Terrorist attack and target diversity

Abstract

Terrorists choose from a wide variety of targets and attack methods. Unlike past literature, this article investigates how diversity in target choice and attack modes among domestic and transnational terrorists has evolved and changed over the past 40 years. Changes in the practice of homeland security, which affects the marginal costs of target–attack combinations, and changes in the dominant terrorist influence at the global level, which affects the marginal benefits of target–attack combinations, drive the changepoints. Our empirical analysis relies on count data drawn from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for 1970–2010 that distinguishes between domestic and transnational terrorist incidents. Given the data-intensity requirements of our methods, the study is necessarily from a global perspective. A Bayesian Reversible Jump Markov chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) changepoint analysis is applied to identify arrival rate changes in both domestic and transnational terrorism. The changepoints in these aggregate series are then matched with those of the subset time series for attack modes (e.g. assassinations and bombings) and target types (e.g. officials and private parties). The underlying drivers of these changepoints are then identified. The article also calculates a Herfindahl index of attack diversity for the aggregate and component domestic and transnational terrorism time series for the entire period and during four subperiods. The variation in both domestic and transnational terrorist attacks has generally fallen over the last four decades; nevertheless, this diversity still remains high. Bombings of private parties have become the preferred target–attack combination for both transnational and domestic terrorists. This combination is the hardest-to-defend target–attack combination and requires the most homeland security resources. Policymakers can use these and other results to focus their counter-terrorism measures.