The Ideology That Binds Us: Homophily in Ideology and Terrorists Collaborations

Abstract

What brings different terrorist groups, organizations that are regularly secretive and competitive, to collaborate with one another? We build on scholarship that identifies ideology as a determining feature of terrorists’ behavior and draw on network studies that emphasize the role of homophily in creating collaboration. We suggest that the groups’ homophily in ideology plays a significant part in terrorists’ collaboration. Using network analysis, we examine collaborations across three case studies and different time frames: Pakistan, Colombia, and Italy. Our findings suggest that homophily in ideology is indeed a key predictor for collaboration yet that it also changed over time.