Drone strikes and radicalization: an exploration utilizing agent-based modeling and data applied to Pakistan

Brandon Shapiro () and Andrew Crooks ()
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Brandon Shapiro: George Mason University
Andrew Crooks: University at Buffalo

Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2023, vol. 29, issue 3, No 2, 415-433

Abstract: Abstract The employment of drone strikes has been ongoing and the public continues to debate their perceived benefits. A question that persists is whether drone strikes contribute to an increase in radicalization. This paper presents a data-driven approach to explore the relationship between drone strikes conducted in Pakistan and subsequent responses, often in the form of terrorist attacks carried out by those in the communities targeted by these particular counterterrorism measures. Our exploration and analysis of news reports which discussed drone strikes and radicalization suggest that government-sanctioned drone strikes in Pakistan appear to drive terrorist events with a distributed lag that can be determined analytically. We leverage news reports to inform and calibrate an agent-based model grounded in radicalization and opinion dynamics theory. This enabled us to simulate terrorist attacks that approximated the rate and magnitude observed in Pakistan from 2007 through 2018. We argue that this research effort advances the field of radicalization and lays the foundation for further work in the area of data-driven modeling and drone strikes.

Keywords: Radicalization; Data-driven modeling; Drone strikes; Terrorism; Pakistan; Agent-based modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s10588-022-09364-1

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