Martyrdom Contracts

Mario Ferrero

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2006, vol. 50, issue 6, 855-877

Abstract: This article emphasizes the similarities between such diverse instances of public-spirited suicide as the Islamic martyrs of yesterday and today, the anarchists, the Japanese kamikaze of World War II, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, and the Christian martyrs under the Roman Empire. It tries to accommodate this disparate evidence within a single two-period, expected utility model of a martyrdom contract, to which volunteers sign up in the expectation of probabilistic earthly rewards. Contract enforcement is ensured by a sufficiently strong stigma, or social sanction, placed on renegades. The main implication for counterterrorism policy is that the sanction should be softened, so as to turn prospective martyrs into apostates.

Keywords: martyrdom; suicide terrorism; expected utility; incentive contracts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002706293466 (text/html)

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:sae:jocore:v:50:y:2006:i:6:p:855-877

DOI: 10.1177/0022002706293466

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().