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Introduction: What is New About


Research on Terrorism
Robert A. Pape
Published online: 02 Dec 2009.

To cite this article: Robert A. Pape (2009) Introduction: What is New About Research on Terrorism,
Security Studies, 18:4, 643-650, DOI: 10.1080/09636410903369100

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DOI: 10.1080/09636410903369100

Introduction:
What is New About Research on Terrorism

ROBERT A. PAPE
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Research on terrorism is now in the midst of a period of rapid progress,


much of which is embodied in the articles in this volume. Although our un-
derstanding of the phenomenon is still in its early stages, knowledge about
the causes, conduct, and consequences of terrorism is accumulating. Impor-
tant methodological advances have helped to make this progress possible,
and continuing to deepen and extend the marriage of social science and the
study of terrorism can be expected to yield further advances in the future.
Good theories about complex social and political phenomenon rarely
emerge all at once from the efforts of individual scholars working in isolation.
Instead, progress tends to occur over time as part of a broad commitment of
intellectual resources, by numerous scholars and communities of scholars,
to originate and analyze logics of the internal dynamics and casual linkages
in theories, and to test theories about the real world with facts from the real
world. This approach is sure to discover ambiguities and deficiencies in prior
formulations and likely to bring forth improved or even wholly new theories
that strengthen our knowledge. In recent decades, the field of international
relations has witnessed this process working to enrich our knowledge about
ethnic and civil war, international institutions, and the politics of unipolarity.
This is now happening in the study of terrorism.
It is useful to think of progress in the study of terrorism as divided into
two waves. The first wave was published mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Chicago Project on
Security and Terrorism at the University of Chicago. I would like to thank the Carnegie Cor-
poration of New York, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the Department of Defense,
Argonne National Laboratories, and the Social Science Division of the University of Chicago
for their generous support that made this special issue possible, and Chaim Kaufmann, Roger
Petersen, James K. Feldman, and the anonymous reviewers from Security Studies for especially
valuable comments that strengthened every article in it.

643
644 R. A. Pape

1990s by such scholars as David Rapoport, Walter Laqueur, Brian Jenkins,


Jerrold Post, Ariel Merari, Martin Kramer, Bruce Hoffman, and Martha Cren-
shaw, some of whom are continuing to make contributions in the present
day.1 Although ingredients can be observed earlier, the second wave be-
gan in earnest in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States
on September 11, 2001 and is commonly associated with scholars such as
Robert Art, Daniel Byman, Mohammed Hafez, Alan Krueger, Andrew Kydd,
Ami Pedahzur, Louise Richardson, Marc Sageman, Barbara Walter, and my-
self, among a growing number of others.2 While distinct, these waves share
some commonalities and together are likely to influence future progress in
the field for a long time to come.
The first wave of research on terrorism was heavily influenced by the
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perceptible and persistent, but also modest and gradual, rise of violence
against innocent civilians and off-duty members of security forces by non-
state actors against Western societiesparticularly in the United Kingdom,
Western Europe, Israel, and Japanin the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The
United States was not immune, but the locus for much of what appeared to
be leftist-inspired, revolutionary, and simply strange violence occurred else-
where, threatening Americas principal allies in the Cold War more than the
United States itself. Further, although some actors called terrorist groups
at the time were large in number and had long-standing and reasonably
well-known histories (for example, the Irish Republican Army and Pales-
tinian Liberation Organization), many were newly formed, tiny, and nebulous
(for example, Baader-Meinhoff, Black September, Red Brigades, and Aum
Shinrikyo).
These circumstances influenced the study of terrorism, most especially
by giving rise to a wave of what are commonly called experts in terrorism.

1Prominent examples of first wave literature on terrorism include David C. Rapoport, Assassina-
tion and Terrorism (Toronto: CBC Merchandising, 1971); Martha Crenshaw, The Causes of Terrorism,
Comparative Politics 13 (July 1981): 39799; Brian N. Jenkins, International Terrorism (Washington, DC:
Rand Corporation, 1985); Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987); Martin
Kramer, The Moral Logic of Hizballah (Tel Aviv: The Shiloah Institute Tel Aviv University, 1987); Ariel
Merari, The Readiness to Kill and Die: Suicidal Terrorism in the Middle East, in Origins of Terrorism:
Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, ed. Walter Reich (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 192207; Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of
Hatred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); and Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998).
2 A partial list of second wave literature would include Robert J. Art and Louis Richardson, Democracy

and Counter-Terrorism: Lessons from the Past (Washington, DC: United Institute of Peace, 2007); Daniel
L. Byman, Al-Qaeda as an Adversary: Do We Understand Our Enemy? World Politics 56, no. 1 (October
2003): 13963; Mohammed M. Hafez, Why Muslims Rebel (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003);
Alan B. Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Root Causes of Terrorism (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2007); Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics
of Extremist Violence, International Organization 56, no. 2 (Spring 2002):.263-96; Ami Pedahzur, Suicide
Terrorism (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2005); Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Robert A. Pape, The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,
American Political Science Review 73, no. 3 (August 2003): 34361.
Introduction 645

The need for highly specialized information about militant individuals and
small networks with cloudy agendas was highly salient for government agen-
cies and for the media, and this demand for specific knowledge about
particular terrorist groups accounts for many of the professional elements
characterizing the first wave scholarship on the subject: (1) close working
relationships with governments, as reflected in various degrees of support
and cross over of personnel in the major first wave institutions on terrorism
at St Andrews in Scotland, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism
in Israel, and RAND in the United States; (2) numerous specialty journals
dedicated exclusively to terrorism, such as Studies in Conflict and Terror-
ism, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Violence, Aggression, and Ter-
rorism; (3) prominent journalists with deep knowledge of certain terrorist
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groups, such as Robin Wright, Thomas Friedman, and Peter Bergen; and
(4) little representation of terrorism scholars among the tenured faculties at
major research universities. Although these circumstances enabled a variety
of accomplishments, they also restricted their reach and tended to separate
terrorism from the broader marriage of social science and national security
affairs that has been occurring increasingly from the end of World War II
onwards.3
Among its important accomplishments, first wave research laid the foun-
dations for and anticipated many insights in subsequent research. While new
hypotheses appear in later work, it is the first wave that is responsible for
much of the menu of causes of terrorism at the individual and social level that
continue to be of interest. Todays stock set of explanationseconomic, reli-
gious, social network, and mental illnessare all prominent in the literature
of the 1970s and 1980s, although scholars usually did not consider more than
one in the same project, which limited testing. Further, data techniques as-
sociated with journalism and intelligence collection contributed to the rise of
field research particularly interviews of terrorist leaders and supporters
which was becoming more robust as the first wave continued.4 Finally, the
first wave produced numerous examples of excellent more general analysis
of cause and effect with lasting value. For example, even after some thirty
years, Charles Russell and Bowman Millers study of the socio-economic
characteristics of 350 Western terrorists remains one of the landmark stud-
ies of individual profiles of ordinary (that is, non-suicide) terrorists in the
field.5 Similarly, Rapoports analyses of the different doctrine and methods
of Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots-Sicarii was one of the earliest comparative

3 On the rise of social science in Security Studies, see Stephen M. Walt, A Renaissance of Security

Studies, International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (June 1991): 211-39.


4 Two fine examples of the use of elite interviews, which bridge the first and second waves, are Mark

Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); and Jessica
Stern, Terror in the Name of God (New York: Ecco, 2003).
5 Charles A. Russell and Bowman H. Miller, Profile of a Terrorist, Terrorism 1, no. 1 (1977): 1734.
646 R. A. Pape

studies of religious terrorist groups and remains an exemplary model of this


approach decades later.6
Distinct from the first wave, although it built on its earlier accomplish-
ments, a new second wave of research on terrorism is now underway. The
second wave was triggered less as a response to the first than by the new
concerns related to the spectacular terrorist attacks on New York and Wash-
ington D.C. on September 11, 2001, which killed more people (three thou-
sand) than any terrorist attack in history and on a scale comparable to Japans
attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941. This event not only increased interest in the
study of terrorism, but also changed the nature of that interest, particularly
for the United States. Whereas terrorism had often previously been viewed
as a persistent, but modest menace comparable to individual acts of violence
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associated with domestic criminals, 9/11 increased the fear of another large-
scale, direct attack usually connected with acts of war. Whereas terrorism
was seen before as a persistent threat that could be contained by greater
specialized knowledge about particular individuals and groups, the new el-
ements of the attackas a surprise attack and suicide attackcreated
powerful interest in broad questions about the causes of terrorism in general
and suicide terrorism in particular.
These new circumstances are pushing the study of terrorism in new
substantive and methodological directions. The most striking aspect of this
new literature is that it fully embraces a variety of sophisticated qualita-
tive, quantitative, formal social science methods and is routinely published
in first-line journals in political science. The demand for general explana-
tion of cause and effect about a complex social science phenomenon that
is highly prominent for policy makers, the academic community, and the
public at largeand not just for specific government agencies or journalists
with fleeting attention in the subjectis already having profound changes
in the professional development of scholarship on terrorism. Most impor-
tant, although second wave scholars work with government agencies and
even receive government funding on occasion, the locus of the produc-
tion of knowledge has shifted from government and government-funded
think tanks to independent centers and scholars in major research univer-
sities. Since 2002, many tenure and tenure-track faculty have contributed
to the study of terrorism, including at the University of Chicago, Princeton
University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Columbia Univer-
sity, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at San
Diego, University of California at Berkeley, and many others. Further, while
it was once rare to see articles on terrorism in major journals in the field,
it is now commonplace. A survey of the American Political Science Review,
International Security, World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and

6 David C. Rapoport, Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions, American

Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (September 1984): 65877.


Introduction 647

International Organization over the past thirty years finds eight articles on
terrorism published from 1977 to 1984, three articles from 1985 to 2000, and
forty-two articles from 2001 to 2007. This survey does not include Security
Studies, which, with this volume, is significantly increasing its attention to ter-
rorism, like other prominent journals. As this growth demonstrates, the study
of terrorism is now less relegated to the narrow area of terrorism experts and
emerging as a productive variety of social science research programs on par
with the major literature in the field of international relations.
Todays growing marriage of professional social science and the study
of terrorism is profoundly affecting progress in this field. With more scholars
and scholarly resources, the study of terrorism is not simply expanding and
re-asking old questions. It is also asking new questions and applying sophisti-
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cated social science methods to improve competitive testing of propositions,


demonstrate their strength of effect, and formalize linkages in their logic.
These methodological advances are improving the ability for knowledge
on terrorism to accumulate. Sometimes this occurs by subtraction, such as
the work by Sageman on mental illness and terrorists, which has largely dis-
credited this popular first wave explanation. Sometimes accumulation occurs
by addition, as with new work on suicide terrorism showing the crucial role
of foreign military occupation, an explanation playing little role in first wave
research. Sometimes it occurs by superior tools, as with Nichole Argos so-
phisticated survey instruments that improve the quality of field research, or
by using comprehensive data and quantitative analysis, which is the case with
Jenna Jordan and Lindsey ORourke in their studies of the effectiveness of
leadership decapitation, and gender and terrorism, respectively. Sometimes
knowledge improves through better frameworks that clarify and overturn
conventional logics, as with Risa Brooks on the theoretical linkages between
democracy and terrorism.
More than any one contribution, however, is the growing ability of the
new wave to reshape the study of terrorism as a whole. Whereas first wave
scholarship focused on single causal factors and rarely considered more than
one, the second wave has self-consciously sharpened frameworks for con-
sidering factors that operate at fundamentally different levels of analysis,
improving our understanding of the theoretical connections across strategic,
social, and individual levels of causes for terrorist events.7 Perhaps most
fundamentally, while the first wave paid tremendous attention to irrational
factors (irrational individuals and cultural biases), second wave scholarship
is broadly committed to investigating rational logics (rewards and compro-
mises, and costs and threats), as well.8 Irrationality may be neither necessary

7 For studies on terrorism that consider multiple levels of analysis, see Robert A. Pape, Dying to

Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005); and Andrew Kydd and
Barbara Walter, Strategies of Terrorism, International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 4980.
8 On rational logics of terrorism, see Kydd and Walter, Sabotaging the Peace, Pape, Strategic Logic

of Suicide Terrorism; Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Columbia
648 R. A. Pape

nor sufficient for terrorism and better understanding of rational causes may
reduce the unpredictability of at least some types of terrorism.
The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST), based at the
University of Chicago and funded by the Carnegie Corporation in New York,
the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense,
Argonne National Laboratories, and the Social Sciences Division of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, is pleased to contribute to this new wave of research.
The purpose of this project is to use the intellectual resources of the social
sciences, and a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, to
contribute to important public policy debates and to address serious public
policy challenges related to the principal international terrorism issues fac-
ing the United States and the world community. CPOST advances its purpose
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through two main substantive activities: (1) the collection, maintenance, and
expansion of a strategic knowledge-base of violent extremist attacks (espe-
cially suicide terrorism); and (2) research projects to help the policy com-
munity solve fundamental international security problems that threaten the
United States and international peace related to terrorism (such as the causes
and solutions to terrorism, the dynamics of martyrdom, the consequences of
nuclear proliferation, and the analytic premises of the U.S. war on terrorism).
As part of its commitment to new research, CPOST has recently supported
a variety of research endeavors on the causes and consequences of terrorism
and strategies to respond to it by faculty and graduate students at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northwestern
University. The results are being published, for the first time, in Security
Studies and represent the leading edge of the new wave of research on
terrorism in a number of specific areas:
Individual Logic of Terrorism. Do individuals carry out terrorist acts for
self-interested reasons (seeking status, money, or rewards in the afterlife)
or for altruistic motives (values related to the security and quality of life
of their communities)? Although recent empirical studies on the individual
logic of terrorism have improved our knowledge, the field has a lack of
detailed surveys of the presence of selective versus public incentives in
the populations of rebellious communities. In a major effort to correlate
individual personal values with willingness to participate in terrorist violence
at various levels of anticipated sacrifice, Nichole Argo has surveyed the
attitudes of 351 Palestinians living in Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus on
the West Bank. Her findings suggest that Palestinians who score high on
self-enhancing values feel less likely to participate in collective action in
general, and costly resistance in particular.

University Press, 2005); Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There
a Causal Connection? Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 119-44; and Eli Berman,
Hamas, Taliban, and the Jewish Underground: An Economists View of Religious Radicals, National
Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. W10004 (September 2003).
Introduction 649

Gender and Terrorism. What makes female suicide terrorists special?


This has been one of the most commonly asked questions of the past few
years. Relying on the first complete database of every female suicide terrorist
attacker since 1980, with over one hundred in all, Lindsey ORourke provides
important new answers that strongly challenge the common view of female
suicide terrorists as young, easily manipulated girls caught up in a ferocious
religious struggle. Most importantly, she finds that (1) female suicide terrorists
are overwhelmingly likely to carry out attacks for secular groups, with the
result that religion may well be dampening the number of suicide attackers
who would otherwise exist; and (2) female attackers are generally over the
age of twenty-four and deeply committed to the traditional norms of their
society, with the implication that efforts to Westernize traditional societies
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with military power are likely to backfire.


Decapitation of Terrorist Groups. The idea that terrorist groups can be
readily destroyed by leadership attacks has long been a core tenet of the
counterterrorism policies of many states, despite the fact that many attempts
produce high collateral damage and other serious negative international con-
sequences. Until now, a key obstacle to assessing the consequences of this
military strategy has been the lack of comprehensive and systematic data
about leadership attacks on terrorist groups. To fill this gap, Jenna Jordan
collects every leadership attack against terrorist groups from the end of
World War II to 2004, over 280 attempts in all. The preliminary findings are
important and surprising. Leadership decapitation is successful only against
terrorist groups less than ten years oldgroups that are likely to collapse for
internal reasons about half the time in any case. For older groups, particu-
larly older religious groups, leadership attacks generally increase the vigor
and lethality of the grouplikely because institutionalization of leadership
selection allows younger and more aggressive leaders to take command.
Democracy and Terrorism. The connection between democracy and
terrorism has emerged as a major public policy issue in the United States,
playing a central role in recent American policies in Iraq, the West Bank,
Pakistan, and elsewhere. However, there exists surprisingly little theoretical
research and only a handful of empirical analyses on how democracy affects
militant group strategy and decisions to use terrorist tactics. Risa Brooks pro-
vides a crucial starting point for investigating the causal relationship between
democracy and terrorism. She analyzes five sets of proto-theories, or schools
of thought, about the motivations of militant groups within terrorism studies:
the Strategic Choice, Psychological, Ideational, Organizational, and Societal
approachesexploring the basic assumptions, causal logic, and empirical
evidence for each. Most significantly, her research shows that purely on
theoretical grounds, in only a very few cases should we actually expect
democracy to yield a reduction in the incidence of terrorism. Together, these
studies represent a substantial advance in the march of the second wave of
social science research of terrorism. To be sure, our understanding of the
650 R. A. Pape

origins of terrorism, the motivations of terrorists, strategies of terrorist or-


ganizations, and counterterrorism responses remains at an early stage. Yet,
recent progress has meaningfully contributed to improved knowledge on
these terrorism issues, which is so vital to the security of the United States,
and many countries and peoples across the world. As young scholars con-
tinue to enter the field, we have every reason to look forward to even more
progress in coming years.
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