Political Violence Midterm Review

Chapter 1, Hoffman, Bruce. 2006. Inside Terrorism, Revised and Expanded Edition.

The understanding of what terrorism has changed over time. Has created a gray area phenomenon where terrorist organizations become so engrained in processes and other states that it is hard to identify them and hides their actions and avoids blame. Terrorists rarely call themselves terrorists.

Textbook definition of terrorism

Terrorism is violence—or, equally important, the threat of violence—used and directed in pursuit of, or in service of, a political aim

Guerilla

A larger group of armed individuals who operate in a military unit, attack enemy military forces, and seize and hold territory while having some sovereignty and control over an area and its population

Targets state forces

Somewhere in between of controlling territory, like only controlling at night

In between organizations.

Insurgents

Transcend hit-and-run warfare, embrace revolution, coordinated informational and psychological warfare efforts designed to mobilize popular support in favor of the movement

Targets state forces

Can control territory almost like a state.

Militant groups w more complex military structure that function like a state

Terrorists

Terrorists - do not function in the open as openly armed units, don’t usually try to hold territory, avoid engaging enemy militaries in head-on combat, no direct governance, smaller in numbers. Not ego-driven, believes he is fundamentally altruistic

Targets civilians

Baby militants, little structure and little resources.

No territory

“Waves” of terrorism

1945-late 1960s - Anti-colonial. Algeria demonstrates that groups that first use terrorism as a tactic can then engage in full-blown civil war, eventually gaining independence and pushing France out of Algeria.

1970s-1980s - Left-wing marxist communist - US - Weather Underground

1980s-present - Religious - 9/11

Huff, Connor, and Joshua Kertzer. 2018. “How the Public Defines Terrorism.”

Employed joint experiment of 1,400 US citizens to “show how ordinary citizens classify terrorism based not only on relatively objective facts on the ground, but also on fairly subjective considerations about the perpetrator.” 2

Type of violence and number of casualties matters significantly, but target and location have no significant effect

Perceived political purpose has significant effect on views of the actor

The notion that the actor has an agenda at all matters more than the agenda itself.

Chapter 2, Hoffman, Bruce. 2006. Inside Terrorism, Revised and Expanded Edition.

Western powers consistently disappoint their colonized countries, specifically in Asia. When Singapore fell and Japan continued to steamroll many of these supposedly-western controlled countries, this demonstrated that the western nations were not nearly as secure or as powerful as they had boasted during takeover, leading to significant instability and further conflict. Irgun terrorists made Britain pull out.

Rapoport, David. 1984. “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.”

The Thugs, The Assassins, and the Zealots-Sicarii. The article demonstrates that terrorism is not a new phenomenon, even when we didn’t have new technologies.

Thugs

Intend their victims to experience terror and to express it visibly for the pleasure of Kali, the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction (660), tend to avoid wanting publicity, but inevitably get publicity anyways. The group persisted for at least 600 years, from the 6th to 13th century. Murdered more than any other terrorist group.

Thugs would collaborate with government powers such as princes for protection in exchange for committing their operations elsewhere, whereas Assassins refused to collaborate with the existing Islamic state, believing in complete overhaul. 666

Assassins

1090-1275 - have political objectives to fulfill or purify Islam through religious and political purposes.

Trained to know that their acts will lead to their death, no chance of survival.

Trained to stab masters in the back, trust and shock value

Purify Islam thru assassinations

Zealots-Sicarii

Inspired to seek publicity and derived important events in religion as formulas for their terrorism to be carried out. Also identified by particular weapons, like the assassins. 668-669

Crenshaw, Martha. 1981. “The Causes of Terrorism.” Comparative Politics 13(4): 379–99.

Gives overview of some of the determinants of why terrorism occurs in a context.

Modernization not the sole cause because bombs existed in 19th century

Urbanization has factored in cities as large targets.

Government’s unwillingness or inability to prevent terrorism is the most salient factor 382

Preconditions - Crenshaw

Factors that set the stage for terrorism in the long run 381

Precipitants - Crenshaw

Specific events that immediately precede the occurrence of terrorism 381

Group-level Factors of Terrorism - Crenshaw

Militant group’s strength relative to opponent, Time constraints, Seeking publicity, Provoking government, Ethnic/religious/elite grievances

Macro-Contextual Factors of Terrorism - Crenshaw

Modernization, Urbanization, Economic conditions, State capacity, Regime type (transition?), Presence of foreign troops, Subgroup grievances of population

Fortna, Virginia Page, Nicholas J Lotito, and Michael A Rubin. 2018. “Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars.”

• Potential determinants of a group’s choice of tactics:

  • Target’s regime type

  • Who is supporting the group

  • Amount of resource in the region

• Expected that groups that relied on natural resources and external support should encourage terrorism, only found strong evidence for natural resources and mixed evidence for external support

Mitts, Tamar. 2019. “From Isolation to Radicalization: Anti-Muslim Hostility and Support for ISIS in the West.” American Political Science Review 113(1): 173-94

European countries becoming hotspots for terrorist recruitment and radicalization

• Socioeconomic and political backgrounds of civilians can lead them to radicalization

• Higher shares of far-right and anti-muslim voting leads to higher levels of radicalization.

• Uses geomapping of friends and family to measure individual’s locations and the tweets that they are posting.

• Looks at hate crimes as well, finds that the more hate crimes, the more radicalization.Hate crimes are not consistently collected, however, which makes this difficult to fully track. Uses stats from the UK and finds this relationship.

Blair, Graeme, C. Christine Fair, Neil Malhotra, and Jacob N. Shapiro. 2013. “Poverty and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan.” American Journal of Political Science 57(1): 30-48.

Especially after 9/11, policymakers and government officials started talking a lot about poverty and its correlation with terrorism. Bush strongly backed this.

• The poor are unlikely to be the radicalized ones in this context

• Urban poor will be more likely to reject terrorism

• Endorsement-experiment - Asks Pakistanis endorsement questions to determine support and remove response bias. Negative feelings about endorsers are more likely to make them feel negative about policy. 

• Urban poor are more likely to be in higher proximity to terrorist violence, and thus the results suggest that they have less inclination to express support for them.

Elites much more in tune with international affairs, villagers probably unaware of a lot of terrorist organizations

The Problem with Aid

• Aid could actually go to the middle class or elite, who will utilize these funds possibly to support terrorism. 

  • Who is receiving the aid, how is it distributed, will it make the nation independent or continuously dependent on aid-givers?

  • Governments could also be corrupt and misuse these funds.

• Shouldn’t only focus on terrorism but perhaps other factors if wanting to help.

Krueger, Alan, and Jitka Maleckova. 2002. “Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is there a Causal Connection?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17(4): 119-144

Looks at a sample of Palestine suicide bombers to determine what their motivations were. Important to note that the sample may not be fully representative because it was just looking at dead bombers. Possible that these people could be trained after being recruited if their stats are coming at time of death.

“Any connection between poverty, education and terrorism is indirect, complicated and probably quite weak.” 119

The results suggest that poverty is inversely related with the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter, and education is positively related with the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter.

Pape, Robert. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97(3): 343-61

Suicide terrorism has a logic and is not just driven by religious indoctrination and there is a strategy behind it.

Groups are increasingly likely to use suicide tactics since the 1980s.

• There are strategic incentives behind these attacks.

  • Timing: Part of organized campaigns

  • Target: democratic targets

  • Goal: Nationalist goals

Pape Flaws

• Study really only looks at places where suicide terrorism has occured.

• Many of these have failed; Israel drew out initially but is definitely not drawing out now.

• Cases labeled as successful are not necessarily successful today; rebellions are often crushed. 

• How do we count success? What counts as success? Limited amounts of cases.

• Could make terrorists look more desperate, make the target less willing to compromise, alienate the target constituency due to extremity. 

Kydd, Andrew, and Barbara F. Walter. 2006. “The Strategies of Terrorism.” International Security 31(1): 49-80.

Attrition, Intimidation, Provocation, Spoiling, Outbidding.

Uncertainty over relative power, use of costly actions

5 goals - regime change, territorial change, policy change, social control, and status quo maintenance

2 audiences - target government and potential constituency

Regime Change Example

Cold War w soviet union-funded groups - main goal to establish marxist regimes in the countries they are operating. Shining Path in Peru, which hoped to upend the entire Peruvian government, destroy its democratic and capitalist institutions, and replace them with a peasant-led communist regime.

Territorial Change Example

Kashmir groups are targeting India in order to separate into Pakistan. Hamas and Palestine.

Policy Change Example

Al-Qaida’s demand for the US to drop support for Israel

Social Control Example

KKK sought continued oppression of African Americans, antiabortion groups who seek to kill doctors who perform abortion procedures.

Boko Haram could be an example as they kidnapped school girls to prevent them from going to school.

Status Quo Maintenance Example

In response to leftist organizations, there were small right wing organizations that were trying to protect the liberal regimes. KKK was status quo maintenance as well.

Tactics Governments are Most Vulnerable to

Attrition - democracies, governments that can’t absorb costs for long periods of time, places where public opinion negatively views long wars and can impact elections

Provocation - governments that will likely inflict middling levels of damage - not enough to wipe out terrorist forces but enough to create large collateral damage

Intimidation - weak governments

Outbidding - multiple groups all competition means someone needs to show costly signals to gain support

Spoiling - during times of peace treaties trying to end extremely unstable wars or conflicts. Governments and actors already have an incentive to distrust the other party.

Malcolm, Noel. 1996. Bosnia: A Short History. New York: NYU Press. Chapters 15-16.

When Croatia was eventually recognized as independent, Bosnia was the next step. Bosnia could not be simply divided up. Serbs establish the narrative that the Bosnian serbs were being persecuted and punished, despite no real evidence. Leads to genocide. 1992 Bosnia recognized. International powers eventually try to get involved, but through indiscriminate arms embargoes this actually ends up harming Bosnians. UN peacekeepers only attacked if they themselves were attacked.

Vance-Owen Plan: territories were given ethnic labels and the impression was given that the boundary lines drawn were not final, inciting competition between Croat and Muslim forces that had previously been the main barrier to the Serbs.

Posen, Barry. 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict.” Survival 35(1): 27-47.

Security Dilemma: Your security makes me feel insecure. Apply this to the special conditions that arise when proximate groups of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security

For the Serbs/Bosnians, state collapse/disintegration conducive to nationalist rhetoric and the security dilemma.

Posen - When are Security Dilemmas most dangerous in civil wars?

The condition of anarchy makes security the first concern of states, according to realists. So:

• When offensive and defensive military forces are more or less identical, it is the most dangerous

• If offensive operations are more effective than defensive operations, then this can pre-empt war as states choose the offensive.

• Ethnic islands can cause disintegrated new states to jump into preemptive civil war.

• Indistinguishability in civil wars, “group solidarity” and past historical grievances contributes to indistinguishability of offensive and defensive behaviors.

• If one side has an advantage that will not be present later, then they are in the “window of opportunity” and may very well choose to strike.

Fearon, James, and David Laitin. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political Science Review 97(1): 75-90.

Three findings:

• Find that current internal wars are typically the result of a steady build up of conflicts since the 50s and 60s rather than a result of the post-Cold War international system.

• We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. 75

• We find little evidence that one can predict where a civil war will break out by looking for where ethnic or other broad political grievances are strongest. 75

Instead, look at rough terrain or weak governments, which favors insurgency. Study did look at an outdated data set.

Cederman, Lars-Erik, Nils B. Weidmann, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2011. “Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison.” American Political Science Review 105(3): 478-95

In countries with numeric diversity, when minorities are systematically discriminated against, this leads to grievances, grievances can lead to conflict.

• In Syria - Alawite minority v Sunni majority, leads to grievances.

• Ethnic diversity and unequal access to political power can be very problematic. Horizontal inequalities between politically relevant ethnic groups and states at large can promote ethnonationalist conflict.

• Groups with wealth levels far from the country average are indeed more likely to experience civil war. 487

Horizontal inequalities Cederman

Inequalities between ethnic groups, can be economic, political, social

Core Idea behind “ethnic” civil wars Cederman

The underlying characteristics of diversity, including horizontal inequalities, land, and government stability allows for us to observe violence. Grievances ≠ organized violence, there needs to be opportunity for terrain to hide, capacity to mobilize because the state is weak or incompetent, or concentrated in a secluded area. Hatred not enough, must be underlying opportunities that give these groups the ability to organize.

Varshney, Ashutosh. 2001. “Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society.” World Politics 53(3): 362-98.

Does civic engagement between different ethnic communities also serve to contain ethnic conflict?

The article argues there is an integral link between the structure of civic life in a multiethnic society, on the one hand, and the presence or absence of ethnic violence, on the other. 362

Selected 6 cities, three from riot-prone cities and three from peace-prone cities.

Does not argue that the more civic engagement there is in a town, the less violence we observe. What matters is not the existence of a civic society but a good civic society. Intercommunal versus Intracommunal.

Interethnic Communities Varshney

Interethnic networks are agents of peace, but if communities are organized only along intraethnic lines and the interconnections with other communities are very weak or nonexistent, then ethnic violence is quite likely 363 Associational the most durable.

Varshney’s Three Pairs

First pair: Aligarh and Calicut

• Similar Muslim-Hindu population shares only

Second pair: Hyderabad and Lucknow

• Previous Muslim rule and cultural similarities

Third pair: Ahmedabad and Surat

• Same state, similar historical development, dominant language is the same, cultural similarities

Civic society Varshney

All the ties that fill in gap between family and state institutions, anything else that ties people together. Can be informal, where you watch a soccer game with your neighbor. Can be formal based on certain associations: NRA, teacher’s unions, not part of state.

Possible Problems with Varshney

• Does civic engagement create peace, or does peace create civic engagement?

• Probably not likely to see constant collaboration between Muslims and Hindus in places where violence has broken out or is currently occurring.

• In Calicut, problem is actually in the caste system and not between Hindus and Muslims.

Wilkinson, Steven. 2004. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1-2.

Ethnic riots, far from being relatively spontaneous eruptions of anger, are often planned by politicians for a clear electoral purpose.

Electoral incentives at two levels – the local constituency level and the level of government that controls the police – interact to determine both where and when ethnic violence against minorities will occur, and, more importantly, whether the state will choose to intervene to stop it.

Why Wedge Ethnic Divides in Tight Elections? Wilkinson

Parties that represent elites within ethnic groups will often – especially in the most competitive seats – use polarizing antiminority events in an effort to encourage members of their wider ethnic category to identify with their party and the “majority” identity rather than a party that is identified with economic redistribution or some ideological agenda.

Strategies to Wedge Ethnic Divides - Wilkinson

A favorite strategy of Hindu party leaders who calculate that they will gain electorally from polarization around a Hindu identity is to organize unusually large religious processions that take new routes through minority neighborhoods, to hoist the national flag over a disputed site, or to sponsor processions to celebrate national anniversaries. 24 Makes it difficult for the local administration to ban the event, because it makes them look bad to do so. However, the organizers, once approved, can easily put in symbols that provoke the other parties.

Solution to Ethnic Wedging? Wilkinson

Type of electoral institutions should better match the demographic characteristics at hand, in most ethnic societies don’t see winner takes all, see proportional representation. BJP would not be crazy about having plurality of voters support you, stakes are a little less severe. When they need the majority of the votes, makes them resort to terrible tactics to win.

Straus, Scott. 2006. The Order of Genocide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chapters 1, 5 and 6.

The notion that ancient tribal hatred drove the Rwandan genocide is deeply misleading…

New consensus:

(1) Rwanda’s colonially-infected past created ethnic tensions, leads to nationalism, propagated justification of racism.

(2) Specific Hutu hardliners responsible for the genocide.

(3) The genocide was planned before it happened.

Macro and Micro-level Straus

Emphasis on the macro-level (things going on in country and context as a whole), and micro-level (which shapes individual’s calculations and rationale to participate)

Macros: war, the availability of ethnic “other,” and the characteristics of the state (and strength) are the three main conditions conductive to genocide at the macro-level.

Types of state institutions Rwanda has: very compact and dense, state is very present, quite literally. Not hard to reach areas.

Straus Interviews

Asks them questions on their relationships with their Tutsi neighbors, 87% say that they had positive relationships, only 2% say they had negative relationships.

65% say their response was related to coercion from the Hutus, said they would be persecuted themselves

48% say that they had fear and motivations related to war, scared they would be killed if they didn’t kill first.

Victims seen as enemies, Killing to win the war - security dilemma, Fear of Tutsi retribution

Straus Criticism

Why should we believe in the things these people say? These people have done horrible things, it is an inherent human desire to not look so terrible to people you are talking to, people said they were overtaken by the devil or something, have to rationalize what they have done, especially in something officially labeled as a genocide.