding actors conduct policy research on the government turnover trap - how to save peace agreements from severe failure when unlikely hawkish governments come to power in democratic countries.
... Nonetheless, whether targeting terror group leadership is a single strategy or part of a wider strategy, its success or failure may depend on the terrorist group structure and hierarchy of command. One way of evaluating the outcome of this strategy is by comparing the number and frequency of the group's attacks before and after its leadership is specifically targeted (Wilner, 2010;Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Jordan, 2009). Where the number of attacks reduces after a successful killing of the leader, the strategy is deemed effective; otherwise it is deemed ineffective (Dear, 2013:294). ...
As a qualitative research, this chapter examines governance failure as the roots of terrorism in Nigeria. It adopted the "gap framework" developed by Call (2010) which focused on three gaps that the state is not able to provide when there is the process of governance failure or state failure.
... With ongoing counterterror and counterinsurgency actions around the world, there is a growing interest in state, paramilitary, and civilian-driven violence against suspected insurgents and their supporters. While scholars generally consider indiscriminate use of retributive violence by the state as counterproductive to fighting insurgencies (Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004;Sambanis, Schulhofer-Wohl, and Shayo 2012;Valentino 2014;Souleimanov and Siroky 2016;though see Lyall 2009), less is known about the effectiveness of selective legal and extra-legal targeting of insurgents as part of a long-term counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategy (Byman 2006;Hafez and Hatfield 2006;Eck and Hultman 2007). Still less is known about public support for such retributive strategies against insurgents compared to approaches involving bargaining and negotiation (Cox 2020). ...
What drives public support for retributive violence against insurgents, a desire for revenge or security? We consider the case of suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Mosul Iraq. Using survey experiments, we inquire about public support for judicial as well as extrajudicial violence against insurgent combatants. We sample among ordinary civilians in Mosul who lived under ISIS rule as well as ISIS-affiliated families in displacement camps outside Mosul. We find that many Mosul civilians are highly tolerant of retributive violence against insurgents, but this tolerance is driven primarily by security concerns rather than revenge. In contrast, others, especially in displacement camps, oppose the punitive killing of insurgents because they regard such actions as counterproductive to long-term security goals. This tension speaks to potential security dilemmas surrounding retaliatory responses to insurgency. Instead, public security interests may be better served through nonviolent strategies, to include negotiations with insurgent forces and more restorative approaches to justice.
... Contrary to those claiming that drones strikes are a panacea for the problem of terrorism, a number of studies have showed that leadership targeting does not result in collapse of terrorist organizations (Pape, 1996, Hafez andHatfield, 2006). In a major study, analyzing 298 occurrences of leadership decapitation against 96 organizations, Jordan (2009) found that removal of terrorist leaders did not lead to the collapse of organizations. ...
... Assassinations, by this definition, thus have few pronounced effects. The key influence is that small scale conflicts can be exacerbated, while large-scale conflicts can be calmed (Jones & Olken, 2009); violence could escalate or decrease based on group reactions (Hafez & Hatfield, 2006). The perception of the general public can greatly influence what the response is to an assassination, allowing it to have a ripple effect. ...
The period following an assassination is one of fear and uncertainty for citizens of a nation after their leader has been assassinated. However, different nations experience assassinations differently; while some collapse and result in failed states, other nations have seen leaders rise to power. Thus, I examine how institutional forms—democracy, autocracy, and anocracy—influence and structure how a country experiences instability following the assassination of a head of state. I do this through a qualitative case study of three assassinations: John F. Kennedy of the United States in 1963; Rafael Trujillo of the Dominica Republic in 1961; and José Antonio “Chichi” Remón of Panama in 1955. The results show that although institutional form may structure how states experience instability and the assassination, they do not determine the final outcomes.
... The first empirical prediction was that, following the killing of Godane, there would be an increase in single suicide attacks, as a vengeful response to the killing. As previously noted, literature on the efficacy of leadership decapitation is mixed, 64 with a number of scholars arguing that leadership decapitation is ineffective and inevitably triggers more violence, 65 while others argue that leadership decapitation can be effective if it is operationalized under certain conditions. 66 Based on the data, there is evidence that leadership decapitation significantly increased the potency of Al-Shabaab. ...
Targeted killing is a cornerstone of counter-terrorism strategy, and tactical mistakes made by militant groups are endemic in terrorism. Yet, how do they affect a militant group’s suicide bomber deployment? Since joining Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab has carried out various types of suicide attacks on different targets. Using a uniquely constructed dataset, I introduce two typologies of suicide bomber detonation profiles – single and multiple – and explore the strategic purposes these have served for the group during multiphasic stages following targeted killings against the group’s leadership and targeting errors committed by Al-Shabaab. The findings reveal that targeted killing has the opposite effect of disrupting suicide attacks, instead, leading to a rapid proliferation of unsophisticated single suicide attacks against civilian and military targets to maintain the perception of the group’s potency. Thus, I argue that targeting errors made by Al-Shabaab have a more serious detrimental effect on its deployment of suicide attacks than any counter-terrorism measure.
... Nonetheless, whether targeting terror group leadership is a single strategy or part of a wider strategy, its success or failure may depend on the terrorist group structure and hierarchy of command. One way of evaluating the outcome of this strategy is by comparing the number and frequency of the group's attacks before and after its leadership is specifically targeted (Wilner, 2010;Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Jordan, 2009). Where the number of attacks reduces after a successful killing of the leader, the strategy is deemed effective; otherwise it is deemed ineffective (Dear, 2013:294). ...
The book examines the challenges of terrorism confronting Nigeria. In 15 chapters, it traces the dynamics and context of terrorism in the country and provides logical insights for stare intervention.
... 265 Johnston's research also provides similar interesting conclusions, which tend to "…challenge previous claims that removing militant leaders is ineffective or counterproductive. 266 On the contrary, they suggest that leadership decapitation (1) increases the chances of war termination; ...
The dissertation deals with the questions surrounding the legal, ethical and strategic aspects of armed drones in warfare. This is a vast and complex field, however, one where there remains more conflict and debate than actual consensus.One of the many themes addressed during the course of this research was an examination of the evolution of modern asymmetric transnational armed conflict. It is the opinion of the author that this phenomenon represents a “grey-zone”; an entirely new paradigm of warfare. International terrorism has not been dealt with in a cohesive fashion. Any international prosecution of terrorism which has been conducted has been either “sectoral” adopting a piecemeal typological approach or has been carried out at the domestic level.A novel approach to the problem, of subnational actors with transnational reach, was proposed, by attributing certain groups with a new legal personality, that of “Stateless International Entities”, or “SIEs”. Those groups who possess, for all intents and purposes, the same attributes as those of States, could then be judged for their behavior before an international tribunal. Other important topics addressed in this research include an examination of important case law, targeted killing, autonomy, preemption versus prevention, imminence versus intent, the find, fix and finish paradigm, the impact of the media, and the role of the CIA, and finally, the flawed reasoning which adopts technology as a form of strategy.
... To date, geographical research into terrorist target selection has largely concentrated on establishing how terrorist attacks are spatially distributed, whether they are concentrated to specific areas, and determining variations in risk (Townsley et al., 2008;Rossmo & Harries, 2011;Braithwaite & Johnson, 2015;Tench et al., 2016). Other studies have identified temporal variations in spatial patterns, such as changes in incidents and intensity of attacks per the changes in strategy of the organisation, or increases in attacks due to symbolic dates or special events (Hafez and Hatfield, 2006;Siebeneck et al. 2009). There have been several target based studies of this nature for group terrorism (Berrebi and Lakdawalla, 2007;Siebeneck et al., 2009, Webb andCutter, 2010;LaFree et al., 2012), but spatial patterns of group terrorism such as clustering and hotspots are unlikely to be replicated for lone attacks. ...
Research consistently supports the notion that terrorists are rational actors. However, there has been a tendency to focus on distal factors associated with involvement in terrorism, and there is a distinct lack of empirical research on aspects of attack commission at the individual level. Little has been done to identify proximal factors associated with attacks. This thesis uses multiple paradigms from environmental criminology, including journey-to-crime analyses, various spatial and temporal statistics, risk terrain modelling and discrete choice modelling, to examine the target selection for two of the current national security threats to the UK: lone-actor terrorism and Northern Ireland related terrorism. Collectively, the findings indicate that target selection is guided by an inherent logic, and that terrorists are rational in their spatial decision making. The first piece of analysis demonstrates that lone-actor terrorists behave in a similar way to group terrorists and urban criminals. Their residence-to-attack journeys display a classic distance decay pattern. The second empirical chapter shows how attacks by violent dissident Republicans in the period studied were spatially and temporally clustered. The following chapter identifies differences between risk factors for bombings and bomb hoaxes, and suggests that dissident Republicans may select less ideological targets for bombings relative to bomb hoaxes. The final empirical chapter demonstrates that the locations of attacks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army were influenced by characteristics of the target areas as well as the properties of their likely journey to the target. In the concluding chapter, a new framework for target selection is presented and assessed using illustrative examples of recent attacks in the U.K. Important insights are provided that could guide and improve the efficacy of preventative and disruptive measures.
... Regardless of their operational effectiveness,Hafez and Hatfield (2006) suggest that strikes on insurgent leadership may be politically useful to a state in signaling resolve to both their enemies and their domestic audience.Byman (2006; argues that targeted killings, especially by drones, will continue because of their political expedience but stresses that such strikes can only manage terrorism, not eradicate it. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fpa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/fpa/orz008/5380600 by University of Missouri-Columbia user on 06 September 2019 ...
This study investigates the relationship between US strikes targeting Al-Shabaab and civilian victimization using spatially disaggregated data. We find that US strikes make it approximately 5.5 times more likely that civilians are murdered—an effect that is comparable to battles and periods of territorial loss. Disaggregating based on the target of each strike, however, reveals a more nuanced relationship: strikes that destroy Al-Shabaab military assets are associated with more civilian killings, whereas there is some evidence that strikes that kill members significantly reduce this form of violence. This implies an ability of the United States to continue current policy while also minimizing the human costs that directly result from intervention. Notably, however, this would require a policy-shift that avoids destroying Al-Shabaab's war-fighting capabilities, thereby reducing the ability of the United States to undermine the organization's capacity to wage war.
... During the Al-Aqsa Intifada, again, the assassinaiions of mid and high-level operatives of the Hamas, PIJ and Fatah did not yield a significant deterrence effcct. 13 The more policy makers acknowledge that it is doubtful that the terrorist threat can be completely eliminated, the more attention is directed to the question of the deterrence effect of defensive measures. Here again, the empirical observations so far do not provide many reasons for optimism, although they do afford us a glance into the decision-making process of the terrorist groups. ...
... Regardless of effectivity concerns as well as growing public criticisms about both legality and moral legitimacy of those programs, the 16 This literature largely agrees that terrorist organizations, unlike states, prove to be more organizationally stable. Decapitation strikes might lead to martyrdom effects and removing leadership might lead to inadvertent organizational decentralization (Hafez & Hatfield, 2006;Hosmer, 2001;Jordan 2009Jordan ,2014Pape, 1996) Some newer studies have painted a more optimistic picture about decapitation as a viable counterterrorism strategy (Frankel, 2011;Johnston, 2012;Pryce, 2016). CIA and Department of Justice strategy papers largely share these concerns, crucially the 2009 CIA strategy paper "Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool" (CIA, 2009). ...
In this paper, I argue that today's 'high value targeting' of individuals in the context of the 'War on Terror' is rooted in strategic debates about 'decapitation strikes' that predate September 11. The 'decapitation' paradigm assumes that any enemy organization - whether a state, insurgent group or terrorist organization - can be dismantled by cutting off its 'head'-by killing their leaders. It anticipates a paralyzing effect on the groups the targeted individuals were 'heading'. The concept has its origins in late Cold War nuclear deterrence theory and gained relevance in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an aerial warfare strategy. Crucially, 'decapitation' and its set of 'body' metaphors established a new logic of enemies as organisms, detaching military targeting from the concept of the nation state. This contributed to an individualization of threat that proved to be applicable beyond its origins in interstate warfare, spilling over into counterterrorism. It connected decapitation with the logic of preemption and its set of medicinal metaphors. The latter stabilizes the nation state as the sole relevant legal person, contributing to a conception of individuals as targets, but not legal subjects. By tracing the storied career of 'decapitation' - as a concept and a metaphor - in United States targeting strategies, I emphasize normative change as slow and incremental. Metaphors offer a promising analytic pathway into this type of discursive transformation. They have a stabilizing function through the structuring force of the discourses embodied in them, but also allow leeway for agency. Their intertextuality and inherent contradictions can be leveraged by actors, both to transform and to stabilize meaning.
... This too is critical because, while seemingly better than a backlash response, it does not amount to what can be described a deterrent effect. This stasis has been observed in the Israeli-Palestinian context by Hafez and Hatfield (2006) who analyzed targeted assassinations during the al-Aqsa uprising from 2000 to 2004. The authors found that this policy had no impact on the violent output of Palestinian terrorist groups. ...
This article examines efforts to counter Boko Haram’s campaign of terrorism in Northern Nigeria from a deterrence–backlash perspective. Drawing from previous research, the authors develop hypothetical expectations for deterrence and backlash effects when counterterrorism policies are conducted at governmental and community levels. Using parametric survival analysis, the authors conclude that government policies designed to curb Boko Haram attacks resulted in backlash. Conversely, community-based efforts resulted in deterrence.
... Although controversial, these strategies may hold promise for combating the GJM above and beyond punitive strikes. It would also appear that such punitive measures have not been effective thus far and may even produce backlash effects (Dugan & Chenoweth, 2012;Hafez & Hatfield, 2006;. ...
Prior research has established a link between ideology and lethality, both within the homicide and terrorism literatures. We examine this relationship as it pertains to the Global Jihadist Movement (GJM). Using a series of logit and negative binomial models with a sample from the Global Terrorism Database, we find that the GJM is indeed more deadly. However, this relationship does not seem to differentially affect Americans, despite their role as the GJM’s defined “other.”
... A number of scholars have argued that targeted-killing or decapitation strikes are effective in the sense that they undermine the operational capabilities and resolve of enemy agents (Byman, 2006;Johnston, 2012;Price, 2012;Tiernay, 2015) or, at least, the moral within the attacking country (Wey, 2015). This argument of strategic effectiveness has been challenged by scholars who argue that the targeted killing of state (Hosmer, 2001;Pape, 1996) and non-state agents (Gill, Piazza, & Horgan, 2016;Hafez & Hatfield, 2006;Jordan, 2009Jordan, , 2014Kaplan, Mintz, Mishal, & Samban, 2005) has no effects or even negative effects such as increasing enemy resolve or inciting retributive attacks (see also Carvin, 2012, and, more recently, Abrahams & Mierau, 2015Johnston & Sarbahi, 2016;Lehrke & Schomaker, 2016;Morehouse, 2015). While these studies address the effectiveness of targeted killing in armed conflict, Bob and Erikson Nepstad (2007) analyze factors that influence the effects of killing leaders in social movements. ...
This article introduces the special issue’s question of whether and how the current transformation of targeted killing is transforming the global international order and provides the conceptual ground for the individual contributions to the special issue. It develops a two-dimensional concept of political order and introduces a theoretical framework that conceives the maintenance and transformation of international order as a dynamic interplay between its behavioral dimension in the form of violence and discursive processes and its institutional dimension in the form of ideas, norms, and rules. The article also conceptualizes targeted killing and introduces a typology of targeted-killing acts on the basis of their legal and moral legitimacy. Building on this conceptual groundwork, the article takes stock of the current transformation of targeted killing and summarizes the individual contributions to this special issue.
... They found that targeted house demolitions that destroyed the homes of people engaged in suicide terrorism reduced suicide attacks, while house demolitions that were carried out against property not directly associated with the specific suicide attack increased subsequent terrorism. Byman, examining Israel's policies of targeted killing found that such assassinations reduced the effectiveness of Hamas terrorism against Israel (Byman 2006), although others have found no effect (Hafez and Hatfield 2006). The Benmelech, Berrebi, and Klor (2010) and LaFree, Dugan, and Korte (2009) articles both suggest that counterterrorism actions can create a backlash. ...
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.
... Evidence from the relevant literature is currently inconclusive, with the aim of most prior studies centering on the legal and moral components of targeted killings, often in the context of the enduring Israeli-Palestine conflict. The results of some prior studies have revealed that targeted killings have no effect on insurgency violence in Palestine (Hafez and Hatfield, 2006), whereas others have uncovered deterrent effects after killings of terrorist leaders (Johnston, 2012;Price, 2012), and specifically those targeting the Taliban in Afghanistan (Wilner, 2010) and al-Qaeda operatives (Hepworth, 2014). ...
... While killing ISIS' leaders is an important aspect of the fight against ISIS, the past research on terrorist assassinations shows that killing terrorist leadership may not always represent a winning strategy-it does not work well if they can quickly replace charismatic and battlefield leadership, explosives expertise, and so forth. 20 ISIS continues to control large swaths of territories in Iraq and Syria, which it will unlikely lose access to altogether. The fact that its leaders are usually killed in the communities that provide support to them and that atrocities continue to be carried out by the enemies of ISIS as well, it may be that the group will continue to generate a steady stream of recruits and leaders in the areas in which it operates. ...
The United States and its allies continue to achieve significant military victories against ISIS (otherwise known as ISIL or the “Islamic State”). The loss of territories resulting from military victories is especially important given that ISIS relies in part on recruits from the territories it
controls. Efforts have also been directed at killing the group’s core leadership; stemming the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria through tightening up border security and surveillance;
and targeting militant jihadi narratives and propaganda that is pushed out by ISIS on a twentyfour/seven basis via the Internet and social media platforms. In such a complicated security landscape, a new discourse on ISIS is born—its allure, threat, grandeur, lawlessness, and
violence have emerged as the “new normal” in Syria and Iraq, and recently have spilled out to Western Europe and beyond in home grown and ISIS directed attacks. While cognizant of the progress achieved in the fight against ISIS, this article, in particular, highlights the dangers
emanating from the group’s continuing online, as well as face-to-face, recruiting success in theWest and the apparent stagnation in the fight for dominance in the digital battlefield where ISIS is currently winning.
... While all 20 of these efforts have been informative, their findings are based on government 21 actions that were identified by the authors as worthy of attention. By hand selecting 22 counterterrorism efforts to evaluate, we still are left in the dark on whether other 23 less extraordinary actions by states played any role in reducing (or increasing) 24 terrorist violence. To further complicate this potential bias, the types of actions 25 27 target hardening efforts, most of the counterterrorism activities described above 28 are repressive. ...
With the persistent alarm being raised about terrorist violence by the media and government officials it is unsurprising that scholarship in this area has grown well beyond its traditional disciplinary boundaries (i.e., political science and international relations). As scholars from disciplines such as criminology [27, 30], computer science [11, 12, 35], economics [25], and others get more involved, more data sources have become available [1, 19, 28, 50] and more sophisticated analytical methods have been applied to terrorism research [14, 17, 30]. Yet, research on the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures has only incrementally improved in recent years [33].
Why do militant groups decide to escalate or deescalate their use of violence in conflict? Examining the case of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, we analyze groups that adopt violence as a political strategy and evaluate factors that influence its application. To do so, we adopt a novel empirical approach to the study of militant groups. Drawn from information science, this approach enables estimation of variable influence and uncertainty within structured case studies, and is thus ideal for topics such as militant decision-making where systematic data collection is difficult.
This article examines the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine’s (PIJ) framing to explain the radicalisation and short-term tactical variations of its violent repertoires of action during the Second Intifada. By adopting a framing-sensitive approach, the analysis reveals that PIJ actions should be approached as relational performances that communicated a symbolic message to different audiences, beyond their immediate targets. This, in turn, solves some of the puzzles regarding the mixed effects of repression on political violence. Furthermore, by analysing PIJ thought through the lens of social movement theory, the article contributes to de-orientalise the academic knowledge on this group by highlighting the context-dependent character of its mobilisation strategies against Israel.
Since the beginning of the war on terror, the US has intensified security efforts in Africa, promoting regional initiatives and increasing bilateral cooperation with local governments to fight terrorism on the ground. Yet, despite Washington’s attempts, Islamist violence on the continent is on the rise. What is more, several of US African partners have been criticised for overstepping legal boundaries in the conduct of counter-terrorism operations, committing human rights violations against African people. This study fills a longstanding gap in the literature by exploring whether, and above all, how post-9/11 US security policies may have a negative impact on radicalisation in African states, increasing dynamics culminating with mobilisation into terrorism. Relying on a critical theoryinspired research orientation, it sets up an innovative and interdisciplinary framework, shifting the emphasis to local politics as a determinant for the impact of US policies and pointing to dynamics of violent interaction between African states and their population as a crucial dimension of radicalisation. Incorporating analytical elements from the research on remote warfare, security assistance and the role of agency, and social movements, the proposed framework develops around a three-step causal mechanism hypothesised to connect US policies to the increase in radicalisation on the ground. The mechanism posits that post-9/11 US security policies have a negative impact in African states characterised by the threat of terrorism and the use of indiscriminate repression against suspect groups by: 1) leading to the establishment of a partnership relationship within the framework of remote warfare; 2) from the partnership relationship, African states gain resources and room for manoeuvre to implement indiscriminate repression; 3) indiscriminate repression causes an increase in radicalisation in African states. To test such a mechanism, the research is designed as a case study, focusing on post-9/11 US security policies in Kenya by using theory-testing process tracing to identify the case-specific manifestations of the three steps. The research provides extensive evidence in support of the hypothesised mechanism in the case of Kenya, showing how US remote intervention, based on the provision of indirect support, has inadvertently contributed to fuelling the repressive campaign conducted by local security authorities against Muslims and ethnic Somalis, pushing the latter into the hands of the terrorist group Al Shabaab. Such findings have significant implications, pointing to the need of context-sensitive security policies acknowledging the political drivers of terrorism and the limits of remote warfare in Kenya. At the same time, they make a theoretical contribution, setting the foundation for a more thorough approach towards the study of US efforts in Africa which, by overcoming divisions in the discipline, could help shape more sustainable and effective security policies.
20. yüzyılın son önemli çatışmalarından birisi olan ve 19911 yılında cereyan eden Birinci Körfez Savaşı’nda o sıralarda adı fazla bilinmeyen ve popüler olmayan İHA’lar da sıklıkla kullanılmıştır. ABD bu dönemde İHA kullanımında tecrübe kazanmış ve elde ettiği tecrübeleri 11 Eylül saldırısı sonrasında Afganistan’ın işgalinde kullanmıştır. Afganistan ve Pakistan’daki Targeted Killing tarzı saldırılar da İHA’ların dünya kamuoyunca daha fazla bilinir hale gelmesini sağlamıştır. 2001 yılında ABD ordusunun İHA filosunun belkemiğini oluşturan Predator filosunda sadece 10 hava aracı mevcuttur ve çoğunlukla da keşif amaçlı olarak kullanılmışlardır. Afganistan’ın işgali ile daha önce keşif aracı olarak kullanılan İHA’lar artık bir silah haline gelmiştir. Gerek Afganistan gerekse de Irak’ta İHA’lar keşif aracı olarak kullanılmaya devam etse de, eklenen silah taşıma kapasiteleri onları spontane bir saldırı aracı haline de getirmiştir. Ve bu durum uluslararası hukuk açısından çok tartışılan bir konu haline gelmiştir. Bu gelişmeler sonucunda artık günümüzde kullanımda olan pek çok İHA sistemi vardır ve bunların geliştirmesi ve kullanımı ABD ve İsrail’le sınırlı değildir. Dünya üzerinde 70’ten fazla ülkede, farklı amaçlar için kullanılan İHA sistemleri mevcuttur.
Research Summary:
This study assesses the impact of state repressive counterterrorism actions on terrorists’ targeting and lethality of the terrorism landscape in Israel. Using systematic data on government responses to terrorism and an empirical model that addresses reciprocal relationships, we analyze dynamical interactions between types of government repression with attacks against civilian or government targets, and deadly terrorist violence. Contrary to public policy pronouncements of forcefully fighting terrorism to eradicate terrorist threats, our results suggest that repressive counterterrorism actions by the state increase terror and deadly violence. Importantly, the results indicate that these unintended escalatory or backlash effects are dependent on the scope of government repression, the type of terrorist targets, and the lethality of terrorism.
Policy Implications:
Our findings provide insight into particular behaviors and exchanges within the state repression–terrorism nexus that evoke and prolong terrorist violence. Centered on key aspects of terrorist activities involving target choice and deadly violence, our ecological study contributes to the development of a systematic understanding of specific impacts of government policies on terrorism. In all, constructing an empirically rigorous evidence base for terrorism prevention policies and practices is essential for ensuring the protection of human lives and public resources from terrorism.
Leadership decapitation, as a means of hindering the operations and hastening the demise of terrorist organizations, has been the subject of a growing body of research. However, these studies have not examined how an organization’s position in a broader network impacts its ability to weather decapitation. We argue that highly networked organizations possess characteristics that make decapitation less effective. To test this argument, we combine data on leadership decapitation with network data on terrorist organizations and find that well-networked organizations are resilience to leadership decapitation. Our study has implications for our understanding of how terrorist organizations respond to counterterrorism efforts.
Scholars are increasingly investigating the effectiveness of removing militant groups’ leaders; to date, their findings have been mixed. Rather than seeking consistent evidence, this article explains why some militant organizations demonstrate resilience to leadership targeting while others do not. The author argues that organizational context, especially the initial endowment set, determines the extent of institutionalization and ease of leadership succession. Organizations formed by appealing to shared identity and norms are less likely to implement institutionalized systems, instead depending heavily on charismatic leaders; conversely, groups with access to economic resources develop highly structured functions, leading to the routinization of leadership succession. Analysis of 153 militant organizations between 1970 and 2008 shows that organizations based on economic endowment show high resilience to this strategy. Groups that employ negative strategies against local communities as the product of their initial economic endowment are much less likely to be affected by forced leadership removal.
Despite the increased attention paid on drone strikes, there has not been yet a definite conclusion either on their effectiveness or their legality. Praised for their effectiveness on neutralising High-Value Targets of a terrorist organisation, usually, they fail to comply with the rules of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. On the contrary, legal against enemy combatants during an armed conflict usually fails to protect civilian or attack at the fundamental drivers of insurgency. This unstable sum of paradigms from the foreign policy and armed conflicts stage further diminishes any effort to provide with a uniform verdict. The current dissertation will attempt to analyze the legal framework and the effectiveness of drone strikes in an effort to contribute to the clarification of the subject.
Led by UCL, the purpose of this deliverable is to set out an analytical framework, which will 1) guide and motivate the project's data collection activities; and 2) provide the 'bare frame' around which to build LAEE scripts by identifying key categories of indicators associated with LAEEs, which are theorised to signposts opportunities for the prevention, disruption or mitigation of these events. The theoretical model described herein, based on prior work by the first author (Bouhana, UCL) is intended for use as a risk analysis framework (i.e. a model which sets out the relationships between categories of risk factors and indicators at different analytical levels).
Combat drones are transforming attitudes about the use of military force. Military casualties and the costs of conflict sap public support for war and for political and military leaders. Combat drones offer an unprecedented ability to reduce these costs by increasing accuracy, reducing the risks to civilians, and protecting military personnel from harm. These advantages should make drone strikes more popular than operations involving ground troops. Yet many critics believe drone warfare will make political leaders too willing to authorize wars, weakening constraints on the use of force. Because combat drones are relatively new, these arguments have been based on anecdotes, a handful of public opinion polls, or theoretical speculation.
Drones and Support for the Use of Force uses experimental research to analyze the effects of combat drones on Americans’ support for the use of force. The authors’ findings—that drones have had important but nuanced effects on support for the use of force—have implications for democratic control of military action and civil-military relations and provide insight into how the proliferation of military technologies influences foreign policy.
This note analyzes the effectiveness of leadership targeting in deterring militant operations. It broadens how we think about their deterrence effects by including nontargeted groups. I argue that leadership decapitation of one group signals to other would-be aggressors a state's capability and determination to deploy such actions against them. Nontargeted groups are thus forced to recalculate the cost-benefit balance of conducting further attacks, which leads to indirect deterrence. Using the Global Terrorism Database from 1970 to 2008 and Price's (2012) leadership decapitation data, targeted capturing is found to deter operations by nontargeted groups, and this effect is magnified when those militants form an alliance. While targeted killing is frequently executed through drone strikes, incurring lower costs and risk for the state, the findings indicate that killing a leader does not reduce militant operations. Policymakers should recognize the unintended effect deriving from one leadership decapitation and transform it into an intended outcome to maximize their expected payoffs.
Since the end of the second Chechen campaign, the North Caucasus counterinsurgency has experienced the shift from military involvement toward prevalence of law enforcement instruments. This paper discusses the composition of repressive tactics that the Russian state developed as a result of the two decades long evolution of a counter strategy designed to eliminate illegal armed groups operating in the North Caucasus. It is focused on the late stages of conflict (2007–2014) when the violence that had spread across the region started in the early 2000s had symbolically culminated in 2007 with the proclamation of the Caucasian Emirate. This paper advances a reconceptualization of the Russian counterinsurgency by devising an analysis of indiscriminate and discriminate repressive tactics. It demonstrates that security agencies incorporated more selective uses of violence into their tactics, thereby reducing the number of indiscriminate violent actions to an insignificant level. Moreover, along with selective violence, security institutions reinforced their effort by conducting preventive work such as the detection of secret caches of weapons, seizures, and arrests. Findings regarding the current composition of repressive tactics are illustrated by means of new disaggregated media-based data that were especially collected and analyzed to form the basis of this research.
Existing research has found that killing or capturing rebel group leaders can lead to the termination of civil wars. This paper considers the quality of those terminations, examining how wars end and whether this produces a lasting peace or only a temporary reprieve from violence. Decapitation is expected to weaken rebel groups, shifting the balance of power to the government; however, results suggest that killing or capturing a rebel group leader tends to produce termination through inactivity rather than outright government victories. Decapitation is also found to have no effect on the chances of civil war recurrence. This suggests that the removal of rebel group leaders is effective primarily as a short-term strategy that does not tend to generate a lasting peace.
Although the years since 9/11 have seen an significant increase in the contribution of criminologists to the study of terrorist events, efforts to apply major criminological theories to the understanding of the development of terrorist criminality and individual involvement in terrorist action have lagged. In this chapter, we apply a recently formulated theory of moral action and crime causation, Situational Action Theory, to the explanation of terrorism and radicalization. The case is made that explanations of terrorism and radicalisation should be mechanism-based and integrate all levels of analysis. Situational Action Theory is introduced and examples of its application to the study of terrorism and radicalization are provided. The priorities of a SAT-driven, systematic research agenda are outlined.
Terör örgütlerinde lider kadronun hedef alınıp tasfiye edilmesinin (decapitation) terörle mücadeleye etkileri, güvenlik ve terörle mücadele konusundaki çalışmalarda önemli bir tartışma konusudur. Bu konuda birbirinden farklı sonuçlara ulaşan akademik çalışmalar mevcuttur. Lider tasfiyesi bazı durumlarda oldukça etkili bir strateji olmasına karşın çoğu durumda terör örgütlerinin tamamen ortadan kaldırılmasını sağlamamıştır. Fakat bu stratejinin, örgütleri zayıflatıp belli süre için kayıplarını artırma konusunda etkili sonuçlar verdiği görülmüştür. Bu stratejinin aynı zamanda belirli riskleri de mevcuttur.
Member states have often resorted to decapitation as a weapon against terrorist organizations. Evidence from other counterterrorism experiences show a possible benefit from preserving ideologues or organizational leaders of terrorist groups, and using them in efforts of deradicalization or disengagement.
This chapter will apply the methodological understandings developed in the previous chapter to illustrate how metaphors map source onto target domains and how this predicates the action of terrorism and the terrorist actor in the German Bild and the British The Sun newspapers. So far metaphor and predicate analysis has predominantly been applied to elite discourses or what can be called ‘high data’. So for example the focus has been on speeches by leading politicians (Ferrari 2007) or on government statements or documents (Hülsse 2003a) from one country. Although there has been some investigation of media reporting (Pancake 1993; Zinken 2003; Lule 2004) and quality press newspapers (Flowerdew and Leong 2007), analysis of popular tabloid newspapers from different countries has so far been neglected.1 The central idea behind analysing the media rather than the political elite is that the media, and in particular the widely read tabloid media, give an insight into the construction of terrorism possibly held by large portions of the general public and the metaphoric ‘Joe the plumber’ or his German female equivalent ‘Erika Mustermann’. Furthermore, it is important to note that it was not the political elite but the media who were the first to metaphorise the events of 9/11 as war. George Lakoff (2001), one of the leading scholars on metaphors, has pointed out that the Bush administration first used a ‘crime’ metaphor to describe the attacks of 9/11 but then quickly replaced these with a ‘war’ metaphor.
This chapter examines the effectiveness of leadership decapitation
as a counterterrorism tool. Several States have put decapitation tactics—those that seek to kill or capture the leader of an organization—at the forefront of their counterterrorism efforts. However, most of the scholarly work on decapitation suggests it is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. Using survival analysis to measure decapitation effectiveness
against an original dataset, this chapter shows that decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate
(the rate at which groups end) of terrorist groups. The results indicate that the effect of decapitation on terrorist group mortality decreases with the age of the group, even to a point where decapitation may have no effect on the group’s mortality rate, which helps explain the previously perplexing mixed record of decapitation effectiveness. Additionally, this work puts forth a theoretical justification for why terrorist groups are especially susceptible to decapitation tactics and challenges the conventional wisdom regarding terrorist group durability, showing that politically relevant terrorist groups last significantly longer than previously believed.
This book considers not the beginning or origins of terrorism but how groups that use terrorism end. Terrorism as a tactic is unlikely to disappear, however virtually all the groups that employed terrorist violence during the 1960s and 1970s have passed from the scene in one way or another. Likewise most of the individuals who embarked on ‘careers’ in terrorism over these same years now engage in other pursuits.
Several major theories — deprivation theory, resource mobilization theory, and the theory of collective action — make different
predictions about the effects of repression on political protest. The results of empirical research have been inconclusive
as well: some studies have found that repression deters protest, whereas others have found a positive (radicalizing) effect
of repression on protest This article proposes a model that explains the different effects of repression, in conjunction with
other incentives, on political protest. We first hypothesize that repression has a direct negative (deterring) effect on protest
because repression is a cost. This direct effect may be endorsed under some conditions, or it may be neutralized, or even
reversed if repression leads to micromobilization processes that raise incentives for protest. These processes are set in
motion if persons are exposed to repression, if repression is considered illegitimate by these persons and their social environment
(which holds in case of legal protest), and if these persons are members of groups that support protest. Under such conditions
repression indirectly increases protest by launching micromobilization processes. These processes and their effects are specified
in a model which is tested and confirmed by a panel study of opponents of nuclear power in West Germany.
A central theoretical question in the literature on state-sanctioned terror is whether, and under what conditions, repressive violence deters or stimulates a shift in popular support away from the regime and toward the opposition. By combining a rational choice model of the nonelite response to escalating levels of death squad violence with a structural analysis of the global and domestic conditions under which the escalation of state-sanctioned terror can be expected, we demonstrate theoretically that carefully targeted repressive violence may in fact reduce the level of active popular support for the opposition, at least temporarily. However, as the level of repressive violence escalates and its application becomes more indiscriminate, it may in fact produce increases in active support for the opposition because nonelites can no longer assure themselves of immunity from repression by simply remaining politically inert. Thus, they turn to the rebels in search of protection from indiscriminate violence by the state. Why, then, would a regime, itself composed of supposedly rational individuals, pursue a policy of escalating repression if such measures are ultimately counterproductive? We argue that the conditions of structural dependence characterizing these regimes leave them without the institutional machinery, economic resources, or political will to address opposition challenges through more accommodative programs of reform. Thus, escalating repression is perpetrated not because it has a high probability of success but because the weakness of the state precludes its resort to less violent alternatives. The utility of this approach is illustrated with a case study of reform, repression, and revolution in El Salvador.
A basic problem for a rational choice theory of rebellious collective action is to explain why average citizens would participate in such behavior, since they have nothing to gain (they will receive benefits of successful rebellion, in terms of public goods, regardless of whether they take part or not), but much to lose (rebellious behavior may be quite costly). According to the conventional private interest or "by-product" theory, the incentive to participate must come from the expectation of receiving selective benefits; but since average citizens in a general case cannot expect substantial private material rewards, the relevant selective benefits must be psychological in nature. In contrast to the model of private interest theory, a public goods model is proposed, stipulating that the value of rebellion in terms of public goods can be a relevant incentive for participation. Using data from surveys conducted in New York City and Hamburg, West Germany, we investigate the relationship between participation in rebellious political behavior and measures of the incentives of public goods and private interest. The results do not support predictions of the private interest model in regard to nonmaterial selective incentives. Hypotheses of the public goods model are supported.
We propose two models to explain why individuals participate in collective political action--a personal influence model and a collective rationality model. Each model overcomes the free-rider problem posed by conventional rational choice theory and left unresolved in previous research. The models are tested for legal and illegal protest behaviors, using data from a national sample and two samples of protest-prone communities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The personal influence model is supported for both forms of participation, while the collective rationality model is supported for legal protest. We discuss implications of the results for grievance and rational choice theories of collective political action.
Discontent theories of rebellion postulate that politicized discontent will have a strong independent effect on individuals' potential to participate in rebellious political action. Expected utility theories postulate that participation in rebellious action is motivated by expectation of reward and that discontent is relevant at most only insofar as individuals expect that collective action can be successful and that their participation is important to that end. We test these theories with data from a national sample and a sample of students at a protest-prone university in Peru, a country with significant objective conditions of discontent and a high incidence of rebellious political conflict. The results provide no evidence for the discontent models but strong support for the expected utility models. The potential for participation in rebellious political action proves to be a function primarily of discontent weighted by the expectancy of the action's success and the perceived importance of personal participation. Private social and normative rewards and costs also are relevant--but to a lesser extent--for the individual's calculation of the expected utility of participation.
What do dissidents do after a massacre? This article uses thirty-one brutal repressions to test collective-action theory in the harshest possible context. After a massacre, dissidents are outraged at the state, but also fearful of further repression. Can dissidents mobilize backlash protests in these circumstances? The report shows that there usually is sufficient communication of the massacre to enable subsequent backlash mobilization. Also, there is sufficient continuity in leadership after the massacre to coordinate backlash protest. The massacre-event leadership either remains in tact or is immediately and effectively replaced after the event. Moreover, dissident leaders use adaptive tactics to elude subsequent repression in most cases. A Bayesian updating test for mobilization shows that repression reduces backlash protests and that no repression increases backlash. This report concludes by affirming that collective-action theory works even in this highly challenging situation.
In spite of the centrality of the relationship between repression and mobilization to our understanding of state-movement interactions, the literature has not even come close to providing conclusive answers. A variety of competing models exists, each of which can claim some theoretical plausibility and empirical support. This inconclusiveness seems to derive from the general level of analysis in many studies and from insufficient empirical acknowledgment of the interactive and dynamic nature of the repression-mobilization nexus. This paper aims to avoid these problems by presenting a detailed analysis of the interaction between the mobilization of the German extreme right and the different forms of repression that state authorities have reactively applied. Two types of repression—institutional and situational—and their impacts on two types of mobilization—violent and nonviolent—are distinguished and analyzed both cross-sectionally, by comparing the sixteen German federal states, and diachronically, through a time-series analysis for the period 1990-1994. The results consistently show that the two types of repression have very different impacts on mobilization. Whereas situational police repression as a direct reaction to mobilization events had an escalating effect, more indirect, institutional repress-sion such as bans of organizations and demonstrations or trials and court rulings against activists had a clear negative impact on the extreme right's level of mobilization. The article discusses several reasons for this relative effectiveness of institutional repression, including its greater degree of consistency and legitimacy as well as its preventive focus on mobilizing structures.
This article describes a substitution model of states' responses to dissident behavior and a statistical test of some sequential hypotheses that are derived from the model. It is motivated by an interest in understanding the sequential response of states to dissident activity. That is, if dissidents protest, what will the state do next? Similarly, if dissidents are cooperative, what will the state do next? The author argues that the answer to both of these questions depends on the interaction of the state's most recent behavior (i.e., repression or accommodation) and the dissident's response. The model produces the hypothesis that states substitute repression for accommodation, and vice versa, in response to dissident protest. Statistical analysis of evidence from Peru and Sri Lanka, 1955 to 1991, suggests that the model captures well the sequential responses of the Peruvian and Sri Lankan governments to dissident behavior during that period.
Many people [in Guatemala] did begin to join the guerrillas, while many more were sympathetic or quietly supportive. The guerrillas are the only remaining source of defense left to a community or family. I know of villages that experienced actual massacres against innocent
campesinos
, who were not even members of coops. The survivors of these massacres would often turn to the guerrillas. With all their anger about the murders of their kin and neighbors, there was nowhere else to turn.
—quoted in S. Davis and J. Hodson,
Witnesses to Political Violence in Guatemala
Central american events of recent decades show human behavior at both its most courageous and its most barbaric. The opposing phenomena of popular mobilization and state terrorism pose some of the most profound questions that can be asked by social science. How can we explain the willingness of political elites and their agents to slay thousands—tens of thousands—of their fellow human beings, even when their victims are unarmed? Conversely, how do we account for ordinary people undertaking collective action under circumstances so dangerous that even their lives are at risk?
Maldistribution of land in agrarian societies is commonly thought to be an important precondition of mass political violence and revolution. Others argue that because of the difficulty of mobilizing rural populations for political protest, land maldistribution is irrelevant except as part of an inegalitarian distribution of income nationwide. These rival inequality hypotheses have significant implications with respect to the kinds of reforms likely to reduce the potential for insurgency in a society. They are tested using the most comprehensive cross-national compilation of data currently available on land inequality, landlessness, and income inequality. Support is found for the argument that attributes the greater causal import to income inequality. Moreover, the effect of income inequality on political violence is found to hold in the context of a causal model that takes into account the repressiveness of the regime, governmental acts of coercion, intensity of separatism, and level of economic development.
Theory: A synthetic theoretical model built on both deprivation and resource mobilization arguments is constructed to explain ethnopolitical rebellion for the 1980s and to provide risk assessments for the early 1990s. Hypotheses: We hypothesize that ethnopolitical groups which produce residuals well below the regression line will likely exhibit rebellious behavior in the early 1990s. Methods: We use a three stage least squares estimator, analyze the coefficients and their standard errors, and also examine the residuals. Results: We find broad support for the theoretical synthesis, but focus attention on the risk assessments. In addition to identifying ethnopolitical groups that did resort to greater violence in the early 1990s, the theoretical model helps us explain why a number of groups that the analysis suggested would rebel in the early 1990s have not in fact done so.
This article describes some results of a successful attempt to assess and refine a causal model of the general conditions of several forms of civil strife, using cross-sectional analyses of data collected for 114 polities. The theoretical argument, which is discussed in detail elsewhere, stipulates a set of variables said to determine the likelihood and magnitude of civil strife. Considerable effort was given here to devising indices that represent the theoretical variables more closely than the readily-available aggregate indices often used in quantitative cross-national research. One consequence is an unusually high degree of statistical explanation: measures of five independent variables jointly account for two-thirds of the variance among nations in magnitude of civil strife (R = .80, R ² = .64).
It should be noted at the outset that this study does not attempt to isolate the set of conditions that leads specifically to “revolution,” nor to assess the social or political impact of any given act of strife except as that impact is reflected in measures of “magnitude” of strife. The relevance of this kind of research to the classic concern of political scholarship with revolution is its attempt at identification and systematic analysis of conditions that dispose men to strife generally, revolution included.
Death rate from political violence is postulated to vary cross-nationally as a positively accelerated time-lagged function of income inequality and as a nonmonotonic inverted "U" function of regime repressiveness. The former hypothesis is consistent with approaches to the explanation of collective political violence that emphasize the general concept of discontent or, more specifically, relative deprivation; the latter hypothesis is consistent with a political-process version of the resource mobilization approach. In the context of a multivariate model estimated across two decades, 1958-67 and 1968-77, support is found for the inequality hypothesis. Support also is found for the regime repressiveness hypothesis in the decade (1968-77) for which the index of regime repressiveness is available. The U-curve effect of regime repressiveness appears to have stronger impact on variation in rates of deadly political violence than the positively accelerated effect of income inequality.
The application of rational expectations theory to policies of retaliation against terrorism suggests that only unexpected retaliations will be effective in causing terrorist attacks to deviate from their natural rate and that there is a time inconsistency problem in responding to terrorism. Since the optimal response rate to terrorism would never be believable to the terrorists, the first best policy may be for the government retaliating against terrorism to have its response rate constrained by an externally imposed rule. A time series intervention model of terrorist attacks against Israel supports the natural rate hypothesis and, therefore, also the desirability of a retaliatory rule over policy discretion. Israeli retaliation for the 1972 Munich massacre was the first Israeli retaliation of unexpectedly large magnitude, and it produced a temporary deviation of terrorist attacks from the natural rate. Retaliation has no long-term deterrent or escalation effect.
I investigate how and why the Shah's policies of accommodation and repression escalated the revolutionary mobilization of the Iranian population. Several major theories--micromobilization theory, value expectancy, and bandwagon (critical mass) models--are used to sort out the empirical relationships between protest behavior (violent and nonviolent), strikes, spatial diffusion, concessions, and repression in the year prior to the Shah's exit from Iran. Estimates from Poisson regression models show that repression had a short-term negative effect and a long-term positive effect on overall levels of protest via repression's influence on spatial diffusion. I infer that this pattern of effects stems from a combination of deterrent and micromobilization mechanisms. Concessions expanded the protests by accelerating massive urban strikes that in turn generated more opposition activity throughout Iran. Spatial diffusion was encouraged by government concessions and massive labor strikes. Mutually reinforcing relationships between concessions, strikes, and spatial diffusion indicate the significance of intergroup dynamics in the revolutionary process.
Existing rational choice treatments of collective violence have consistently discounted the role of the public goods component of the individual's decision calculus about whether or not to participate in such acts. By assuming free rider effects with respect to the public goods, these theories are unable to account for the initial inception of violence or for the later nonlooting behaviors that constitute aspects of a riot and, indeed, are preconditions for the inception of looting, the only riot behavior for which these theories can offer any explanation. Five dimensions of discrimination are defined in rational choice terms and their elimination (or reduction) is defined as the creation of a public good. I use existing theories of individual contributions to the provision of public goods to demonstrate that free rider effects need not be assumed and that the inception of a riot and later nonlooting riot behaviors can best be explained as individual contributions to the provision of the public goods represented by the elimination of the several forms of discrimination.
Theory: Two expected utility theories and one psychological/resource mobilization theory of the impact of repression on dissent are tested in this study. Hypotheses: Lichbach (1987) hypothesizes that dissidents will substitute violent protest for nonviolent protest behavior (and vice versa) when confronted with repression. Gupta, Singh, and Sprague (1993) put forth a contextual argument: repression spurs violence in democracies, but high levels of repression are effective in authoritarian regimes. Rasler (1996) contends that timing matters: repression is effective in the short run, but spurs pro-test in the long run. Methods: Sequential tests of events data are used to test the hypotheses. Results: Lichbach's theory is supported by the evidence, but neither Gupta, Singh, and Sprague's nor Rasler's theories receives support.
Foreword Sidney Tarrow List of abbreviations Preface 1. Comparative research on political violence 2. Political violence in Italy and Germany: a periodization 3. Violence and the political system: the policing of protest 4. Organizational processes and violence in social movements 5. The logic of underground organizations 6. Patterns of radicalization in political activism 7. Individual commitment in the underground 8. Social movements, political violence and the state a conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.
Using quarterly data from 1968 to 1988, we analyze the time series properties of the various attack modes used by transnational terrorists. Combining vector autoregression and intervention analysis, we find strong evidence of both substitutes and complements among the attack modes. We also evaluate the effectiveness of six policies designed to thwart terrorism. The existence of complements and substitutes means that policies designed to reduce one type of attack may affect other attack modes. For example, the installation of metal detectors in airports reduced skyjackings and diplomatic incidents but increased other kinds of hostage attacks (barricade missions, kidnappings) and assassinations. In the long run, embassy fortification decreased barricade missions but increased assassinations. The Reagan “get tough” policy, which resulted in the enactment of two laws in 1984 and a retaliatory raid on Libya in 1986, did not have any noticeable long-term effect on curbing terrorist attacks directed against U.S. interests.
The relationship between coercion and protest, arguably the core of any theory of rebellion, remains unresolved. Competing hypotheses have emerged from formal models and empirical research. This article uses two forms of the predator-prey model to test these competing hypotheses. Time-series data from three coercive states (the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and the Palestinian Intifada) are used to estimate parameters for both models. Results show stable, damped relationships in all three cases. The “inverted U” hypothesis receives less support than its “backlash” alternative, that is, that dissidents react strongly to extremely harsh coercion. Moreover, the study indicates that protesters adapt to coercion by changing tactics.
Research on protest and repression has shown that state coercion may result in increased mobilization or effectively deter further challenges. The nature of dissident responses to repression is largely context-based. In Burma, as the military regime faced a massive uprising, although brutal coercion failed to quell the rebellion in August 1988, it succeeded in suppressing the democratic movement only a few weeks later. Such a difference is explained in terms of contextual transformations resulting from the government's strategic adaptation. Specifically, by suspending the supply of social order, the regime presented the population with Hobbes's dilemma. Forced to choose between dictatorship and anarchy, the Burmese people overwhelmingly defected from the democratic movement and reluctantly accepted the reestablishment of a highly oppressive order. This analytic narrative seeks to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between protest and repression and enrich the literature on strategic adaptation.
Research on protest and repression has shown that state coercion may result in increased mobilization or effectively deter further challenges. The nature of dissident responses to repression is largely context-based. In Burma, as the military regime faced a massive uprising, although brutal coercion failed to quell the rebellion in August 1988, it succeeded in suppressing the democratic movement only a few weeks later. Such a difference is explained in terms of contextual transformations resulting from the government's strategic adaptation. Specifically, by suspending the supply of social order, the regime presented the population with Hobbes's dilemma. Forced to choose between dictatorship and anarchy, the Burmese people overwhelmingly defected from the democratic movement and reluctantly accepted the reestablishment of a highly oppressive order. This analytic narrative seeks to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between protest and repression and enrich the literature on strategic adaptation.
Existing models of revolutions tend to focus only on the behavior of the revolutionaries and do not account for government actions. This article presents a model that captures the decision making of a repressive government, career dissidents, and revolutionary participants. The model shows that (a) governments rarely offer concessions to protesters, (b) dissident activity is more likely to be successful in motivating large-scale protest under highly repressive conditions, and (c) Kuran's hypothesis that regimes collapse suddenly with little warning is confirmed. The authors use the model to interpret the different outcomes that occurred during the successful Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the failed revolution in China during the Tiananmen Square democracy protests.
This article describes a substitution model of states' responses to dissident behavior and a statistical test of some sequential hypotheses that are derived from the model. It is motivated by an interest in understanding the sequential response of states to dissident activity. That is, if dissidents protest, what will the state do next? Similarly, if dissidents are cooperative, what will the state do next? The author argues that the answer to both of these questions depends on the interaction of the state's most recent behavior (i.e., repression or accommodation) and the dissident's response. The model produces the hypothesis that states substitute repression for accommodation, and vice versa, in response to dissident protest. Statistical analysis of evidence from Peru and Sri Lanka, 1955 to 1991, suggests that the model captures well the sequential responses of the Peruvian and Sri Lankan governments to dissident behavior during that period.
This article proposes and tests a self-generative theory of conflict processes within nations. We dissect the "conflict breeds conflict" truism into three hypotheses: (1) the present extent of conflict simultaneously determines its intensity, while the present intensity of conflict determines its future extent; (2) the present extent of protest determines the present extent of rebellion and vice versa; and (3) the extent and intensity of both protest and rebellion persist over time. Our principal findings are: (1) man-days of protest is a weak positive and linear function of simultaneous man-days of rebellion and lagged man-days of protest; (2) deaths from protest is a strong curvilinear function of simultaneous man-days of protest; (3) man-days of rebellion is a weak positive and linear function of simultaneous man-days of protest and lagged man-days of rebellion, and a U-shaped function of lagged deaths from rebellion; (4) deaths from rebellion is a strong exponential function of present man-days of rebellion, and a linear and positive function of lagged deaths from protest and from rebellion. We conclude that the self-generative model provides a less-than-sufficient explanation of variations in internal conflict.
This article presents some @'rational-actor@' models that depict the negotiation process between terrorists and government policymakers for those incidents where hostages or property are seized and demands are issued. The models account for the objectives and constraints faced by both the terrorists and the policymakers. Uncertainty is introduced through probability constraints (i.e., chance constraints) requiring a specific likelihood of some event occuring. Implications are subsequently extracted from the comparative static analysis as the models' parameters are changed. The last part of the article presents a club theory analysis concerning the sharing of transnational commando forces.
Much empirical work in the social-movements literature has focused on the role of social ties in movement recruitment. Yet these studies have been plagued by a troubling theoretical and empirical imprecision. This imprecision stems from three sources. First, these studies are generally silent on the basic sociological dynamics that account for the reported findings. Second, movement scholars have generally failed to specify and test the precise dimensions of social ties that seem to account for their effects. Finally, most studies fail to acknowledge that individuals are embedded in many relationships that may expose the individual to conflicting pressures. This article seeks to address these shortcomings by means of an elaborated model of recruitment that is then used as a basis for examining the role of social ties in mediating individual recruitment to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.
Aggregate data studies of domestic political conflict have used an Action-Reaction (AR) model that has produced contradictory findings about the repression/dissent nexus: Repression by regimes may either increase or decrease dissent by opposition groups. To clarify these findings I propose an alternative Rational Actor (RA) model from which are derived three propositions. (1) An increase in a government's repression of nonviolence will reduce the nonviolent activities of an opposition group but increase its violent activities. (2) The balance of effects, that is, whether an increase in the regime's repression increases or decreases the opposition group's total dissident activities, depends upon the government's accommodative policy to the group. (3) Consistent government accommodative and repressive policies reduce dissent; inconsistent policies increase dissent. The RA model thus accounts for the contradictory findings produced by the AR-based aggregate data studies of repression and dissent.
Propositions about determinants of political violence at the cross-national level are derived from rational action theory and tested across the entire population of independent states in the mid-1970s. The data support two rational action hypotheses: Rates of domestic political violence are higher at intermediate levels of both regime repressiveness and negative sanctions than at either low or high levels of these indicators of institutionalized and behavioral coercion. Two hypotheses that can be interpreted within either a rational action or a deprivation framework also are supported: High rates of economic growth reduce the incidence of political violence, and potential separatism increases the incidence of violence. A deprivation hypothesis that high life expectancy reduces the incidence of political violence is not supported. Overall, this set of findings favors a rational action rather than a deprivation approach to explaining why nations differ in rates of political violence.
Theory: The theory of protest under varying levels of coercion forms the context for an investigation of the data on protest coercion in Germany and Northern Ireland for 11 years (1982-92), aggregated weekly. Hypotheses: The standard inverted-U hypothesis is tested against competing unstable (protest and coercion diverge and oscillate); backlash (coercion increases protest); and adaptation (protesters change tactics after coercion) hypotheses. Methods: Three forms of the biological predator-prey model are estimated with two-and three-stage least squares and supplemented with a Bayesian updating test. Results: The predator-prey mechanism fits the German data well, even in a context of low coercion. The results cast doubt on the inverted-U hypothesis, support the backlash hypothesis and strengthen the evidence that protesters adapt. Northern Ireland's terror-based protest and coercion did not conform as well to the predator-prey model, but protesters did adapt in a separate test of Bayesian updating.
Political protest and rebellion by communal groups has become a major impetus to domestic and international political change. This study uses new coded data on 227 communal groups throughout the world to assess a general model of how and why they mobilize to defend and promote their collective interests. Statistical analysis shows that cultural identity, inequalities, and historical loss of autonomy all contribute substantially to their grievances. Political mobilization, grievances, and the international diffusion and contagion of communal conflict jointly explain the extent of political action in the 1980s. Democracy, state power, and institutional change help determine whether conflict takes the form of protest or rebellion.
Positive and negative selective incentives are shown analytically to have different structural implications when used to induce collective action. Positive selective incentives are effective for motivating small numbers of cooperators and generate pressures toward smaller, more "elite" actions, unless the incentives have jointness of supply. Nega tive selective incentives are effective for motivating unanimous co operation, but their use is often uneven and cyclical and may gener ate hostilities which disrupt the cooperation they enforce. Examples of these dynamics are found in many arenas of collective action and social movements. One important feature of collective action is the use of selective incen tives to reward those who cooperate in the action or punish those who do not. An arts fund may reward contributors by giving a lavish party or by printing their names in a program. Workers ensure cooperation with a strike by threatening to ostracize or beat up strikebreakers. In the 1960s, famous folksingers rewarded antiwar demonstrators by singing at protest rallies. In the 1970s, Louisville antibusing protesters threatened violence against other whites to induce them to keep their children out of school. This paper considers relations among potential cooperators, not their re lations with any "enemy." It discusses the processes that arise when actors reward and punish each other to motivate or sustain cooperation in some form of collective action. The first half of the paper provides a formal analysis which reviews the work of Mancur Olson and his critics, formal izes the decision to participate in collective action, and then formalizes and examines the decision to use a resource as a selective incentive to in duce others to act collectively. The second half of the paper draws out the implications of this analysis. The most important implication is the difference between rewards and punishments when they are used as selective incentives. This implication 1 I would like to thank James Wiggins, Elizabeth Martin, Patricia Rieker, Jean War ren, Ross Purdy, William Gamson, and Anthony Oberschall for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and especially to acknowledge the extensive, detailed, and illuminating critical commentary of John Lemke, Bertrand Shelton, and three anony mous reviewers as this paper moved toward its final form.
The dynamic effect of government coercion on dissident activities has been a controversial issue. It is contended that this relationship is significantly altered when different control variables such as regime type, ideological orientation, and economic performance are employed. Time series data based on 24 countries is used to estimate the net effect of government coercion on two types of dissident activities: protest demonstrations and deaths from domestic group violence. It is shown that in democratic nations, government sanctions provoke a higher level of protest demonstrations. However, in nondemocratic countries, at the extreme, severe sanctions can impose an unbearable cost, resulting in an inverse relationship between sanctions and political deaths. The nature of the regime influences not only the dynamics of the relationship between government coercion and dissident activities, but also the qualitative character of opposition response.
The connection between dissent and repression has been the topic of much theory and empirical research, but little agreement on the relationship can be found. We reconceptualize the linkage in terms of an interactive process model of changes in the grievances and resourcemobilizations of dissident movement and regime countermovement. Diachronic modeling is proposed as superior to the cross-sectional approach for unraveling dissent-repression interactions. Dynamic modeling techniques are employed to experiment with three linear “mutuality models” using the scope and intensity dimensions of dissent and repression. Our findings reveal significant similarities and differences among the models studied that would be difficult to intuit from conventional methods. Dynamic modeling of complex rivalry relationships emerges as a potentially useful methodology for constructing effective policies of conflict resolution.
Past analysis of social movements and social movement organizations has normally assumed a close link between the frustrations or grievances of a collectivity of actors and the growth and decline of movement activity. Questioning the theoretical centrality of this assumption directs social movement analysis away from its heavy emphasis upon the social psychology of social movement participants; it can then be more easily integrated with structural theories of social process. This essay presents a set of concepts and related propositions drawn from a resource mobilization perspective. It emphasizes the variety and sources of resources; the relationship of social movements to the media, authorities, and other parties; and the interaction among movement organizations. Propositions are developed to explain social movement activity at several levels of inclusiveness-the social movement sector, the social movement industry, and social movement organization.