Academic research and government policy on terrorism

Merari, Ariel

doi:10.1080/09546559108427094

Cited by 59 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…Ariel Merari highlighted the "inadequate contribution of academic research on terrorism to governmental policy making" and attributed it to three factors: the difficulty of researching terrorism, the lack of interest in terrorism within the mainstream social sciences, and government failure to utilize the expertise of the academic community. 5 Merari's study, however, was concerned with policy and not prevention, and did not discuss predictive analysis within terrorism research. Based on empirical observations, his assessment also lacked any statistical evidence to support his claims.…”

Section: Shortcomings In Terrorism Researchmentioning

confidence: 95%

Misjudging Islamic Terrorism: The Academic Community's Failure to Predict 9/11

Czwarno

2006

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

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Most academic experts within the International Relations (IR) community and other, more specialized disciplines, failed to predict or warn government policymakers and the public of the possibility that events of 9/11 magnitude could take place on the U.S. homeland. Given that long-term investigation of trends in world affairs is one of the sources that has always informed policy analysis, this represents an interesting question to examine. The analysis contained in this assessment suggests that the ontological, methodological, and conceptual problems within and between the disciplines, combined with a skewed absorption with the prospect of developments in Asia, created a gap in the knowledge about Islamic terrorism and groups like Al Qaeda, which in turn caught most of the academic community unaware on 9/11. This article performs a quantitative study to determine the nature and scope of this apparent analytical failure on the part of academics in IR and other specialized disciplines to predict 9/11 and aims to address why this failure took place.

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Section: Shortcomings In Terrorism Researchmentioning

confidence: 95%

Misjudging Islamic Terrorism: The Academic Community's Failure to Predict 9/11

Czwarno

2006

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

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“…Most importantly, we expected that, despite the proliferation of counter-terrorism tactics (especially after September 11th), there would be few evaluations of these policies. Additionally, terrorism and its associated counter-policies, have not been easily or clearly defined, as the recent special briefing by the U.S. State Department has illustrated 5 (see also Crenshaw 1992;Merari 1991;Wilkinson 1986). Types of strategies could potentially cover a wide range of phenomena, seek a variety of outcomes, and involve multiple points at which effectiveness could be measured.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Are counter-terrorism strategies effective? The results of the Campbell systematic review on counter-terrorism evaluation research

2006

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The events of September 11th have led to massive increases in personal, commercial, and governmental expenditures on anti-terrorism strategies, as well as a proliferation of programs designed to fight terrorism. These increases in spending and program development have focused attention on the most significant and central policy question related to these interventions: Are these programs effective? To explore this question, this study reports the results of a Campbell Collaboration systematic review on evaluation research of counter-terrorism strategies. Not only did we discover an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism interventions, but from those evaluations that we could find, it appears that some interventions either did not achieve the outcomes sought or sometimes increased the likelihood of terrorism occurring. The findings dramatically emphasize the need for government leaders, policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies to support both outcome evaluations of these programs as well as efforts to develop an infrastructure to foster counter-terrorism evaluation research.

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“…Over reliance on secondary data analysis Jongman, 1988, 2005) Psychology Critical analysis of literature Terrorism studies Lack of empirical data and over reliance on other terrorism authors' results (Merari, 1991) Psychology Content analysis Journal articles from major terrorism journals (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999) Problems identified by Schmid and Jongman are still issues. Over reliance on cohort's publications and media-derived incident databases (Silke, 2001(Silke, , 2004 to interact with large-scale citation data (Eggers et al, 2005).…”

Section: Visualization Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Although terrorism is as old as recorded history and acquired its modern name from the French Reign of Terror of 1793-1794 (Laqueur, 1977), contemporary terrorism is a form of political violence that evolved in the 1960s and is characterized by increased terrorist attacks across international boundaries, involving citizens of more than one country (Merari, 1991;Wilkinson, 2003). For example, the Munich Massacre occurred at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the Black September terrorist group (Wilkinson, 1986b).…”

Section: Contemporary Terrorism Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%