Abstract Rational choice theory has long been recognized as an approach of great applicability to the study of terrorism. Using this perspective, people employ terrorism as the result of a conscious or unconscious cost-benefit calculation to accomplish some end. As this chapter shows, radicalization is another area where rational choice explanations hold promise. Here too, the logic is simple; self-interested individuals, after an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits of radicalization, choose to become terrorists because it offers them the greatest utility. This approach also shows us the power and allure of incentives to overcome the natural and rational desire of people to shirk and let others take the risks that come with high-risk action. Terrorists then, are no stranger to the enthusiasm and participatory problems that affect the interest group, the labor union, or the political party. Nor are they above incentivizing their participants, just like their more peaceful and benign counterparts. Finally, this chapter also highlights shortcomings inherent in rational choice theory, but argues that while the fit between the model and the facts is imperfect, the approach remains sound and serves as a useful analytical and theoretical starting point for understanding radicalization.

How can we expect climate change to affect terrorism? Research on climate-conflict links argues that climate and conflict are unlikely to exhibit a direct relationship. Instead, these links are likely to be indirect, often through negative shocks to agriculture. Even then, politics remains a far stronger influence on conflict than climate. Terrorism appears particularly unlikely to be directly linked to climate change, since climate change disproportionately affects rural areas and terrorism disproportionately affects urban areas. Yet, we argue that there is a process through which climate change could increase the risk of terrorism. This process involves failure to adapt in rural areas, rural-urban migration, and then a failure of cities to incorporate new population influxes. Meanwhile, rural-urban migration is likely to trigger path-dependent urbanization processes that will increase the share of the world's population living near country borders. We expect this process to increase the motivation and opportunity for terrorism as climate change continues. Policies that help rural areas adapt through new livelihood strategies and cities adapt to large population influxes are critical to reducing this threat.

The effect of natural disasters on the end of civil wars has received little attention from scholars. We argue that the effect of disasters on conflict negotiation is dependent on which combatant is victimized by disaster. Drawing on a bargaining model, we argue that disasters create costs that alter the capabilities of the rebels and government. In order for these changes to lead to negotiations, the effects of a disaster have to lead to the mutual expectation that military victory is unlikely in the short term. When both sides are hit by a natural disaster, this mutual expectation is likely to form because both sides face significant costs to engaging in conflict in the short term. When one side is impacted, the non-affected side is likely to see an opportunity to gain against its rival while the side facing the devastation of a natural disaster may see only a temporary setback that it can recover from. This may lead both sides to not update their beliefs about the costs of war, or their chances of victory. We evaluate these hypotheses by examining all territorial civil wars from 1980 to 2005 using a more precise measure of disaster location. We find that when both sides are hit by a disaster, the likelihood of negotiation consistently increases. When only one side is impacted, the effect on negotiations is not consistent across model specifications.

While many previous studies on U.S. right-wing violence center on factors such as racial threat and economic anxiety, we draw from comparative politics research linking electoral dynamics to anti-minority violence. Furthermore, we argue that the causes of right-wing terrorism do not solely rest on political, economic, or social changes individually, but on their interaction. Using a geocoded, U.S. county-level analysis of right-wing terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2016, we find no evidence that poorer or more diverse counties are targets of right-wing terrorism. Rather, right-wing violence is more common in areas where “playing the ethnic card” makes strategic sense for elites looking to shift electoral outcomes: counties that are in electorally competitive areas and that are predominantly white.

While evidence has suggested that international assistance projects become the targets of violence, political science research has often addressed this relationship at the state level and not the aid location itself. Given the heterogeneous nature of aid distribution and terrorist behavior within a state, it is important to study this relationship using higher resolution data. Using geocoded terrorist attack and multilateral aid distribution data, coupled with the PRIO-GRID cell structure, our approach sheds light on whether areas in which aid is distributed are more likely to be targeted by terrorist groups. Our results show that areas where aid is being distributed are targeted more heavily than areas without aid distribution. The modality of specific multilateral aid projects is also shown to impact whether they are more likely to be targeted. Further, we show that terrorists select different types of targets in aid locations than they do in non-aid locations, lending support to the notion that terrorists seek to intimidate local populations from collaboration with the government and to dissuade further government efforts. The results not only highlight and expand upon the dangers associated with aid distribution, but also the notion that aid content is a factor in terrorist targeting preferences.

Previous work finds that countries that contain an excluded group are at higher risk of terrorism. However, there are good reasons to think that the impact of exclusion may be more likely to motivate ethnic violence when this exclusion is paired with local conditions that increase awareness of intergroup competition. In this study, we examine sub-national terrorist violence and find that areas that contain an excluded ethnic group are at higher risk of violence. Moreover, this risk is heightened by local population density, wealth, and country regime type.

Does the introduction of UN forces impact terrorism? We argue that at least initially, UN peacekeeping missions may significantly shift the local conflict bargaining process, creating incentives for terrorist and insurgent groups to increase their attacks against civilians. UN missions create a symbolic endpoint to initial negotiations, alter the balance of power between combatants, and may change the relationship between local combatants and the civilian population they rely on for support. We test this argument using monthly data from 12 African countries, analyzing the risk of terrorism at the local level. We find that the introduction of UN forces in an area significantly increases the short-term risk of terrorism, but longer missions in the country reduce this risk.

Fears about the prevalence of terrorism have shaped political discourse since the 9/11 attacks. Contrary to popular belief, however, the risk of domestic terrorism – its most prevalent strain – is exceedingly low. To visually depict the rarity of this form of violence, and its propensity to cluster in certain locations, we created this map by running a modified statistical model from Nemeth et al.1 which utilizes the Global Terrorism Database (GTD)2 with the cellular grid structure from the PRIO-GRID project.3 These cells, which measure roughly 55km x 55km for every terrestrial location on the Earth’s surface, provide a range of social, economic, and geographical variables that were shown in the past research to impact a wide range of political phenomena. For our model, we utilized domestic terrorism data from the GTD with PRIO-GRID measures. In particular, we use the following variables:

While event data provides researchers with insight into contemporary security threats, many are built upon secondary sources that may insert bias into empirical studies. Specifically, we argue that one form of bias-description bias-can be conditional on an event's characteristics or locale, thus influencing the certainty an observation is coded as an act of terrorism. We find that, using the Global Terrorism Database's own variables, attacks on civilians, particular types of tactics, and attacks that occur closer to a populated place are more likely to be coded as terrorism. These findings speak to broader conceptual issues in terrorism research and reiterate the need for researchers to evaluate the validity of their data before making claims.

A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Despite the wide range of studies focused on the causes of terrorism, most use the state as the unit of analysis. Doing so, however, overlooks important variation that occurs within the state. Our research seeks to determine the causes of domestic terrorism through a more refined unit of analysis. We do this by using the PRIO-GRID cell structure spatially merged with a geocoded version of the GTD dataset. We then perform a Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis to uncover those local areas most prone to domestic terrorism. Our results indicate the following attributes increase the likelihood of terrorism: mountainous terrain, close proximity to a state capital, large population, high population density, and poor economic conditions. When testing between regime types, we find that factors such as population, economic conditions, and the number of ethnic groups are significant only in democracies, while distance to capital is significant only in autocracies.

Two primary mechanisms for managing competitive interstate claims to maritime areas are evaluated: the creation of private ownership of maritime zones in the form of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and the creation of a global institution, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to establish standards for maritime claims and dispute resolution procedures. Analyses of maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe from 1900 to 2001 show that declared EEZs help states reach agreements over maritime conflicts in bilateral negotiations, while membership in UNCLOS prevents the outbreak of new maritime claims and promotes third-party management efforts of maritime conflicts. Neither mechanism influences the probability of militarized conflicts over maritime areas.

Scholars have long accepted the contention that competition among terrorist organizations raises the level of violence used by the competitors. This article discusses this claim and advances anotherthat competition among terrorist organizations creates incentives to use less violence. Using insights from the organizational ecology literaturenamely that competition occurs within speciesI create a variable that assesses intraspecies competition. I test both claims using a data set of domestic terrorism created from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for the years 1970 to 1997. I find support for the hypothesis that competition leads to more terrorism, validating the claims of outbidding theorists. Furthermore, ideologies have differential effects on whether outbidding occurs, with nationalist and religious terrorist groups responding to competition with more terrorism and left-wing organizations responding with less.

A RATIONALIST EXPLANATION OF TERRORIST TARGETING by Stephen Charles Nemeth An Abstract Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa July 2010 Thesis Supervisors: Associate Professor Brian Lai Associate Professor Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

Maritime issues have gained international prominence in recent decades, fueled by the decline in global fishing catches, the scramble for oil and mineral resources, and states’ desire to lay sovereign claims to their maritime spaces. States are willing to use militarized force to defend their maritime claims, as the UK-Iceland "Cod Wars" and militarized confrontations between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea demonstrate. This paper evaluates two primary mechanisms for resolving maritime conflicts: 1) the creation of private ownership of maritime zones in the form of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and 2) the creation of an institution, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to establish standards for maritime claims and the resolution of disputes. We evaluate the effects of UNCLOS and EEZs on the peaceful and militarized management of maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001) and the long-run effects of privatization and institutionalization on marine fishing stocks (1950-2003). Our analyses suggest that declared EEZs work efficiently for helping states to reach agreements over maritime claims in bilateral negotiations, while membership in UNCLOS prevents the outbreak of new claims and promotes more frequent third party management efforts. We also find a U-shaped relationship between marine catches and the duration of UNCLOS/EEZ commitments, indicating that fish stocks initially decline and then recover positively after the implementation of conservation policies.