Brutality of Jihadist Terrorism. A contest theory perspective and empirical evidence in the period 2002-2010

Raul Caruso () and Friedrich Schneider ()

No ispe0061, DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Politica Economica from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE)

Abstract: We interpret the emergence of Jihadist terrorism in the light of contest theory. Al Qaeda may be portrayed as a contest organizer, providing a ‘prize’ to the best terrorist group. Each group maximizes its probability of winning by launching attacks more destructive than previous ones perpetrated by competing groups. This hypothesis is confirmed by the empirical analysis which shows that the number of victims of terrorist attacks increases compared to number of victims of previous attacks in the same country. An upward trend in terrorist brutality is the outcome of competition between groups. Results also show that Al Qaeda-style terrorism is associated with poverty and underprivileged socio-economic conditions.

Keywords: terrorism; contest; negative binomial regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2012-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Brutality of Jihadist terrorism. A contest theory perspective and empirical evidence in the period 2002–2010 (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctc:serie5:ispe0061

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