Supreme values as the basis for terror

Immigration, Integration and Terrorism: Is There a Clash of Cultures?

“…Nevertheless, moderate nihilists may well respond to changing incentives. Bernholz (2004) provides as alternative explanation for why terrorists may possibly not respond to economic, political or social incentives lexicographic preferences ('supreme values'). generated in case both groups are shaped by two greatly differing cultures -they 'clash '.…”

“…Aggregated to the population level as percentage shares of people responding either (3) or (4), we view this attitude as an approximation of a terror-sympathizing environment. As we argue in section 2, such terror-sympathizing environment may aid terrorists in carrying out their attacks or provide them with a pool of potential recruits -decreasing their costs of committing an attack (Schnellenbach 2006, Bernholz 2004. Thus, as rational terrorists weigh the expected costs against the expected benefits of an additional attack (Dreher and Fischer 2010), ceteris paribus, the optimal number of attacks should increase in people's support for terror.…”

“…Supporting terrorists, however, is an illegal activity, usually generating a non-monetary benefit -both Schnellenbach (2006) and Bernholz (2004) provide economic rationales why persons with certain preferences may choose to support terror groups rather than getting actively engaged in terror activities themselves; both Schnellenbach (2006) and Neumayer and Plümper (2009) argue that supporters of terror groups behave more as 'rational' actors in the traditional sense than their leaders do, implying that economic incentives have a stronger impact on the first group than on the latter. The economics of terrorism literature, which can be applied in analogy to the decision to engage in support for terror, suggests that the rational choice to provide support depends also on the opportunity costs of doing so -such as forgone legal employment and political participation (e.g.…”

“…Intermediate goals include media attention, and the destabilization of polity and economy in the target country (e.g. Dreher and Fischer 2010, Frey and Lüchinger 2003, 2004. 2 Earliest treatments of terrorists as rational decision-makers include Landes (1978) for hijacker's choice and Sandler, Tschirhart, and Cauley (1983) for modeling negotiations between terrorists and democratic governments in target countries.…”

Group support for political violence: The role of emotions and expressive choice in creating conflict or providing peace

“…Rationalist explanations for con ‡ict can be divided into the three main explanations reviewed by Fearon (1995); bargaining failures due to private information (for example in Cetinyan (2002)); commitment problems (for example in Fearon (2004)) and issue indivisibilities (as, for example, implied by Bernholz (2004)) on terrorism and supreme values). In the next section we will review the rationalist literature on support for violence which may make sense from a material perspective (in the absence of commitment to an e¢ cient outcome), but the crux of Fearon's puzzle is the support for violence where it does not provide an obvious material bene…t, in fact, the violence leads to a predictable material loss.…”