Joseph K. Young

Terrorism and Civil War: A Spatial and Temporal Approach to a Conceptual Problem

What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Most current research on these topics either explicitly or implicitly separates the two, in spite of compelling reasons to consider them together. In this paper, we examine the extent to which terrorism and civil war overlap and then unpack various temporal and spatial patterns. To accomplish this, we use newly geo-referenced terror event data to offer a global overview of where and when terrorist events happen and whether they occur inside or outside of civil war zones. Furthermore, we conduct an exploratory analysis of six separate cases that have elements of comparability but also occur in unique contexts, which illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war. The data show a high degree of overlap between terrorism and ongoing civil war and, further, indicate that a substantial amount of terrorism occurs prior to civil wars in Latin America, but yet follows civil war in other regions of the world. While the study of terrorism and of civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer a possibility for future research by considering how geo-referenced terror and civil war data may be utilized together. More generally, we expect these results to apply to a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors in contentious politics.

Veto Players and Terror

Democratic regimes have been linked to terrorism for contending reasons, with some scholars claiming democracy increases terrorism and others claiming it decreases terror. Corroborating evidence has been used for both relationships leading to the following puzzle: why do some democratic regimes seem to foster terrorism while others do not? We offer an explanation based on Tsbelis’s veto players theory. Beginning with the assumption that terror groups want to change government policy, we argue that the more veto players present in a political system, the more likely the system is to experience deadlock. Given the inability of societal actors to change policies through nonviolent and institutional participation, these systems will tend to generate more terror events. We also explore different methods for estimating terrorism models. We identify several ways to match the data with the proper statistical estimator and discuss implications for terrorism research. Finally, we use new data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) that was previously unavailable. These data allow us to use different operational definitions of terrorism and to identify homegrown terror events.

Repression, Dissent, and the Onset of Civil War

The prevailing scholarly wisdom is that weak states, or resource-poor states, are the most prone to civil war. Yet many weak states never experience civil war. Why then are some weak states prone to civil war while others are not? The author offers a theory that explains how dissidents and states interact to jointly produce civil war. In sum, states that repress their citizens are the most likely to kill citizens and to generate dissident violence. This insight resolves an academic puzzle and when tested provides a model with better predictive ability than previous models.

State Capacity, Democracy, and the Violation of Personal Integrity Rights

While a large literature explores the effect that regime type has on personal integrity rights violations, few studies have explored a state-centric approach to understanding these violations. I develop an argument that focuses on the leaders of the state and the incentives that they have to protect or violate rights. Moving beyond the democracy-autocracy debate, I claim that state leaders who are more secure, face fewer costs in producing their desired policies, and have more bargaining power vis-à-vis their domestic opponents are less likely to violate their citizens personal integrity rights. Using a series of econometric models, I find support for many of the hypotheses derived from the argument. Based on the results of the models, I offer some potential policy implications.

Fighting Fire with Fire? How (Not) to Neutralize an Insurgency

From as early as the Roman Empire to the present day, governments have grappled with how best to respond to political violence from organized insurgent groups. In response to insurgent groups, some governments have emphasized a direct military response or what is often called ‘attrition’. Other states have stressed a softer, political strategy or what is often called the ‘hearts and minds’ approach. Either approach places the population at the center of a struggle between the government and violent dissidents. Despite numerous works emphasizing either ‘attrition’ or ‘hearts and minds’, few theoretical studies have attempted to compare their relative success. Using an agent-based computational model, we examine which approach is more successful at quelling insurgencies and find that a hearts and minds approach is superior to an attrition strategy. We illustrate the model with insights from the Iraqi insurgency and, more generally, the model has implications for other insurgencies, such as in Chechnya.

Political Networks: Editors' Introduction: A Relational Political Science

Political science is diverse in its methods, theories, and substantive interests. A quick perusal of our flagship journals reveals just how heterogeneous we are, with articles ranging from mathematical treatments of theoretical problems to textual exegesis of Plato, and qualitative studies of single countries standing in contrast to quantitative analyses of experiments designed to mobilize voters. At times, the disciplines boundaries are so fuzzy that our territory is alternatively claimed by philosophers, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and psychologists.

More Combatant Groups, More Terror?: Empirical Tests of an Outbidding Logic

We examine and test the logic that outbidding among insurgent groups results in more suicide terrorism specifically and more terrorism of any type, which has become a popular argument in recent years. A global analysis of terrorism from 1970–2004 provides scant support for the notion that outbidding increases suicide terrorism. An extension of the argument to all types of terrorist attacks provides even less support. The logic of outbidding has received considerable attention in academic and policy circles in recent years. 1 Similar to the argument that democratic occupation increases suicide terror, 2 our lack of empirical support suggests that considerable cross-national work is still needed to understand suicide terror adequately. We suggest some reasons why this may be the case, drawing particular attention to the problem of overgeneralizing from a limited set of cases.

A political economy of human rights: Oil, natural gas, and state incentives to repress1

Oil and other natural resources are linked to many undesirable outcomes, such as civil war, autocracy and lack of economic development. Using a state-centered framework for revenue extraction, we identify why oil should also be linked to another undesirable effect: repression. We argue that repression is less costly where states do not rely on their citizenry for generating revenue, so that these states are more likely than others to use indiscriminate violations of personal integrity rights as a policy tool. We test this argument using a cross-national database with a variety of indicators of oil and fuel rents and personal integrity violations. Across all specifications and different indicators, we find a substantive and significant relationship between a state relying on oil and the violation of personal integrity rights.

Games Rivals Play: Terrorism in International Rivalries

The quantitative terrorism literature has largely overlooked interstate relations when evaluating predictors of transnational terrorist attacks, opting to focus on state, group, or individual-level factors to explain patterns of terrorism using analytical methods that are limited to either the origin or target of the attack. In this piece we argue that this is both incongruous with the larger conflict literature and limiting in terms of theoretical impact. Transnational terrorism in many cases is more accurately considered a component of conflicting relations between two states generally hostile towards each other, which necessitates an examination of both states. We demonstrate, by conducting a series of statistical analyses using politically relevant directed dyads, that interstate rivalries are reliable positive predictors of transnational terrorism. We find that interstate rivalries explain a great deal of variation in cross-national patterns of terrorism, a result that is robust to different rivalry ...The empirical terrorism literature has largely overlooked interstate relations when evaluating predictors of international terrorist attacks, opting to focus on state, group, or individual-level factors to explain patterns of terrorism using analytical methods that are limited to either the origin or target of the attack. In this piece we argue that this is both incongruous with the larger conflict literature and limiting in terms of theoretical impact. Terrorism is more accurately considered a component of conflictual relations between two states generally hostile towards each other, which necessitates an examination of both states. We demonstrate, by conducting a series of negative binomial regression estimates using politically-relevant directed dyads, that interstate rivalries are highly robust, positive predictors of international terrorism. We use two different rivalry measures – Klein, Goertz and Diehl (2006) and Rasler and Thompson (2006) – and find that interstate rivalries, regardless of operationalization, explain a greater degree of variation in patterns of terrorism than do established significant predictors such as regime type, regime capacity to project force, or population.

Cultures of Violence and Acts of Terror Applying a Legitimation–Habituation Model to Terrorism

Although uniquely positioned to provide insight into the nature and dynamics of terrorism, overall the field of criminology has seen few empirically focused analyses of this form of political violence. This article seeks to add to the understanding of terror through an exploration of how general levels of violence within a given society influence the probability of political dissidents within that society resorting to terror as a form of political action. Drawing on the legitimation–habituation thesis, the authors explore whether general levels of legitimate and illegitimate violence within a society predict terrorist violence (both internal and external in direction) within that society. To do so, the authors use zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to perform time series cross-sectional analysis on predictors of terrorist events from the Global Terrorism Database. The authors find support for their core hypothesis and provide a discussion of the implications for the findings within their data and for future criminological research on terrorism.