The Rationality of Political Violence : Modelling Al-Qaeda vs. the United States

Abstract

The study of political violence, defined as the use of violent meth ods to achieve political ends by individuals, sub-national groups and states, has come to the forefront of scholarly inquiry since the cata clysm of 9/11/01. This study conceptualizes political violence between subgroups and states as a process of strategic interaction among play ers, whereby each side tries to maximize its utility within the con straints imposed by the amount of available information and the level of certainty. The analysis of such strategic behavior commonly de scribed as terrorism and counter-terrorism is undertaken to explain why it occurs, how it develops and when it ceases. A variety of explanations have been offered for the incidence of interactive terrorism ranging from psychological and biological factors to ideological, ethnic and religious motivations1. Although the forego ing explanations offer a wide variety of competing or complementary theories of political violence, rational choice analysis provides a unique method to trace the dynamics of interaction among the players and to identify the conditions under which the sides choose to use vi olence or to reach mutual accommodation. Specifically, game theory will be applied in this study to model Al-Qaeda violent behavior against the United States.