Justin Conrad

Interstate Rivalry and Terrorism: An Unprobed Link

Existing scholarly research on terrorism has largely ignored the role of international relations and its effects on patterns of terrorism. This study argues that strategic interstate relationships can affect the amount of terrorism that a state experiences and should be considered along with “traditional” determinants of terrorism, such as domestic institutional and macroeconomic variables. The study specifically looks at state sponsorship of terrorism, arguing that while we cannot reliably identify state sponsors of terror, we can indirectly observe relevant evidence of state sponsorship. To support this claim, the study examines the annual number of transnational terrorist attacks that occurred in all countries during the period 1975–2003. The results demonstrate that states involved in ongoing rivalries with other states are the victims of more terrorist attacks than states that are not involved in such hostile interstate relationships.

Competition, Differentiation, and the Severity of Terrorist Attacks

A wide range of literature on ethnic conflict and terrorism has argued that domestic competition increases the likelihood that a political organization will use violence in an effort to distinguish itself. Known as “outbidding,” empirical evidence for such a phenomenon has thus far been limited. The bulk of the empirical analysis, however, has focused on the effect of domestic competition on the quantity of violence. This study instead argues that competition should have an observable effect on the quality of violence, as organizations seek to differentiate their “brand” from others. Using information on the tactics and targets of terrorist attacks, the results suggest that an increase in the competitiveness of a political market leads to more severe or “shocking” types of attacks.

Regime Similarity and Rivalry

Explanations for the democratic peace have developed along two broad lines: those that focus on democratic-specific mechanisms and those that focus on institutional similarity mechanisms. We test these competing mechanisms against each other by examining a range of regime types and a variety of institutional mechanisms, and for the first time, test them in logistic multiple regression models of rivalry onset using three rivalry datasets. Our comparative test of the two approaches largely justifies democratic-specific explanations for the democratic peace. That is, more than any other regime pairing, two democracies are less likely to engage in a rivalry. We also find some evidence that socialist single-party dyads are less likely to experience rivalry than other dyads, but overall the support for a broader institutional similarity peace is quite limited.

Going Abroad: Transnational Solicitation and Contention by Ethnopolitical Organizations

Existing literature on contentious political movements has generally focused on domestic political activity. Using the new Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior�Middle East data set (MAROB-ME), which contains organization-level data for 104 ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, we analyze the decision of both violent and nonviolent organizations to engage in political activity transnationally. Among the results, we find that diaspora support is associated with transnational nonviolent protest, whereas foreign state support and domestic repression increase the use of transnational violence. The most robust finding, however, is that participation in the domestic electoral process consistently reduces the likelihood that an organization will engage in any political activity abroad.

The Strategic Logic of Credit Claiming: A New Theory for Anonymous Terrorist Attacks

ABSTRACT In theory, terrorism is a political communication strategy for groups to convey their grievances and the costs of ignoring them. In practice, though, terrorist groups take responsibility for just a small portion of their attacks. Rather than getting credit for the violence, terrorist leaders generally deny their operatives committed it. This theoretical and empirical disconnect may explain why scholars have ignored the subject of unclaimed attacks despite these being the norm. With a mixed-methods research design, our study helps to fill this lacuna by proposing and testing a new theory to help account for variation in which attacks are claimed.

I Want You! The Determinants of Military Conscription

What explains the use of military conscription? Using a new data set of more than 100 countries over a period of 200 years, we examine the determinants of a state’s decision to implement a military draft. We argue that the decision to use conscription is largely dependent on historical factors. Specifically, we contend that former British colonies are less likely to use conscription as a means of military recruitment because of an anticonscription precedent set during the English Civil War. We find that former British colonies are far less likely to opt for conscription, even after controlling for counter arguments relating to a state’s colonial legacy. We also examine a number of existing explanations for the use of conscripts, using the data to arbitrate previous debates. We find that democracies are less likely to implement the draft, while states involved in an interstate war or interstate rivalry are more likely to do so.

Narrow interests and military resource allocation in autocratic regimes

Why do some autocratic states allocate more resources to the military than others? We contend that as narrow political interests have more influence on a leader, relative to broader political interests, a state’s military burden increases. Further, we argue that two domestic factors are central to explaining the relative strength of narrow political interests for military spending, and therefore variation in state military burden. First, institutions that increase the cost of political participation reduce the influence of the median citizen, increasing the strength of narrow political interests and, concomitantly, military spending. Second, as a regime ages, narrow interests become more entrenched and the regime becomes less concerned about overthrow. In turn, older regimes spend more on their militaries. We test hypotheses from this argument by examining the military burden for all autocracies over the period 1950–2000. We find that variation in restrictions on political participation and the age of the regime are central to understanding differences in military spending among autocracies. Further, once these institutional features are taken into account, we find only modest support for the view that certain types of regimes spend more than others. What matters is not regime type but specific institutional features that affect the strength of narrow interests and vary across, and within, autocratic regimes.

International Cooperation, Spoiling, and Transnational Terrorism

Do interstate relations influence the sources and targets of transnational terrorism? A considerable body of recent research suggests that the answer to this question is yes, and that one state may sponsor terrorist attacks to weaken the bargaining positions of other states. We suggest, in contrast, that positive or cooperative actions invite terrorist attacks from a different source: nonstate groups wishing to spoil interstate cooperation that they oppose. We assess this argument with a dyadic dataset using monthly data on transnational terrorist attacks and cooperative and noncooperative actions between states. Our results suggest that spoiling in response to interstate cooperation is an important determinant of transnational terrorism.

Unpacking the Connection Between Terror and Islam

Are countries with large Muslim populations more likely to experience or produce transnational terrorist attacks than countries with fewer Muslims? And if there is a difference, is it attributable to the influence of Islam, or to the economic, social, and political conditions that are common in predominantly Muslim countries? Analyzing all transnational terrorist attacks between 1973 and 2002, this study uses decomposition analysis to identify the relative contributions of the observable and behavioral characteristics of a state on the amount of terrorism that it experiences and produces. The results suggest that Muslim states do not systematically produce more terrorism than non-Muslim states once state repression, human rights abuses, and discrimination against minorities are taken into account.

Funding rebellion: The Rebel Contraband Dataset

We introduce a new dataset measuring if and how rebel groups earn income from the exploitation of natural resources or criminal activities. The Rebel Contraband Dataset makes three contributions to data in this area. First, it covers a wide range of natural resources and types of crime. Second, it measures rebel engagement in these activities over time. Third, it distinguishes among different strategies that rebel groups employ, such as extortion and smuggling. Theory suggests that reliance on natural resource wealth should lead rebels to mistreat civilians, but cross-group research using existing data does not find support for this relationship. We replicate an earlier study using data from the Rebel Contraband Dataset and conclude that there is a consistent relationship between natural resource exploitation and civilian victimization. Future research can use the dataset to explore questions about the onset, location, severity, and outcomes of civil conflicts.