Barbara J Phillips
Biographic Data
| ID | 126844 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Barbara J Phillips |
| GIVEN NAMES | Barbara J |
| FAMILY NAME | Phillips |
| SIGNATURE | PHILLIPS B J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9812-4030 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 485 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
When Do Sanctions On Terrorist Groups Work
A substantial amount of literature studies the effects of sanctions against states, but far less is known about sanctions against violent non-state actors. We argue and show that the effectiveness of counterterrorism sanctions hinges on terrorist groups’ financial adaptability. Groups with low financial adaptability are likely to reduce attacks due to sanctions. In contrast, groups with high financial adaptability are likely to adapt to sanctions…
Who Are the Terrorism Researchers? A Study of Scholars in an Evolving Field, 1970–2019
Debates rage about diversity and representation. How diverse is terrorism studies? How has it changed over time? This article analyzes data on the nearly 2,000 terrorism scholars in the Web of Science databases. It also identifies the scholars who have published the most articles. The vast majority of terrorism scholars have worked in a small set of countries (mostly the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel). The list of the most prolific sc…
How do Militant Organizations Respond to Counterterrorism? Introducing the Live Typology, with Examples from Proscription in Pakistan
How do militant organizations respond to counterterrorism? A vast literature seeks to understand the effects of counterterrorism, examining outcomes such as levels of violence. However, violence is only one way that militant groups can respond to pressure. We focus on terrorist designation or proscription, the sanctions many states and international organizations impose on militants as an attempt to weaken them. We introduce a new typology of arm…
Dogs and Cats Living Together? Explaining the Crime-Terror Nexus
Why do some terrorist groups cooperate with criminal organizations? This behavior is puzzling because there are reputational reasons for each of these kinds of groups to avoid the other, yet such cooperation seems to be increasingly common. The growing literature on the “crime-terror-nexus” examines terrorist-criminal cooperation, but questions remain. We discuss relevant research, and present hypotheses. Analysis of nearly 400 terrorist organiza…
Introducing ViNSAR: Dyadic Data on Violent Non-State Actor Rivalry
A growing line of research examines causes and consequences of militant group competition. However, empirical work on these topics has limitations. Most quantitative research uses relatively rough proxies for competition, such as counts of groups in a country. Other work uses dichotomous indicators, ignoring the intensity or degree of rivalries. Additionally, many studies examine either terrorist organizations or rebel groups, overlooking cross-t…
How Did 9/11 Affect Terrorism Research? Examining Articles and Authors, 1970-2019
Terrorism research increased markedly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11). How has research on this subject changed in the past 20 years? I examine data on more than 6,000 academic articles on terrorism between 1970 and 2019, and the more than 1,500 authors of multiple articles. This information comes from every article in the Web of Science database with “terrorism” or “terrorist” in the title. Several primary findings emerge. (1) The vol…
Exploring how older women want to be portrayed in advertisements
Previous research has demonstrated that older women carry a stigmatized identity in society and are severely underrepresented in advertisements in all types of media around the world. Brands have been admonished to increase the presence of older women in their ads. However, it is unclear how older women wish to be depicted in ads. This study used an interpretative phenomenology analysis (IPA) approach to explore older women’s preferences regardin…
Insurgent Terrorism: Intergroup Relationships and the Killing of Civilians
Why do insurgent organizations sometimes kill civilians? Some do all the time, some do so occasionally, and some seem to never do so. Why? Recent research seeks to explain civilian victimization by insurgent groups, also called terrorism, focusing on factors such as insurgent weakness or country regime type. This book presents a different explanation, building on what is referred to as insurgent embeddedness—the extent to which an insurgent group…
American international students’ motivation to study abroad in Thailand
As the transnational education market continues to grow, Asian universities are experiencing a more significant influx of short-term visiting and exchange students from western nations. This article summarises research on the motivations of American international students studying in Thailand. The purpose of this study is to better understand the impact of push pull factors that influenced the study abroad decision-making process. During 2019–202…
Where is Conflict Research? Western Bias in the Literature on Armed Violence
Which countries are likely to be subjects of research in the study of armed conflict? Evidence from other fields suggests that research often focuses disproportionately on the West, but it is unclear to what extent this is true in conflict studies. We suggest that a baseline explanation of research focus is each country’s conflict experience, and we present two additional hypotheses: Western bias and research feasibility. Empirically, we count co…
Organized Crime and Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From Criminal Groups in Mexico
How does organized crime affect foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries? Some research examines the effects of crime, such as homicide rates, on FDI. However, we know little about how organized crime in particular might affect such investment. This paper examines organized crime and FDI in Mexican states between 2000 and 2018. This case is important because Mexico is one of the top global recipients of FDI. At the same time, crimi…
Death in advertising: The last taboo
Portrayals of death in advertising for non-death related products are exceedingly rare, in sharp contrast to numerous death portrayals in other media sources such as movies and TV programs. Additionally, advertising increasingly depicts other controversial topics, such as sex and violence, but not death. Is death the last taboo in advertising? This qualitative study uses a grounded theory approach to explore death as a taboo topic in advertising …
Threat Perception, Policy Diffusion, and the Logic of Terrorist Group Designation
Many governments maintain lists of terrorist groups, imposing sanctions on designated organizations. However, the logic behind designation remains unclear. Furthermore, most studies focus on Western countries. This paper develops arguments for why attack attributes, group attributes, and policy diffusion might explain proscription. Empirically, we examine hundreds of militant organizations to see which are listed by the European Union, India, Pak…
Narco-Messages: Competition and Public Communication by Criminal Groups
Criminal groups often avoid the limelight, shunning publicity. However, in some instances, they overtly communicate, such as with banners or signs. This article explains the competition dynamics behind public criminal communication and provides theory and evidence of the conditions under which it emerges. Relying on a new dataset of approximately 1,800 banners publicly deployed by Mexican criminal groups from 2007 to 2010, the study identifies th…
Carrots, Sticks, and Insurgent Targeting of Civilians
How do conciliatory and coercive counterinsurgency tactics affect militant group violence against civilians? Scholars of civil war increasingly seek to understand intentional civilian targeting, often referred to as terrorism. Extant research emphasizes group weakness, or general state attributes such as regime type. We focus on terrorism as violent communication and as a response to government actions. State tactics toward groups, carrots and st…
Do 90 Percent of Terrorist Groups Last Less than a Year? Updating the Conventional Wisdom
Prominent scholars criticize terrorism research for lacking sufficient empirical testing of arguments. Interestingly, one of the most widely cited estimates in terrorism studies has not been evaluated using the many data sources now available. Rapoport’s 1992 claim, that perhaps 90 percent of terrorist groups last less than one year, has been described as part of the conventional wisdom. This estimate is frequently used to justify studies of terr…
Terrorist Group Rivalries and Alliances: Testing Competing Explanations
Terrorist group rivalries and alliances have important consequences, but the sources of these relationships are debated. This article offers a side-by-side examination of correlates of terrorist rivalries and alliances. Global analyses of hundreds of terrorist groups find violent rivalry is associated with drug trafficking, state sponsorship, ethnic motivation, and operating in a civil conflict country. Alliances are associated with territorial c…
Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, international cooperation, and terrorism
How does branding militant groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) affect them? Beyond its obvious policy importance, this question speaks to debates about counterterrorism, terrorism financing, and organizational dynamics of subnational violence. This article analyzes FTO designation, a key policy used by the U.S. government since 1997 to impose costs on foreign terrorist groups and those who might support them. Contrary to arguments …
Inequality and the Emergence of Vigilante Organizations: The Case of MexicanAutodefensas
What explains the emergence of vigilante organizations? Throughout the world, vigilantes emerge to illegally punish perceived criminals, often leading to serious consequences. However, the literature presents partial and conflicting explanations for this phenomenon. This article argues that local economic inequality creates a situation ripe for vigilante organizations. Inequality creates demand for vigilantism because poorer citizens feel relativ…
Deadlier in the U.S.? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality
Scholars, politicians, and pundits increasingly suggest lone wolf terrorists are substantial threats, but we know little about how dangerous these actors are—especially relative to other terrorist actors. How deadly are lone actor terrorists? A growing body of empirical research focuses on terrorist organizations, but similar work on lone actors is sparse. Furthermore, attempts to explicitly compare these or other types of terrorist actors are al…
What explains ethnic organizational violence? Evidence from Eastern Europe and Russia
Why do some ethnopolitical organizations use violence? Research on substate violence often uses the state level of analysis, or only analyzes groups that are already violent. Using a resource mobilization framework drawn from a broad literature, we test hypotheses with new data on hundreds of violent and non-violent ethnopolitical organizations in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our study finds interorganizational competition, state repression and str…
How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico
Many governments target leaders of violent groups, but consequences of this strategy are unclear. Additionally, most studies examine political groups such as terrorists, ignoring criminal organizations—even though they can represent serious threats to security. This article presents a theoretical framework for how political and criminal groups differ and uses the framework to explain how group type should condition leadership removal's effects. D…
Enemies with benefits? Violent rivalry and terrorist group longevity
Terrorist organizations often attack each other, but we know little about how this affects the involved groups. Some states encourage or turn a blind eye toward terrorist group interorganizational violence, hoping that it destroys at least one of the groups involved. This article argues that - contrary to the wishes of such governments - violent rivalries can contribute to the longevity of participating terrorist groups. Violent rivalries encoura…
What Is a Terrorist Group? Conceptual Issues and Empirical Implications
Researchers increasingly conduct quantitative studies of terrorist groups, which is an important advance in the literature. However, there has been little discussion of what constitutes a “terrorist group, ” regarding conceptualization or measurement. Many studies of terrorist groups do not define the term, and among those that do, definitions vary considerably. The lack of clarity leads to conceptual confusion as well as sample selection issues,…
The Megaphone Effect in Social Media: How Ordinary Consumers Become Style Leaders
Amassing an audience by blogging is a very recent form of online consumer behavior. Consumers not only seek community as earlier studies show, they also look for taste leadership from certain peers Fashion bloggers take hold of the Internet “megaphone” to broadcast and influence taste within an elaborate social and cultural process. It teaches us some general principles about the ways professional marketing is affected by these “citizen journalis…
Democracy, Foreign Policy, and Terrorism
This article takes a closer look at the relationship between democracy and transnational terrorism. It investigates what it is about democracies that make them particularly vulnerable to terrorism from abroad. The authors suggest that states that exhibit a certain type of foreign policy behavior, regardless of their regime type, are likely to attract transnational terrorism. States that are actively involved in international politics are likely t…
How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico
Many governments target leaders of violent groups, but consequences of this strategy are unclear. Additionally, most studies examine political groups such as terrorists, ignoring criminal organizations—even though they can represent serious threats to security. This article presents a theoretical framework for how political and criminal groups differ and uses the framework to explain how group type should condition leadership removal's effects. D…
Inequality and the Emergence of Vigilante Organizations: The Case of MexicanAutodefensas
What explains the emergence of vigilante organizations? Throughout the world, vigilantes emerge to illegally punish perceived criminals, often leading to serious consequences. However, the literature presents partial and conflicting explanations for this phenomenon. This article argues that local economic inequality creates a situation ripe for vigilante organizations. Inequality creates demand for vigilantism because poorer citizens feel relativ…
The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging
The megaphone effect refers to the fact that the web makes a mass audience potentially available to ordinary consumers. The article focuses on fashion bloggers who acquire an audience by iterated displays of aesthetic discrimination applied to the selection and combination of clothing. The authors offer a theoretical account of bloggers’ success in terms of the accumulation of cultural capital via public displays of taste and describe how the exe…
Terrorist Group Cooperation and Longevity
Why do some terrorist groups survive considerably longer than others? The literature is just beginning to address this important question in a systematic manner. Additionally, and as with most studies of terrorism, longevity studies have ignored the possibility of interactions between terrorist groups. This article attempts to address these two gaps in the literature: the incomplete understanding of terrorist group survival and the tendency to as…
Foreign Aid as a Signal to Investors: Predicting FDI in Post-conflict Countries
Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments fa…
Carrots, Sticks, and Insurgent Targeting of Civilians
How do conciliatory and coercive counterinsurgency tactics affect militant group violence against civilians? Scholars of civil war increasingly seek to understand intentional civilian targeting, often referred to as terrorism. Extant research emphasizes group weakness, or general state attributes such as regime type. We focus on terrorism as violent communication and as a response to government actions. State tactics toward groups, carrots and st…
Enemies with benefits? Violent rivalry and terrorist group longevity
Terrorist organizations often attack each other, but we know little about how this affects the involved groups. Some states encourage or turn a blind eye toward terrorist group interorganizational violence, hoping that it destroys at least one of the groups involved. This article argues that - contrary to the wishes of such governments - violent rivalries can contribute to the longevity of participating terrorist groups. Violent rivalries encoura…
Terrorist Group Rivalries and Alliances: Testing Competing Explanations
Terrorist group rivalries and alliances have important consequences, but the sources of these relationships are debated. This article offers a side-by-side examination of correlates of terrorist rivalries and alliances. Global analyses of hundreds of terrorist groups find violent rivalry is associated with drug trafficking, state sponsorship, ethnic motivation, and operating in a civil conflict country. Alliances are associated with territorial c…
Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising
Narrative transportation—to be carried away by a story—has been proposed as a distinct route to persuasion. But as originally conceived, narrative transportation is unlikely to occur in response to advertisements, where persuasive intent is obvious and consumer resistance is expected. We analyze fashion ads to show how narrative transportation can nonetheless be a possible response to ads, if specific aesthetic properties are present, most notabl…
Deadlier in the U.S.? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality
Scholars, politicians, and pundits increasingly suggest lone wolf terrorists are substantial threats, but we know little about how dangerous these actors are—especially relative to other terrorist actors. How deadly are lone actor terrorists? A growing body of empirical research focuses on terrorist organizations, but similar work on lone actors is sparse. Furthermore, attempts to explicitly compare these or other types of terrorist actors are al…
Narco-Messages: Competition and Public Communication by Criminal Groups
Criminal groups often avoid the limelight, shunning publicity. However, in some instances, they overtly communicate, such as with banners or signs. This article explains the competition dynamics behind public criminal communication and provides theory and evidence of the conditions under which it emerges. Relying on a new dataset of approximately 1,800 banners publicly deployed by Mexican criminal groups from 2007 to 2010, the study identifies th…
What explains ethnic organizational violence? Evidence from Eastern Europe and Russia
Why do some ethnopolitical organizations use violence? Research on substate violence often uses the state level of analysis, or only analyzes groups that are already violent. Using a resource mobilization framework drawn from a broad literature, we test hypotheses with new data on hundreds of violent and non-violent ethnopolitical organizations in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our study finds interorganizational competition, state repression and str…
What Is a Terrorist Group? Conceptual Issues and Empirical Implications
Researchers increasingly conduct quantitative studies of terrorist groups, which is an important advance in the literature. However, there has been little discussion of what constitutes a “terrorist group, ” regarding conceptualization or measurement. Many studies of terrorist groups do not define the term, and among those that do, definitions vary considerably. The lack of clarity leads to conceptual confusion as well as sample selection issues,…
Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, international cooperation, and terrorism
How does branding militant groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) affect them? Beyond its obvious policy importance, this question speaks to debates about counterterrorism, terrorism financing, and organizational dynamics of subnational violence. This article analyzes FTO designation, a key policy used by the U.S. government since 1997 to impose costs on foreign terrorist groups and those who might support them. Contrary to arguments …
Where is Conflict Research? Western Bias in the Literature on Armed Violence
Which countries are likely to be subjects of research in the study of armed conflict? Evidence from other fields suggests that research often focuses disproportionately on the West, but it is unclear to what extent this is true in conflict studies. We suggest that a baseline explanation of research focus is each country’s conflict experience, and we present two additional hypotheses: Western bias and research feasibility. Empirically, we count co…
Do 90 Percent of Terrorist Groups Last Less than a Year? Updating the Conventional Wisdom
Prominent scholars criticize terrorism research for lacking sufficient empirical testing of arguments. Interestingly, one of the most widely cited estimates in terrorism studies has not been evaluated using the many data sources now available. Rapoport’s 1992 claim, that perhaps 90 percent of terrorist groups last less than one year, has been described as part of the conventional wisdom. This estimate is frequently used to justify studies of terr…
Working Out: Consumers and the Culture of Exercise
CULTURE CAN BE CHARACTERIZED BY ITS obsession with fitness and exercise.American consumers spend billions of dollars annually on exercise products (Howell) as diverse as health club memberships, whey supplements, yoga videos, and zip-up sneakers.Cultural institutions encourage this focus on exercise; in the media, a dramatic increase can be seen in the number of exercise articles written for women's magazines over the last thirty years (Wiseman e…
Defining Trade Characters and Their Role In American Popular Culture
Threat Perception, Policy Diffusion, and the Logic of Terrorist Group Designation
Many governments maintain lists of terrorist groups, imposing sanctions on designated organizations. However, the logic behind designation remains unclear. Furthermore, most studies focus on Western countries. This paper develops arguments for why attack attributes, group attributes, and policy diffusion might explain proscription. Empirically, we examine hundreds of militant organizations to see which are listed by the European Union, India, Pak…
Civil war, spillover and neighbors’ military spending
This paper brings together studies of civil war consequences and literature on military spending, introducing a novel mechanism for how civil wars adversely affect neighbors—through neighbors’ increased military spending. Military expenditures are important because they often inhibit development. Civil wars affect proximate states’ defense spending because the potential spillover threatens neighbors. Tests on developing countries from 1950 to 200…
Dogs and Cats Living Together? Explaining the Crime-Terror Nexus
Why do some terrorist groups cooperate with criminal organizations? This behavior is puzzling because there are reputational reasons for each of these kinds of groups to avoid the other, yet such cooperation seems to be increasingly common. The growing literature on the “crime-terror-nexus” examines terrorist-criminal cooperation, but questions remain. We discuss relevant research, and present hypotheses. Analysis of nearly 400 terrorist organiza…
How Did 9/11 Affect Terrorism Research? Examining Articles and Authors, 1970-2019
Terrorism research increased markedly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11). How has research on this subject changed in the past 20 years? I examine data on more than 6,000 academic articles on terrorism between 1970 and 2019, and the more than 1,500 authors of multiple articles. This information comes from every article in the Web of Science database with “terrorism” or “terrorist” in the title. Several primary findings emerge. (1) The vol…
American international students’ motivation to study abroad in Thailand
As the transnational education market continues to grow, Asian universities are experiencing a more significant influx of short-term visiting and exchange students from western nations. This article summarises research on the motivations of American international students studying in Thailand. The purpose of this study is to better understand the impact of push pull factors that influenced the study abroad decision-making process. During 2019–202…
Ideas: Electronic Mail Pen Pals
Electronic mail can be an effective tool for practicing authentic language and learning cultural information in the Spanish classroom
Defining Trade Characters and Their Role In American Popular Culture
Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising
The goal of rhetorical theory is always to organize the possibilities for persuasion within a domain and to relate each possible stratagem to specific desired outcomes. In this article we develop a visual rhetoric that differentiates the pictorial strategies available to advertisers and links them to consumer response. We propose a new typology that distinguishes nine types of visual rhetorical figures according to their degree of complexity and …
Indirect Persuasion in Advertising: How Consumers Process Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words
Indirect persuasion attempts are common in magazine advertisements. Although the use of an indirect claim presumably offers some advantage to an advertiser, as yet, little is known about how consumers process different types of indirect claims. We develop the proposition that when consumers are presented with an indirect metaphorical claim, they become more receptive to multiple positive inferences about the advertised brand. In addition, when th…
Working Out: Consumers and the Culture of Exercise
CULTURE CAN BE CHARACTERIZED BY ITS obsession with fitness and exercise.American consumers spend billions of dollars annually on exercise products (Howell) as diverse as health club memberships, whey supplements, yoga videos, and zip-up sneakers.Cultural institutions encourage this focus on exercise; in the media, a dramatic increase can be seen in the number of exercise articles written for women's magazines over the last thirty years (Wiseman e…
Democracy, Foreign Policy, and Terrorism
This article takes a closer look at the relationship between democracy and transnational terrorism. It investigates what it is about democracies that make them particularly vulnerable to terrorism from abroad. The authors suggest that states that exhibit a certain type of foreign policy behavior, regardless of their regime type, are likely to attract transnational terrorism. States that are actively involved in international politics are likely t…
Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising
Narrative transportation—to be carried away by a story—has been proposed as a distinct route to persuasion. But as originally conceived, narrative transportation is unlikely to occur in response to advertisements, where persuasive intent is obvious and consumer resistance is expected. We analyze fashion ads to show how narrative transportation can nonetheless be a possible response to ads, if specific aesthetic properties are present, most notabl…
Personification in Advertising
All forms of personification draw on anthropomorphism, the propensity to attribute human characteristics to objects. In an experiment, we show that visual personification—pictures in an ad that metaphorically represent a product as engaged in some kind of human behavior—can trigger anthropomorphism. Such personification, when embedded in an ad, appears to lead to more positive emotions, more positive attributions of brand personality, and greater…
When Politicians Sell Drugs: Examining Why Middle East Ethnopolitical Organizations Are Involved in the Drug Trade
Political organizations claim they are serving the interests of their constituents—but being involved in the drug trade does not seem to support those claims. Why would political organizations sell drugs then? Most often the question of why organizations engage in the drug trade has been explored in the context of organizations that are either criminal or violent, thus leaving a large hole in the literature about how violence and legality interse…
The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging
The megaphone effect refers to the fact that the web makes a mass audience potentially available to ordinary consumers. The article focuses on fashion bloggers who acquire an audience by iterated displays of aesthetic discrimination applied to the selection and combination of clothing. The authors offer a theoretical account of bloggers’ success in terms of the accumulation of cultural capital via public displays of taste and describe how the exe…
The Megaphone Effect in Social Media: How Ordinary Consumers Become Style Leaders
Amassing an audience by blogging is a very recent form of online consumer behavior. Consumers not only seek community as earlier studies show, they also look for taste leadership from certain peers Fashion bloggers take hold of the Internet “megaphone” to broadcast and influence taste within an elaborate social and cultural process. It teaches us some general principles about the ways professional marketing is affected by these “citizen journalis…
Civil war, spillover and neighbors’ military spending
This paper brings together studies of civil war consequences and literature on military spending, introducing a novel mechanism for how civil wars adversely affect neighbors—through neighbors’ increased military spending. Military expenditures are important because they often inhibit development. Civil wars affect proximate states’ defense spending because the potential spillover threatens neighbors. Tests on developing countries from 1950 to 200…
Foreign Aid as a Signal to Investors: Predicting FDI in Post-conflict Countries
Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments fa…
Terrorist Group Cooperation and Longevity
Why do some terrorist groups survive considerably longer than others? The literature is just beginning to address this important question in a systematic manner. Additionally, and as with most studies of terrorism, longevity studies have ignored the possibility of interactions between terrorist groups. This article attempts to address these two gaps in the literature: the incomplete understanding of terrorist group survival and the tendency to as…
Deadlier in the U.S.? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality
Scholars, politicians, and pundits increasingly suggest lone wolf terrorists are substantial threats, but we know little about how dangerous these actors are—especially relative to other terrorist actors. How deadly are lone actor terrorists? A growing body of empirical research focuses on terrorist organizations, but similar work on lone actors is sparse. Furthermore, attempts to explicitly compare these or other types of terrorist actors are al…
What explains ethnic organizational violence? Evidence from Eastern Europe and Russia
Why do some ethnopolitical organizations use violence? Research on substate violence often uses the state level of analysis, or only analyzes groups that are already violent. Using a resource mobilization framework drawn from a broad literature, we test hypotheses with new data on hundreds of violent and non-violent ethnopolitical organizations in Eastern Europe and Russia. Our study finds interorganizational competition, state repression and str…
How Does Leadership Decapitation Affect Violence? The Case of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico
Many governments target leaders of violent groups, but consequences of this strategy are unclear. Additionally, most studies examine political groups such as terrorists, ignoring criminal organizations—even though they can represent serious threats to security. This article presents a theoretical framework for how political and criminal groups differ and uses the framework to explain how group type should condition leadership removal's effects. D…
Enemies with benefits? Violent rivalry and terrorist group longevity
Terrorist organizations often attack each other, but we know little about how this affects the involved groups. Some states encourage or turn a blind eye toward terrorist group interorganizational violence, hoping that it destroys at least one of the groups involved. This article argues that - contrary to the wishes of such governments - violent rivalries can contribute to the longevity of participating terrorist groups. Violent rivalries encoura…
What Is a Terrorist Group? Conceptual Issues and Empirical Implications
Researchers increasingly conduct quantitative studies of terrorist groups, which is an important advance in the literature. However, there has been little discussion of what constitutes a “terrorist group, ” regarding conceptualization or measurement. Many studies of terrorist groups do not define the term, and among those that do, definitions vary considerably. The lack of clarity leads to conceptual confusion as well as sample selection issues,…
Inequality and the Emergence of Vigilante Organizations: The Case of MexicanAutodefensas
What explains the emergence of vigilante organizations? Throughout the world, vigilantes emerge to illegally punish perceived criminals, often leading to serious consequences. However, the literature presents partial and conflicting explanations for this phenomenon. This article argues that local economic inequality creates a situation ripe for vigilante organizations. Inequality creates demand for vigilantism because poorer citizens feel relativ…
Terrorist Group Rivalries and Alliances: Testing Competing Explanations
Terrorist group rivalries and alliances have important consequences, but the sources of these relationships are debated. This article offers a side-by-side examination of correlates of terrorist rivalries and alliances. Global analyses of hundreds of terrorist groups find violent rivalry is associated with drug trafficking, state sponsorship, ethnic motivation, and operating in a civil conflict country. Alliances are associated with territorial c…
Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, international cooperation, and terrorism
How does branding militant groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) affect them? Beyond its obvious policy importance, this question speaks to debates about counterterrorism, terrorism financing, and organizational dynamics of subnational violence. This article analyzes FTO designation, a key policy used by the U.S. government since 1997 to impose costs on foreign terrorist groups and those who might support them. Contrary to arguments …
Carrots, Sticks, and Insurgent Targeting of Civilians
How do conciliatory and coercive counterinsurgency tactics affect militant group violence against civilians? Scholars of civil war increasingly seek to understand intentional civilian targeting, often referred to as terrorism. Extant research emphasizes group weakness, or general state attributes such as regime type. We focus on terrorism as violent communication and as a response to government actions. State tactics toward groups, carrots and st…
Do 90 Percent of Terrorist Groups Last Less than a Year? Updating the Conventional Wisdom
Prominent scholars criticize terrorism research for lacking sufficient empirical testing of arguments. Interestingly, one of the most widely cited estimates in terrorism studies has not been evaluated using the many data sources now available. Rapoport’s 1992 claim, that perhaps 90 percent of terrorist groups last less than one year, has been described as part of the conventional wisdom. This estimate is frequently used to justify studies of terr…
Narco-Messages: Competition and Public Communication by Criminal Groups
Criminal groups often avoid the limelight, shunning publicity. However, in some instances, they overtly communicate, such as with banners or signs. This article explains the competition dynamics behind public criminal communication and provides theory and evidence of the conditions under which it emerges. Relying on a new dataset of approximately 1,800 banners publicly deployed by Mexican criminal groups from 2007 to 2010, the study identifies th…
Political science (30 works) · Law (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (21 works) · Criminology (18 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Terrorism (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Politics (14 works)