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Little academic attention has been accorded to terrorism hoaxers-i.e. those perpetrators who use lies, benign materials and/or empty threats to give the impression that a terrorist act is or has been underway. This dissertation harnesses under-utilised terrorism events data to build a theory of hoaxes in pursuit of a dual aim: to provide a robust substantive answer to the empirical puzzle of why hoaxes are used, but not by all groups, and not all the time; and to evaluate the degree to which existing data can demystify the hoax phenomenon. The starting point is a rationalist framework for terrorist groups' strategic logics, which emphasizes the relative costs and benefits of hoaxes in relation to serious terrorism activity. In the empirical theory-building chapters, probit regression and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) are used to identify various organizational conditions that differentiate hoaxers from non-hoaxers, thereby indicating which strategic logics are plausibly at play, and in which contexts. A statistical cluster analysis demonstrates that there are five broad classes of hoaxing terrorist groups, which differ from one another along motivational, structural, and campaign contextual lines. While the unit of analysis throughout is the terrorist group, these analyses rely on crossnational terrorism events databases-predominantly ITERATE and the Monterey WMD Terrorism Database-to identify which groups never hoax, and which groups sometimes do. In the dissertation's final section, earlier findings are tested against a new sample of terrorism perpetrators derived from the recently-released Canadian Incident Database (CIDB). Although the Canada-centric data reveals a biased under-reporting of hoax activity in the cross-national datasets, a QCA analysis of its perpetrators reveals roughly similar conditions differentiating hoaxers from non-hoaxers. The CIDB's comprehensive events coverage is further exploited to test whether these organizational indicators and their associated hypothesized mechanisms hold, when campaign activities are evaluated at the event-level. A fine-grained analysis of event sequencing in Canada's most prolific terrorism campaign (that of the Front de libération du Québec) corroborates a range of proposed strategic logics. The observational nature of available data is thus limited in its ability to clarify hoaxers' strategic logics, which are both over-determined and equifinal.iii

This study explores which factors, given that a terrorist has crossed the threshold into using chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) over conventional weapons, will determine the likelihood that he/she chooses to use C, B, R, or N weapons. Relying primarily on data from the incident-based Monterey WMD Database, it employs multinomial logit regression with C, B, R, or N as a categorical dependent variable: a first within the relevant econometric literature. Fundamentally, the study tests the widely-held—although empirically unsubstantiated—technological deterministic assumption that the more readily CBRN technology, materials, and knowledge are accessible to terrorists, the more likely terrorists will be to use unconventional weapons of the corresponding kind: a relationship hypothesized to be stronger for serious attack perpetrators than for hoaxers. Next, the study tests the notion of a continuum of proliferation potential, hypothesizing that as states’ regulatory capacity increases, biological terrorism will be most likely and nuclear terrorism will be least likely. Finally, the study assesses variables that have previously been proven as significant determinants of CBRN over conventional terrorism, to provide the groundwork for future evaluation of the extent to which terrorists may be induced to pursue C, B, R, or N over conventional weapons.Cette étude explore les facteurs, en supposant qu'un terroriste ait franchi le seuil des armes traditionnelles en utilisant des armes non traditionnelles comme les armes chimiques, biologiques, radiologiques et nucléaires (CBRN), qui détermineront la possibilité qu'il/elle choisisse d'utiliser les armes C, B, R ou N. En s'appuyant sur des données primaires de labase de données Monterey WMD, elle se sert d'une régression logit multinomial avec C, B,R ou N comme une variante dépendante catégorique : il s'agit d'une première pour la documentation pertinente économétrique. Principalement, l'étude vérifie la supposition très répandue - même si elle n'est pas empiriquement corroborée - comme quoi plus latechnologie CBRN, les matériaux et les connaissances sont accessibles aux terroristes, plus les terroristes seront portés à se servir d'armes non traditionnelles pour la situation quis'apprête : une relation censée être plus solide pour des auteurs d'agressions plus dangereuses que pour les charlatans. Ensuite, l'étude vérifie la notion d'une continuité de prolifération éventuelle, en supposant qu'avec l'augmentation de la capacité deréglementation de l'État, le terrorisme biologique serait le plus probable, alors que le terrorisme nucléaire serait le moins probable. Enfin, l'étude évalue les variantes qui ont déjà été prouvées comme déterminant de façon importante les CBRN plutôt que le terrorisme traditionnel, pour fournir un travail préparatoire pour de futures évaluations de l'étendue avec laquelle les terroristes pourraient être incités à se servir d'armes C, B, Rou N plutôt que des armes traditionnelles.