Terrorist Decision Making

Abstract

Key Words terrorism, political violence, irregular warfare, levels of analysis s Abstract How do terrorists and terrorist groups make decisions? And what influence do terrorist decision-making styles have on the course of a terrorist campaign? Efforts to answer these questions have centered on three sets of theories. In order of generality, these are (a) strategic theories, in which the decision to employ terrorism and related forms of political violence is considered to be an instrumental choice; (b) organizational theories, in which the sources of violence are found in the internal dynamics of the terrorist group itself; and (c) psychological theories, in which the decision to employ terrorism is explained within the framework of individual psychology. Most observers agree that these lines of inquiry are not mutually exclusive, but each offers a distinctive approach to terrorist decision making. This essay examines each of these theoretical approaches in turn. It concludes with a brief discussion of the decision-making constraints that help shape terrorist life cycles.

Organizational Behavior of Terrorist Groups

“…When it comes to the nature of perpetrators, some scholars (McCormick 2003, Gibbs 1989 do not consider it as an element for broad definitions, while Asal & Brown(unpublished) limit it to "political actors" and LaFree & Ackerman (2009) to "nonstate actors". According to a broad perspective of perpetrators, state and social actors such as Animal-liberationist organizations and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty(SHAC) are also defined as perpetrators.…”

“…According to a broad perspective of perpetrators, state and social actors such as Animal-liberationist organizations and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty(SHAC) are also defined as perpetrators. Though there is no disagreement that the natures of actions are actual violence, two issues can be brought up here: [1] whether or not violence has to be characterized as illegal (LaFree & Ackerman 2009, Gibbs 1989) (here, the illegality of violence might be disputable in that there is no agreed international law to define which violence is illegal), and [2] whether the threat of violence needs to be included for a broad meaning of terrorism (McCormick 2003, LaFree & Ackerman 2009, Gibbs 1989. Researchers who include the threat of violence in their definitions understand threatened violence as a psychological attack and ongoing violence before actual attacks.…”

“…The last element we need to examine is the intent. Many scholars (McCormick 2003, Asal & Brown unpublished, LaFree & Ackerman 2009) limit it to political purpose, while others (Gibbs 1989, Metraux 1995, Jackson et al 2005a include religious, environmental, and animal rights issues as other purposes of terrorist groups. For example, PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is known for inflicting fear and violence against other civilians.…”

“…All the strategies and tactics are chosen through a process, even though such processes might not be noticeable to outsiders or even to insiders who are not directly in the process. While individual terrorism involves the decision making process that can be explained by individual psychology (McCormick 2003), group decision making is the collective process through group psychology.…”

“…Psychopathological approaches on the individual level were rampant among initial research, and are regarded as terrorist activities whose actions are executed by a group who are psychologically sick or pathological. However, not much empirical support has been given for the argument that psychopathological traits of individuals are the predisposition for terrorists as a group compared to non-terrorists (Friedland 1992, Silke 1998, McCauley 2002LaFree & Ackerman 2009, McCormick 2003, Ruby 2002, Victoroff 2005. At the group level, organizational approaches were adopted in a way to identify and analyze terrorist organizations in terms of organizational structure and intergroup networks (Arquilla & Ronfeldt 2001, Asal & Rethemeyer 2008, Jackson 2006, Krebs 2001, Yang & Sageman 2009).…”