Rational Overreaction to Terrorism

William Spaniel

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2019, vol. 63, issue 3, 786-810

Abstract: Some terrorist organizations provoke their targets into deploying massive countermeasures, allowing terrorists to mobilize a greater share of their audience. Why would a government pursue such a costly strategy if it only strengthens the opponent? I develop a signaling model of terrorism, counterterrorism, and recruitment. If a target government is unsure whether the terrorists’ audience is sympathetic to the cause, weaker groups sometimes bluff strength by attacking. To check this bluff, governments sometimes respond to attacks with large-scale operations, even though they know they might be overreacting. Comparative statics reveal that overreaction regret is most likely when the target is wealthy and large operations are more effective. Thus, a selection effect creates the false impression that provocation is most effective against geopolitically privileged targets.

Keywords: counterterrorism; game theory; terrorism; expected utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002718756489 (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:63:y:2019:i:3:p:786-810

DOI: 10.1177/0022002718756489

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 ().