The dynamics of terrorist organizations

Kjell Hausken

Operations Research Perspectives, 2019, vol. 6, issue C

Abstract: Terrorist organizations are most often comprised of ideologues, criminal mercenaries, and captive participants. Ideologues provide political purpose and direction and have a strong group commitment. However, every organization needs money to survive. For terrorist organizations this comes through capital support or through criminal activities. Mercenaries serve the organization by providing the latter but have a weak group commitment and may corrupt the organization‘s ideological purity. Captive participants have neither strong commitments nor strong personal financial interests, but cannot leave without repercussions. Factors are assessed influencing how the composition of an organization evolves through time. The three labor groups value each other differently which impacts their relative strengths. Capital sponsors may view criminal mercenaries as ideologically detrimental to the terrorist organization. Capital sponsoring may cause an ideologically conscious terrorist organization, while lacking capital may cause a criminal organization relying on mercenary labor. If the ideologues lose their commitment, or the mercenaries and captive participants jointly value each other more, the organization may also become criminal or go extinct. The article provides tools for understanding the evolution of terrorist organizations.

Keywords: Terrorism; Terrorist organization; Ideologues; Mercenaries; Captive participants; Sponsors; Evolution; Dynamics; Simulation; Differential equations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214716018303385
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:oprepe:v:6:y:2019:i:c:s2214716018303385

DOI: 10.1016/j.orp.2019.100120

Access Statistics for this article

Operations Research Perspectives is currently edited by Rubén Ruiz Garcia

More articles in Operations Research Perspectives from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().