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Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee Aug 2022

Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee

Doctoral Dissertations

State-sponsored terrorism (SST) has for long been used as a tool by countries to inflict costs on rival states without direct confrontation, as the latter risks inviting limited to full-scale war. The literature on SST has so far focused primarily on the motivations, facilitating factors, and the timing of state sponsorship. What has been insufficiently studied, however, are the responses of victim states to SST. Why does state response to SST vary spatio-temporally in different countries, under different governments, and even under different leaders of the same ruling political dispensation in a country? Under what conditions does a state respond …


The International Perception Of The Irish Republican Army And Chechen Insurgency, Henry Forteith May 2022

The International Perception Of The Irish Republican Army And Chechen Insurgency, Henry Forteith

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

This purpose of this project is to examine how the labels used to describe the Irish Republican Army and Chechen insurgency changed after certain acts of violence. This paper begins by describing the history of imperial subjugation of Ireland and Chechnya, as well as examining the similarities between the actions and motivations of the IRA and Chechen insurgency. Then, to study the change in language to describe these groups, two searches were conducted into the New York Times and International Newsstream databases. The first search examined articles about the IRA and Chechen insurgency published between 1998 and 2009, while the …


The Longevity Of Religious Terrorist Organizations, William John Hughes Jan 2017

The Longevity Of Religious Terrorist Organizations, William John Hughes

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.


Applying Situational Crime Prevention To Terrorism Against Airports And Aircrafts., Molly Mae Block May 2016

Applying Situational Crime Prevention To Terrorism Against Airports And Aircrafts., Molly Mae Block

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies the characteristics of terrorism against airports and aircrafts and the appropriate measures to prevent or reduce the damage of this crime. The situational crime prevention framework, incorporating routine activity theory, rational choice theory, and crime pattern theory, is used to identify techniques to reduce the opportunity for terrorism targeting airports and aircrafts. This study is a first attempt to determine which situational characteristics may be relevant in attacks specifically targeting airports or aircrafts. Data for this dissertation comes from the Global Terrorism Database and covers terrorist attacks targeting airports or aircrafts from 2002 to 2014. The sample …


18th Century Anarchism And Its Effect On Modern Day Domestic Terrorism, Mary A. Scott May 2014

18th Century Anarchism And Its Effect On Modern Day Domestic Terrorism, Mary A. Scott

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Anarchism is a political and socioeconomic force that has driven violent methods of social and political change for centuries. Relating Anarchism to these violent acts demonstrates a deep-seeded link to terrorism. Anarchism is one of the main forces behind modern day terrorism due to its long history alongside the ever evolving term terrorism. By connecting these two concepts, domestic terror groups can be better analyzed and understood, and future attacks from within the United States may be prevented.


Deadly Premonition: Does Terrorist-Leader Psychology Influence Violence Lethality?, Clayton Besaw Jan 2014

Deadly Premonition: Does Terrorist-Leader Psychology Influence Violence Lethality?, Clayton Besaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to address a theoretical and empirical gap within terrorism studies, and more specially the study of terrorist-group lethality. This research updates a model of terrorist-group lethality by including terrorist-leader psychology as an individual-level variable in predicting terrorist-group lethality. Terrorist-leader statements were analyzed by using two novel coding schemes called Operational Code and Leadership Trait Analysis to create quantified measurements of leader cognitive beliefs and personality traits. The empirical portion of this study utilizes pooled cross-sectional time-series data within the framework of fixed effects and multi-level estimation models. The results find that terrorist-leader psychology, and more specifically Instrumental …


Multicultural Public Policy And Homegrown Terrorism In The European Union, Macklin Keith Everly Jan 2014

Multicultural Public Policy And Homegrown Terrorism In The European Union, Macklin Keith Everly

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Western European democracies embraced multiculturalist public policy (MCPP). This was in an effort to address and accommodate the minority rights of immigrants who found their way to Europe during its post-WWII labor force recovery. By the mid-1990s, there was a backlash against such policy and movement towards integrationist values. This has been exacerbated in the wake of radical Islamist terror attacks like those of 9/11, the London 7/7 bombing, and the Paris Metro Bombings of 1995. Attention has been focused on the threat, incidence, and causal factors of homegrown jihadism within Europe. The research …


The Path To Peace: Conflict Theory And Northern Ireland’S Troubles (1968-1998), Ruairi Wiepking Dec 2011

The Path To Peace: Conflict Theory And Northern Ireland’S Troubles (1968-1998), Ruairi Wiepking

Master's Theses

This paper is a qualitative historical analysis of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Over a period of approximately thirty years, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland dominated the headlines of newspapers in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Despite this violent history, Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace and stability since the passage of the Belfast Agreement in 1998. This paper aims to better understand why and how Northern Ireland endured a generation of brutal sectarian violence and emerged into a new era of peace and mutual understanding. In doing so, this paper incorporates theories from peace and conflict studies …


Accounting For The Role Of The Public In Democratic States' Counterterrorism Policies: A Comparative Case Study Analysis Of Spain And The United Kingdom, Megan R. Cronenwett Jan 2011

Accounting For The Role Of The Public In Democratic States' Counterterrorism Policies: A Comparative Case Study Analysis Of Spain And The United Kingdom, Megan R. Cronenwett

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Democratic states are more susceptible to terrorist attacks and yet have the most responsibility to ensure their counterterrorism responses are in accordance with democratic principles. Respect for the rule of law and the freedoms of speech and press are just a few of the principles ingrained in democratic philosophy and likewise, by the very nature of a democracy, democratic states must be held accountable to their citizenries. These factors, however, can be a cause of dissention and can lead to a dangerous overreaction or a disproportionate response by democratic states in their counterterrorism policies, including leading to the very undemocratic …


The Long Game: Hamas, The Ira, And The Politics Of Radicalization In Palestine And Northern Ireland, Dan O'Sullivan Jan 2009

The Long Game: Hamas, The Ira, And The Politics Of Radicalization In Palestine And Northern Ireland, Dan O'Sullivan

Honors Theses

The value of a comparative study of the two conflicts stems from a remarkable similarity in the structural organization of political violence by its most influential practitioners: the IRA and Hamas. At the core, I have merely tried my best to approach a beguiling question in a fresh, dynamic way. The stultifying discourse of conflict that serves as lingua franca for the Israeli‐Palestinian issue has largely reduced strategic debate to how best the conflict can be managed – not ended. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus on “economic peace” and unwillingness to commit to a two‐state solution – the consensus that …


The Origins Of Ethno/National Separatist Terrorism: A Cross-National Analysis Of The Background Conditions Of Terrorist Campaigns, Brandon Charles Snell Jan 2009

The Origins Of Ethno/National Separatist Terrorism: A Cross-National Analysis Of The Background Conditions Of Terrorist Campaigns, Brandon Charles Snell

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This study measures the influence that multiple social, political, and economic conditions have on the development of ethno/national separatist terrorist organizations. It begins by analyzing the nationalist theories of primordialism, modernism, and ethnosymbolism, and the terrorist theories of strategic logic and psychology. The nationalist theories consider cultural symbols a powerful component behind nationalist movements and populations with significant symbolic attachments especially prone to react aggressively against perceived threats to those symbols. Proponents of strategic logic and psychological theory also view terrorism as reactive but deviate on whether this response is conceived rationally. Examining the origins of Basque and Catalan terrorism …


An Analysis Of The Vulnerability To Terrorist Radicalization In Great Britain, Teddy Reynolds Jan 2008

An Analysis Of The Vulnerability To Terrorist Radicalization In Great Britain, Teddy Reynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To understand the conditions and experiences that might make an individual more vulnerable to terrorist radicalization, this study examines a sample group of Muslim's in Great Britain to determine if responses to survey questions on a range of issues and perceptions can provide indications of an individual's vulnerability to terrorist radicalization. Key to this process was the development of a vulnerability to radicalization score that allowed for an analysis of the relationship between this score and different independent variables. The dataset for this study was obtained using the Pew Research Center's Spring 2006 Global Attitudes Project 15 Nation Survey. This …


The Implementation Of The Reagan Administration's Counterterrorist Policy, Howard Lawrence Steinberg Aug 1992

The Implementation Of The Reagan Administration's Counterterrorist Policy, Howard Lawrence Steinberg

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This thesis investigates the implementation of President Ronald Reagan's active counterterrorist policy. The paper attempts to determine why the stated policy of "swift and effective retribution" was not carried out. This paper concentrates on the discrepancies between the numerous statements advocating retaliation made by Reagan and his top officials and the failure of these officials to administer the necessary orders for such retaliatory policies. This research indicated numerous causes, although the primary cause is attributed to the divergent opinions of the reticent Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the more retributive views of the two successive Secretaries of State, Alexander …