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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

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

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

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 …

Legitimate Illegitimacy: Measuring Terrorists' Legitimacy During And After Negotiations, Brenna L. Bridwell

Doctoral Dissertations

Policymakers often refuse negotiations with terrorist groups for fear that those groups will become legitimized in the eyes of the population, and that the state will become the victim of future attacks as other groups attempt to emulate the negotiating group. While scholars have analyzed whether or not negotiations are effective in ending terrorist groups, scholarship is lacking as to whether or not policymakers’ fears regarding legitimization are accurate. In this vein, I analyze the IRA/UK negotiations during the Good Friday Accords using tobit regressions and Critical Discourse Analysis to determine whether the IRA gained political legitimacy via their portrayal …

The Factors Which Lead To The Emergence Of Terrorist Groups And Influence Their Structure, Stuart C. Groombridge

University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016

This thesis examines the factors, which lead to the emergence of terrorist groups and the evolution of their organisational structure. The three case studies used within this thesis examine terrorist groups as complex adaptive systems. Historically, the only group, which has been studied as a complex adaptive system, is Al Qaeda. This study builds on this work by examining three cases of historical terrorist groups: the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Weather Underground Organisation, and Kosovo Liberation Army, in an attempt to ascertain whether the concept of complex adaptive systems can be generalised to a broader range of groups.

The thesis …

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

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

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

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 …

Tactics, Politics, And Propaganda In The Irish War Of Independence, 1917-1921, Mike Rast

History Theses

This thesis examines the influences on and evolution of the Irish Republican Army‘s guerrilla war strategy between 1917 and 1921. Utilizing newspapers, government documents, and memoirs of participants, this study highlights the role of propaganda and political concerns in waging an insurgency. It argues that while tactical innovation took place in the field, IRA General Headquarters imposed policy and directed the conflict with a concern for the political results of military action. While implementing strategies necessary to effective conflict of the war, this Headquarters staff was unable to reconcile a disjointed and overburdened command structure, leading its disintegration after the …

Covering Terrorism: Examining How U.S. Newspapers Have Reported On These Incidents, David Thomas

Honors Capstones

The Sept. 11,2001 terrorist attacks on the United States pushed the issue of terrorism into the forefront of the American consciousness. Since then, the American media has covered a wide variety of topics related to these attacks. But has the coverage been fair? One of the tenets of modern journalism is to be fair and accurate in all reporting. But terrorism is a very thorny issue to cover. As the famous adage goes, "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist." Questions of bias are unavoidable when it comes to reporting the news. The issue becomes even thornier when terrorism …

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 …

Providing For The Common Defense: Internal Security And The Cold War, 1945-1975, Marc A. Patenaude

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While the historiography of the Red Scare has often discussed the major internal security legislation passed during the period, the legislation in question is often given short shrift and characterized as a misguided response by Congress. It is important to examine this legislation not only for what it did for the internal security of the nation, but also for what it meant symbolically. Implementation of governmental policy, including internal security policy, through legislation often also serves as a window to the beliefs and values of those crafting the legislation. By examining the internal security legislation passed during the Red Scare, …

Slaying The Dragon: An Analysis On How To Dismantle Terrorist Organizations, Caroline Kelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism has become a rising threat to international peace and security all over the world. It is not a new problem to the world scene, but increasingly crucial to the United States. While al-Qaeda is the most current threat to many countries in the world and may seem impossible to put down, terrorist organizations have been defeated throughout history. Understanding the major causes of other group's demise may teach us useful skills in how to defeat the current problems. The most useful policies that have been effective in defeating terrorism have been policing, politicization, and military actions in corporation with …

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

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

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 …

Terrorism And The New International Environment, Dong Jin Kim

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the characteristics of terrorism in the new international environment following the Cold War in which international terrorism is undergoing drastic changes in its sources and characteristics; The breakdown of the bipolar system and concomitant diffusion of political power have given way to rivalry between regional states; especially, one of the key factors is the effect of weapons proliferation on the dynamics of conflict between regional rivals including nuclear, biological, and chemical-weapons capability. The world is also confronting an assortment of prodemocracy and anti-colonial movements which tend to erupt in civil disorder. The above ingredients are currently fomenting …

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 …