ALAN KRUEGER AND DAVID LAITIN PRESENTER: KYLE MARQUARDT Кто Кого? A Cross-Country Study of the Origins and Targets of Terrorism

Background Condos and Caves! Simplistic Policy Rationales! “Macroeconomic shifts generally fail to map on to changes in the amount of terrorism” (2).  Micro-level studies have indicated that those who participate tend to be from better off strata  Small number of studies have found little correlation between economic factors and the incidence of terrorism Why study the who to whom?

International Terrorism Dataset US State Dept. “Patterns of Terrorism”  1,953 events from ; 781 “significant”  Coding problems? Is “Patterns of Terrorism” valid?  Correlates well with independent “Iterate” dataset  General similarity indicative of external validity  No systematic biases seen in State Department dataset  And you’ve got to use something. Table 1 (raw number of events + events per million)  India highest, but on average close to mean  Israel, Sierra Leone and Angola have largest number of attacks per capita  87% same origin and locale  46% same origin and target  52% same target and locale  44% same target, locale and origin What does that mean?

Suicide Attack Dataset Two data sets merged = 236 recorded suicide attacks in 11 countries Coding  Less ambiguous than terrorism  Palestinian attacks on Israel coded as same origin, target, locality = problem?  Coding 187/210 attacks have same origin and target; relevant difference ethnicity or religion Different from terrorism.

Event Analyses Terrorism and suicide attacks are product of organizational strategy (Berman and Laitin; Durkheim) = how should that map onto kto-kogo? Symbolic attacks on foreign property in terrorism only = why? Religion (11-12)  Paper uses the probability that perpetrator and target different religions  Terrorism only trivially more likely to involve interreligious parties than if randomly determined  Suicide attacks more likely to be inter-religious than random (esp. if you look at religious diff. w/in country) Origin countries for terrorism and suicide different  Suicide countries richer.  “A great amount of concentration and a low level of diffusion to other countries of these technologies of warfare.” (pg. 12) KTO KOGO  In 44% terrorism, same origin, locale and target (would be 0, but India and Palestine); in less than half, same citizenship of perpetrator and target  Suicide attacks = very local  90% same perpetrators, targets and locale  90%, same target and perpetrator  92% same target and locale  95% same locale and perpetrator

Country Level: Terrorism Weighted average of characteristics across countries Who is a terrorist (origin countries)?  Low-income countries with low GDP growth (not monotonic; overrepresentation in poorest and third quartiles) (Colombia and India ditched)  Countries characterized by anocracy and instability To whom is a terrorist a terrorist (target countries)?  Wealthier countries that are more stable, less anocratic and more democratic  “Occupying” forces Where is a terrorist a terrorist?  Poor, high illiteracy, high infant mortality

Country Level: Suicide Attacks Figures for perpetrators and targets look similar because the target of most of the suicide attacks resided in the same country as perpetrator Targets and origins tend to be from wealthier, stable and democratic countries But doesn’t take regional differences into account

Further Statistical Analysis Conditioned on explanatory variable; country level analysis (pg. 16) Unit of observation = person Terrorism  Origin  Country’s GDP per capita is unrelated to number of terrorists originating from the country (but looks to be u-shaped) = different from radar charts  Lower level of civil liberties = higher participation  Target  Increasing GDP = increasing risk of terrorism?  No monotonic relationship of civil liberties to terrorism  More political rights = higher risk Suicide rates = really small sample  Involvement of wealthy countries are involved (no countries in bottom quartile) = suicide employed where standard conditions of insurgency disfavored  Origins of terrorism more randomly distributed across quartiles of GDP per capita = Laitin and Berman Sri Lanka and Israel = large influence Religious fractionalization not significant, though suicide attacks generally inter-religious

Variables selected because significant No surprises in light of earlier conclusions Origins of terrorism in political factors, while targets more economic No religion seems to have monopoly on terrorism Terrorism Regression

Kto Kogo Matrix Every country included Two variables: income and civil liberties Income = 4x4 matrix  Country pairs based on GDP per capita quartile  In each cell, number of incidents perpetrated by people from one quartile on people in another  Normalized counts by dividing the geometric mean of total population across countries in the two income brackets =size weighted Civil liberties = analogous but 3x3 Results = similar to 6  Terrorist who do not strike targets in their own income brackets (e.g. their own country) are much more likely to strike against targets from higher-income countries than from lower- income countries.  Lower and especially middle-level countries (in terms of civil liberties) are much more likely to be origin countries for terrorism. Increase in source countries from middle level (b/c of repression + opening) more likely to be origin countries for terrorism b/c of new aggregation

Conclusion and Questions International terrorism’s source more due to repression than poverty; terrorize the rich = “the feel of economic warfare” (23). Or just mainly anti-Western warfare, when international (esp. suicide bombing)? Intra-state terrorism not included, except in ambiguous cases = obscures regional differences within states? How would events not included in the data sets (e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan and former USSR) change this? Different technologies of insurgency, terrorism and suicide attacks:  Berman and Laitin: “Rational Martyrs vs Hard Targets”  Fearon and Laitin: “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation” and “Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War”  Fearon: “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?”