Leonard Weinberg

Does democracy encourage terrorism

The question of the linkage of democratic forms of government with the incidence of terrorist violence is explored. Distinguishing between the presence of terrorist groups in a nation and violent terrorist events, and using multiple indicators of democratic development, evidence is presented clearly linking democracy with the presence of terrorist groups. Terrorist groups are less likely to be found in non‐democratic settings than in democratic ones.

The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism

This analysis begins by exploring various reasons that the concept of terrorism has evaded a widely agreed upon definition for so long despite the efforts of so many writers. Emphasis is placed on the difficulties associated with all “essentially contested concepts.” In addition, the investigation calls attention to such problems as conceptual “stretching” and “traveling.” In an effort to solve the difficulties, the inquiry attempts to determine a consensus definition of terrorism by turning to an empirical analysis of how the term has been employed by academics over the years. Specifically, the well-known definition developed by Alex Schmid, based upon responses to a questionnaire he circulated in 1985, is compared with the way the concept has been employed by contributors to the major journals in the field: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. The 22 “definitional elements” of which Schmids definition is composed are compared to the frequency with which they appear in the professional journals. If these elements appear frequently in both the Schmid definition and those employed by the journal contributors, they are then used to form a consensus definition of the concept. The most striking feature of this academic consensus over the meaning of terrorism is the virtual absence of references to the psychological element, heretofore widely thought to be at the heart of the concept.

Terrorism and democracy: What recent events disclose

This paper is the second in a series of analyses which explore relationships between terrorism and democracy. In this instance, the authors use the Rand‐St Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism for 1994, as well as the US State Departments Patterns of Global Terrorism collection of events for 1995. The authors use these data sets to determine if there is a linkage between the occurrence of terrorist attacks and the type of incumbent political regime in the countries where they are perpetrated. The two classifications of political regimes were drawn from Robert Wessons 1987 study Democracy: a Worldwide Survey and the Freedom House Publication Freedom in the World for 1984–85 and 1994–95, in order to evaluate the impact of regime change on the incidence of terrorist events. Our principal finding, consistent with earlier work, is that terrorist events are substantially more likely to occur in free and democratic settings than in any of the alternatives. We do discover, though, that change in and of...

Italian women terrorists

This paper seeks to assess the role of women in Italian terrorist groups. It is based on biographical information concerning 451 women who were active in such organizations between 1970 and 1984. T...

The social and religious characteristics of suicide bombers and their victims

Using data collected by the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, the authors provide social profiles of Palestinian suicide bombers and their largely Israeli victims. In addition, drawing on a series of public opinion polls, the writers describe the reactions of Israeli citizens to the wave of suicide bombings the country has experienced since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada in the second half of 2000.

Elections and violence

No subject attracts political scientists more than elections do. Still, the intimate link with violence has scarcely been noticed. A sparse recent literature exists on how ballots may eliminate bullets in civil war settlements: questions concerning why ballots create occasions for bullets and the relationship between violence‐producing and violence‐reducing propensities of elections are ignored. This article aims to help fill the gap. It treats election as a mode of succession, noting that the succession moment is normally the most dangerous recurring one in all political systems. We compare election with heredity, its chief historical rival, to see how the different character of each shapes violence patterns. Hereditary systems require, but rarely achieve, clarity in establishing claim priorities. Election requirements are ‘fairness’ (competitors ‘bend’ rules) and ‘conciliation’ (divisions are created which must be reconciled). The final section offers a brief taxonomy of typical justifications for initiating and/or resisting election violence.

Political parties and the formation of terrorist groups

Where do modern terrorist group come from? How do they begin? This article establishes that most often they emerge from political parties. An effort is made to identify the relevant types of parties and the internal party dynamics which may have led to terrorist activity. Also, it is asserted that party‐terrorist group links are most likely to occur in nations whose political systems are going through episodes of regime transformation.

The War on Terrorism and the Decline of Terrorist Group Formation: A Research Note

Over the course of the twentieth century, terrorist organizations possessing different political and religious outlooks have been formed in different regions of the world. This note reports that the peak decades for the formation of terrorist groups were the 1970s and 1980s. Since that period, the pace of terrorist group formation has slowed substantially. Further, during the 1970s and 1980s the political goals of terrorist bands consisted of a heterogeneous mix of nationalist, left-wing revolutionary, right-wing radical and religious agendas. During the 1990s new terrorist groups have been largely reflective of religious concerns, Islamist ones in particular.

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaedas destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.

Neo-Fascist and Far Left Terrorists in Italy: Some Biographical Observations

In recent years a good deal of concern has been expressed about the phenomenon of political terrorism in Italy. The mass media have directed our attention to spectacular acts of international terrorism committed on Italian soil by groups, largely from the Middle East, which have used the country as a teatro in which to stage their operations against targets of opportunity. Scholars and journalists have also drawn our attention to the problem of domestic terrorism. The kidnapping and assassination of the former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 may serve as the most dramatic example. It seems fair to say that much of this publicity has been focused on the Left. The attempts by various leftist groups, the Red Brigades (BR), Front Line (PL), Worker Autonomy (AO) and others, to use terrorist violence as a means of bringing about a Communist revolution was a source of apprehension in the Western world from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Allegations that the revolutionary groups were aided by the Soviets or other Warsaw Pact nations, as part of an effort to destabilize the Western democracies, did much to heighten the concern.