Ballots, Bargains, and Bombs: Terrorist Targeting of Spoiler Opportunities

Braithwaite, Alex; Foster, Dennis M.; Sobek, David

doi:10.1080/03050629.2010.502453

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…By removing the menace of physical harm usually associated with terrorism, FVES may better mobilize citizens' support for environmentalism; promoting the environmentalist agenda as it damages or destroys the target and simultaneously advertises the ideology. 58 Similar to the strategic logic of terrorism, 59 radical tactics can revitalize stagnant movements, 60 increase support for moderate groups' efforts by changing the perceptions of moderates, 61 and highlighting their ideas. 62 For example, in the US context, the Civil Rights Era was defined by a large organizational field.…”

Section: Shared Ideology Equals Shared Reputationmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Radical Environmental Sabotage Impacts US Elections

Farrer

Klein

2019

Terrorism and Political Violence

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In this paper we examine the impact of forceful or violent environmental sabotage (FVES) on U.S. elections. We argue that voters see ideological similarities between groups that engage in FVES and other nonviolent environmental organizations, like the Green Party. This means that when an environmentalist organization engages in FVES, it has a negative impact on voter attitudes toward all environmental organizations. Moreover, this negative impact will be stronger if environmentalists had previously made electoral progress, and so they cannot use the excuse that democratic methods had failed and they were forced to turn to FVES. We demonstrate this by showing that when FVES occurs, Green Party candidates tend to win a lower share of the vote in the next election. However, this effect is conditional on the prior electoral history of the Green Party. If the Green Party has a poor electoral record, then sabotage has little effect, but if the Green Party has a better electoral record, then voters are less forgiving of sabotage. We find no evidence that FVES effects Republican or Democratic vote shares. We conclude that different organizations within the same social movement are connected in ways that impact electoral outcomes.

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Section: Shared Ideology Equals Shared Reputationmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Radical Environmental Sabotage Impacts US Elections

Farrer

Klein

2019

Terrorism and Political Violence

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“…Recent quantitative analyses by economists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists are also split on this issue. Most emphasize predictability, finding statistically significant patterns through which Israeli and Palestinian actions follow from previous ac-tions (Beasley 2008;Braithwaite, Foster, and Sobek 2010;Brym and Andersen 2011;Brym and Araj 2006;Kanwisher 2010, 2011;Kaplan et al 2005;Maoz 2007). Other researchers, however, distinguish the predictability of Israeli actions and the limited predictability of Palestinian actions (Hafez and Hatfield 2006;Jaeger and Paserman 2006.…”

Section: Israel-palestinementioning

confidence: 99%

When Forecasts Fail: Unpredictability in Israeli-Palestinian Interaction

Kurzman¹,

Hasnain²

2014

SocScience

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This article explores the paradox that forecasts may be most likely to fail during dramatic moments of historic change that social scientists are most eager to predict. It distinguishes among four types of shocks that can undermine the predictive power of time series analyses: effect shocks that change the size of the causal effect; input shocks that change the causal variables; duration shocks that change how long a causal effect lasts; and actor shocks that change the number of agents in the system. The significance of these shocks is illustrated in Israeli-Palestinian interactions, one of the contemporary world's most intensely scrutinized episodes, using vector autogression analyses of more than 15,000 Reuters news stories over the past three decades. The intervention of these shocks raises the prospect that some historic episodes may be unpredictable, even retrospectively.

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“…These studies link up with a more extensive research field that examines how violence influences peace processes more generally and in these discussions occasionally make reference to the spoiler concept (for example, Darby and Mac Ginty 2000; Darby 2001, 2006; Sisk 2006; Höglund 2008). Following in the footsteps of the so‐called war on terrorism, we have also witnessed the emergence of a growing research field concerned with the study of terrorist violence that occurs in the context of an armed conflict or an ongoing peace process (for example, Kydd and Walter 2002; Bueno de Mesquita 2005; Kydd and Walter 2006; Boyle 2009; Braithwaite et al. 2010).…”

Section: Parties Actions and Outcomes: Defining Spoilersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting an Elusive Concept: A Review of the Debate on Spoilers in Peace Processes1

Nilsson

Kovacs

2011

International Studies Review

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In a seminal article, Stedman (International Security, 22, 1997, 5) suggested that the greatest source of risk to civil war peace processes comes from so-called spoilers, leaders, and groups that perceive peace as threatening and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it. The spoiler concept has since gained significant ground and widespread legitimacy both in the academic literature and in critical policy circles. In the footsteps of this development, however, we suggest that the spoiler concept has been stretched beyond its original meaning and given raise to a number of ambiguities concerning its definition and empirical applicability. This lack of clarity in regard to some of the key aspects of the spoiler concept does not only risk undermining the usefulness of the concept itself, but also risks hampering the accumulation of valuable research on this pertinent topic. This article presents a reflection on a burgeoning research field and aims to contribute to the same by attempting to offer greater conceptual clarity in regard to a number of issues that are the core of the spoiler debate and by presenting a conceptual framework for analyzing spoilers in future research.From ongoing peace efforts around the world-in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel and Palestine, Nepal, the Philippines, or Sudan-we receive almost daily accounts of broken peace talks, interrupted disarmament efforts, violent incidents, and political assassinations that speak to the importance of better understanding the patterns and processes of peacemaking in civil wars. In a seminal article, Stedman (1997) suggested that the greatest source of risk to peace processes comes from so-called spoilers: leaders and groups that perceive peace as threatening and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it. Although Stedman was not the first to identify the problem or the first to address it, the article was a novel attempt to develop a typology for categorizing different actor types based on their motives and means of spoiling, and discuss the policy implications of various third-party strategies for managing such actors in internationally supervised peace processes. Since then, the concept of spoilers has been frequently referred to and gained widespread usage and legitimacy 1 We would like to thank Thomas Ohlson and the Research Article Seminar at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, for many useful suggestions. A previous version of this paper was also presented at the National Conference on Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala, December 16-17, 2010, and we would like to thank the participants for valuable discussions. We also wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft, from which the final version has greatly benefited. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and the SYLFF Endowment at Uppsala University.

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Ballots, Bargains, and Bombs: Terrorist Targeting of Spoiler Opportunities

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

How Radical Environmental Sabotage Impacts US Elections

How Radical Environmental Sabotage Impacts US Elections

When Forecasts Fail: Unpredictability in Israeli-Palestinian Interaction

Revisiting an Elusive Concept: A Review of the Debate on Spoilers in Peace Processes1

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