Explaining Terrorism: Leadership Deficits and Militant Group Tactics

Abstract

Certain types of militant groups—those suffering from leadership deficits—are more likely to attack civilians. Their leadership deficits exacerbate the principal-agent problem between leaders and foot soldiers, who have stronger incentives to harm civilians. We establish the validity of this proposition with a tripartite research strategy that balances generalizability and identification. First, we demonstrate in a sample of militant organizations operating in the Middle East and North Africa that those lacking centralized leadership are prone to targeting civilians. Second, we show that when the leaderships of militant groups are degraded from drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal regions, the selectivity of organizational violence plummets. Third, we elucidate the mechanism with a detailed case study of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian group that turned to terrorism during the Second Intifada because pressure on leadership allowed low-level members to act on their preexisting incentives to attack civilians. These findings indicate that a lack of principal control is an important, underappreciated cause of militant group violence against civilians.

Who is more violent in extremist groups? A comparison of leaders and followers

“…However, even though leaders were more ideologically committed to the group's goals and ideologies, with regard to our primary variable of interest, use of violence, we found that they were at the same time less likely to engage in violent acts. These results obtained on the individual level support prior research on groups and organizations (Abrahms & Potter, 2015;Shapiro & Siegel, 2012) suggesting that leaders, in comparison to followers, have fewer incentives to perpetrate violence. As we argued above, several variables may motivate followers to engage in violent actions.…”

“…There are several reasons to expect that the incentives of leaders to engage in violent actions are indeed weaker than the incentives of followers for such actions (Abrahms & Potter, 2015;Shapiro & Siegel, 2012). First, due to their position within the group, compared to followers, leaders have a more complete understanding of long-term organizational goals and better recognition of appropriate means for attaining them (Greenwald, 2007;Von Krogh et al, 2012).…”

The Power to Resist: Mobilization and the Logic of Terrorist Attacks in Civil War

“…We use rebel centralized leadership to account for the rebel groups' type of command structure and the possible influence of principal-agent problems (Abrahms and Potter 2015). We distinguish between groups with a strong centralized leadership and those that are internally factionalized (Cunningham, Gleditsch and Salehyan 2009).…”

The internal brakes on violent escalation: a typology

“…We identified five sub-brakes under Brake 5. It is likely that the effectiveness of Brakes 5a -5d will be associated with the effectiveness of organisational leadership, with these brakes being least effective in organisations experiencing 'leadership deficits' (Abrahms & Potter, 2015), or that explicitly adopt strategies of leaderless resistance (Chermak et al, 2013).…”