The Wane of Command: Evidence on Drone Strikes and Control within Terrorist Organizations

Abstract

This paper investigates how counterterrorism targeting terrorist leaders affects terrorist attacks. This effect is theoretically ambiguous and depends on whether terrorist groups are modeled as unitary actors or not. The paper exploits a natural experiment provided by strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) “hitting” and “missing” terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Results suggest that terrorist groups increase the number of attacks they commit after a drone “hit” on their leader compared with after a “miss.” This increase is statistically significant for 3 out of 6 months after a hit, when it ranges between 47.7% and 70.3%. Additional analysis of heterogenous effects across groups and leaders, and the impact of drone hits on the type of attack, terrorist group infighting, and splintering, suggest that principal-agent problems—(new) terrorist leaders struggling to control and discipline their operatives—account for these results better than alternative theoretical explanations.

The mediation effect of radical right parties on the nexus between immigration and right-wing terrorism

“…In this paper, coding is based on the GTD, which has been widely used in the literature (e.g. Trebbi and Weese, 2019; Rigterink, 2021; Peffeley et al, 2015; Piazza, 2020). Drawing on natural language processing and other computational techniques, the GTD looked at news sources around the world and documented more than 200,000 terrorist attacks (including 95,000 bombings, 20,000 assassinations and 15,000 kidnappings and hostage events) from 1970 to 2019.…”

Causal Inference with Spatio-Temporal Data: Estimating the Effects of Airstrikes on Insurgent Violence in Iraq

“…But they use a coarse estimation strategy that bins average effects of drone strikes into broad half-year increments over entire districts that cannot capture local spatial and temporal dynamics. Similarly, Rigterink (2021) draws on 443 drone strikes to estimate airstrike effects on 13 terrorist groups in Pakistan, concluding that they have mixed effects. Yet their group-month estimation strategy cannot detect spillover effects nor accurately capture the timing of insurgent responses.…”

Crime and Networks: 10 Policy Lessons

“…16 Another possibility is that crime could go up after the removal of a key player if a power struggle ensues among the remaining members of the network or if a competing network uses the opportunity to try and increase their market share of illegal activities. Furthermore, if followers are more inclined to commit violence than leaders, then violence can increase when the restraining hand of the leader is removed (Rigterink 2019).…”