Plots, Attacks, and the Measurement of Terrorism

Hegghammer, Thomas; Ketchley, Neil

doi:10.31235/osf.io/t72yj

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“… 6 Hegghammer & Ketchley (2021) argue that the ideal dataset for studying determinants of terrorism would include plots that derailed even before the execution stage. There exists no such dataset with the spatial and temporal coverage necessary for our analysis. …”

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confidence: 99%

Religion and terrorism: Evidence from Ramadan fasting

Hodler

Raschky

Strittmatter

2023

Journal of Peace Research

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Do intense religious experiences increase or decrease terrorism? We argue that fasting during the month of Ramadan offers an ideal setting for studying this question empirically. Reasons are twofold: first, daily fasting from dawn to sunset during Ramadan is considered mandatory for most Muslims. Second, the Islamic Hijri calendar is not synchronized with the solar cycle. Therefore, the daily fasting duration during Ramadan is exogenous once we control for latitude and the seasonality of Ramadan, which we can do by using district and country-year fixed effects. Focusing on predominantly Muslim countries, we document three main findings: first, longer and more intense Ramadan fasting has a robust negative effect on the likelihood of local terrorist events and terror deaths over the next year. Second, this negative effect is particularly pronounced for operationally more difficult attack types, which are more dependent on public support for terrorism. Third, using survey data, we show that longer and more intense Ramadan fasting lowers the share of respondents who consider religiously motivated violence to be justified. These findings imply that intense religious experiences may not be a breeding ground for terrorism. Quite the opposite, they can decrease public support for terrorism and, consequently, terrorist attacks.

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confidence: 99%

Religion and terrorism: Evidence from Ramadan fasting

Hodler

Raschky

Strittmatter

2023

Journal of Peace Research

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“…More recently, it has been noticed that European jihadists have much lower socioeconomic backgrounds than usually observed in terrorism studies (Basra and Neumann 2016;Hecker 2018;Hegghammer 2016;Rekawek et al 2018). Again, this is likely to be due to the capacities of jihadist groups operating in Syria and Iraq to offer incentives to recruits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Egoism and Altruism in Intergroup Conflict

Varaine

Magni-Berton

Benslimane

et al. 2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Studies have shown that intergroup conflict may result from two distinct human motives: the desire to obtain personal retributions from conflict ( egoism), and the desire to sacrifice for the benefit of the ingroup ( parochial altruism). Yet, the relative strength of these motives is open to debate. In this study, we compare behaviors in two Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemmas (IPD), which respectively capture altruistic and egoistic motives to generate conflict. Egoistic motives result in about 40% more conflict than altruistic motives. Yet, parochial altruism generates more conflict when three conditions are gathered: i) other ingroup members are parochial altruists, ii) the outgroup is aggressive and iii) the outgroup is rich. Implications regarding the diverging structural causes of terrorism and civil wars are discussed.

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“…Although such plots make up a significant share of terrorist activity, many previous studies completely overlook foiled or failed attacks, 99 resulting in skewed representations of overall terrorist activity. 100 Foiled and failed plots are included in order to capture the totality of planned and perpetrated activity (not just the number of attacks that happened to avoid police detection). The final group involves cases of far-right actors being detained in prison beyond their original sentences (after being jailed for right-wing-motivated offences that did not reach a level of severity to warrant inclusion), as their release was considered too high of a risk to the community.…”

Section: Perspectives On Terrorismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Far-Right Violence Actually Increasing in Australia? Tracking Far-Right Terrorism and Violence in Australia

Harris-Hogan

2023

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In recent times, governments throughout the Western world have warned of an increase in far-right violence. A range of government and academic sources have also made spectacular claims regarding a rise in far-right violence in Australia. However, for a range of reasons, the actual prevalence of far-right violence occurring in Australia remains largely unknown. To address this gap in knowledge, the following documents acts of far-right violence and terrorism in Australia between 1990 and 2020. This study demonstrates that no clear increase has actually occurred. A total of 181 incidents are identified across almost all geographic locations, with concentrations of violence noted in Melbourne and North Queensland. A clear spike in violent incidents was identified between 2005 and 2010. However, a complete reduction in fatal violence has occurred since that time, and there has also been a notable reduction in violent events across most years since that peak. Notably, only a vanishingly small number of incidents were perpetrated by individuals associated with organised far-right groups. Rather, the vast majority of attacks are committed by lone actors or small unorganised groups, often spontaneously. To date, this more chronic form of far-right violence has been almost entirely overlooked by policymakers. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if Australia’s existing counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism infrastructure, built primarily to address a Jihadist threat that is highly networked, geographically concentrated and transnationally linked, can be adapted to combat a far-right that is largely unorganised and geographically decentralised.

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Plots, Attacks, and the Measurement of Terrorism

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Religion and terrorism: Evidence from Ramadan fasting

Religion and terrorism: Evidence from Ramadan fasting

Egoism and Altruism in Intergroup Conflict

Is Far-Right Violence Actually Increasing in Australia? Tracking Far-Right Terrorism and Violence in Australia

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