Fifty Shades of Terrorist Credit-Taking: A Review of the Existing Scholarship on Terrorist Credit-Taking

Abstract

The consistently low credit-taking rates, 16 percent in 2016 (Global Terrorism Database), continue to challenge the understanding of terrorism as “propaganda of the deed” twenty years after researchers initially pointed out the conundrum. While providing an overview and evaluation of the limited existing literature on credit-taking, this paper draws attention to three core problems in the current literature on terrorist credit-taking, which may have led the low credit-taking rates to appear more puzzling than is due. First, the available explanations struggle to find corroboration when empirically tested and many also show theoretical shortcomings with strong unspoken assumptions and unclear predictions of credit-taking behavior. Second, data structure and data availability unnecessarily narrow our academic understanding of credit-taking. Finally, theories focused on group characteristics such as religious motivation or state sponsorship suffer from severe issues of sample bias due to unintended selection on the dependent variable. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research less prone to the problematic issues identified in the article. A re-orientation toward a less restrictive and more fine-grained understanding of credit-taking is advised.

Between paradise and prison: External secrecy and visibility in terrorist organisations

“…Another crucial aspect of external secrecy in terrorism concerns credit taking (e.g. Hansen, 2021). On several occasions, terrorist organisations officially claim responsibility for the attacks they actually committed and are ready to present the reasons underlying these acts of violence, from their perspective.…”

Scattered Attacks: The Collective Dynamics of Lone-Actor Terrorism

“…One common pattern is that individual perpetrators conceive of themselves and their violent attacks as being part of a movement and an ongoing violent campaign that is driven not only by lone actors, but also (or mainly) by terrorist groups or even larger armed organizations. For example, numerous jihadist lone actors in Europe and the US from 2015 onward proclaimed their acts to be part of the broader war waged by the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, referring to other lone-actor attacks, but identifying especially with ISIS and the jihadist movement, which in many cases then recognized or claimed these attacks as their own (Hansen 2021). However, interactive coordination is not just about individuals aspiring to become part of a larger movement and terrorist groups "absorbing" lone-actor attacks.…”