Abstract
Focusing on the tendency of terrorist organizations to explosive attack, this article applied the institutional theory as the basis to explain the inherent logic of attack type similarity from the perspective of mimetic, coercive, and normative isomorphism. Subsequently, the study conducted an empirical analysis of the data onto 1825 terrorist organizations recorded in the Global Terrorism Database with the logistic regression method. The results show that: (1) Terrorist organizations will learn from pre-existing terrorist organizations' experiences, and mimetic isomorphism will promote explosive tendency; (2) Due to the normative isomorphism effect, terrorist groups' tendency to explosive attacks is weakened by their increased duration; (3) If terrorist organizations are hostile to a strong government, coercive isomorphism positively moderates the negative effects of increasing duration. The study suggests that counter-terrorism approaches such as destroying the learnable experience of attacks, addressing the root causes of terrorism, and maintaining a strong government may be helpful in stopping increasing terrorist activities, which is essential for reducing terrorist organizations' vivosphere, blocking the inter-flow and imitation between terrorist organizations, and ultimately interrupting the terrorist propagation chain.
Highlights
After 9/11, counter-terrorism (CT) became a priority for homeland security worldwide, and enormous amounts of material and human resources are cost in this area
Till the end of 2017, Global Terrorism Database (GTD) has collected more than 180,000 terrorist attacks in 12 regions of more than 200 countries over half a century, and all the incidents are indexed with variable “eventID.” About 98,000 cases with specific terrorist organizations have been identified among all records, and more than 3,500 terrorist organizations have been recorded
In addition to the above variables, since there are few empirical studies on the behavior of terrorist organizations, this study proposes the following six control variables concerning the control of organizational size and structure by Yang and Zhou (2005): (a) “Whether the terrorist organization has a background of transnational attacks,” if a terrorist organization has carried out attacks in multiple countries and regions according to GTD records, the code is 1, and vice versa is 0. (b) “Success rate of explosive attacks of the terrorist organization.” (c) “Success rate of explosive attacks by pre-existing terrorist organizations,” which is calculated as the proportion of terrorist attacks that are considered “successful” by GTD
Summary
After 9/11, counter-terrorism (CT) became a priority for homeland security worldwide, and enormous amounts of material and human resources are cost in this area. The frequency of terrorist attacks worldwide, as recorded in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) (LaFree and Dugan, 2007; START, 2021), is still on an upward trajectory. This unexpected trend means that CT operations have not stopped the actions of terrorists and terrorist organizations, the adversarial strategies still have not entirely grasped the behavioral patterns of enemies. One of the most critical aspects of terrorist organization behavior patterns is the attack type. The most frequent attack type is still bombing and explosion, with 88,255 records and accounting for Terrorism Organization Isomorphism
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
