Rationality of the Terrorist Group and Government’s Policy: A Game Theoretic Approach

Harichandan Aishwarya ()
Additional contact information
Harichandan Aishwarya: Centre for International Trade and Development, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2024, vol. 30, issue 1, 27-53

Abstract: The two ideas of the rationality of terrorist organisations and the costly leader game are used in this paper to construct a game theoretic model. It is an addition to the literature on terrorism and leader-follower games, in which the government and a terrorist organisation are the two players. Terrorist group can be rational or irrational. In case it is rational, it does the cost-benefit analysis and is open to negotiation. Only in this case, the government chooses to not spend on counter-terrorist measures. The irrational group has lexicographic preferences, which means that it prefers a successful attack to attract attention and recruits at the beginning or finish of its operation. Consequently, it is assumed that the irrational group will always attack. the irrational terrorist organisation has the option of either choosing not to mimic the rational group or choosing to do so at a psychological cost. Although the irrational group dislikes imitation. It seeks to duplicate the rational group so that the government withdraws and cuts back on spending on counter-terrorism. A costly leader model is set up in the paper, where the government can incur a cost to gather information about the type of terrorist group. In this framework, the paper provides policy prescriptions concerning counter-terrorist measures that the government should take in case the type of terrorist group being rational or irrational is unknown and it highlights the importance of intelligence.

Keywords: rationality; terrorist group; intelligence; counter-terrorism; game theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D04 D74 H10 H56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2023-0030 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:30:y:2024:i:1:p:27-53:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/peps/html

DOI: 10.1515/peps-2023-0030

Access Statistics for this article

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso

More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().