Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T21:12:58.452Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Kto Kogo?: A Cross-Country Study of the Origins and Targets of Terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Alan B. Krueger
Affiliation:
Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
David D. Laitin
Affiliation:
Watkins Professor of Political Science, Stanford University
Philip Keefer
Affiliation:
The World Bank
Norman Loayza
Affiliation:
The World Bank
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Popular wisdom in the burgeoning literature on terrorism focuses on the economic motivations of terrorists. “We fight against poverty,” President George W. Bush explained in Monterrey, Mexico, on March 23, 2002, “because hope is an answer to terror.” Stern (2003) also draws a direct connection between poverty and terrorism. Though poverty is an attractive answer to the question of “why terrorism?”, the data do not lend much support for it. Macroeconomic shifts generally fail to map on to changes in terrorist activity. For example, in the late 1990s and 2000, when terrorism reached new heights against Israeli citizens, the typical Palestinian was reporting a rosier economic forecast and unemployment was declining. Using a longer time series, Berrebi (2003) finds little correlation between economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the number of terrorist incidents against Israel. An even more perplexing problem for the poverty thesis arises on the microlevel. Several studies at the individual level of analysis have failed to find any direct connection between education, poverty, and the propensity to participate in terrorism (Russell and Miller 1983; Taylor 1988; Hudson 1999; Krueger and Maleckova 2003; Berrebi 2003; Atran 2003). If anything, those who participate in terrorism tend to come from the ranks of the better off in society.

Those who claim a connection between poverty and terrorism could respond that at least on the microlevel, well-to-do citizens become terrorists out of public spiritedness for their impoverished fellow citizens, and organizations choose them to perform these tasks because of their reliability and skill.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abadie, Alberto. 2004. “Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10859, Cambridge, MA.
Atran, Scott. 2003. “Genesis of Suicide Terrorism.” Science 299: 1534–1539.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Azam, Jean-Paul. 2003. “Suicide-Bombing as Inter-Generational Investment.” Public Choice 122(1): 177–198 (January).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Eli, and David D. Laitin. 2005. “Hard Targets: Theory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 11740, Cambridge, MA.
Berrebi, Claude. 2003. “Evidence About the Link Between Education, Poverty and Terrorism Among Palestinians.” Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Working Paper No. 477 (September).
Berrebi, Claude, and Esteban Klor. 2003. “On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” mimeo., Princeton University.
Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan. 2003. “The Quality of Terror,” mimeo., Dept. of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
Burgoon, Brian. 2006. “On Welfare and Terror: Social Welfare Policies and Political-Economic Roots of Terrorism.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(4): 176–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bush, George, W. 2002. “Remarks by the President at United Nations Financing for Development Conference,” Cintermex Convention Center, Monterrey, Mexico. March 22. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020322-1.html.
Fearon, James, and Laitin, David. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political Science Review 97(1): 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, Dipak, and Mudra, Kusum. 2005. “Suicide Bombing as a Strategic Instrument of Protest: An Empirical Investigation.” Terrorism and Political Violence 17(4): 573–598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassan, Nasra. 2001. “An Arsenal of Believers.” The New Yorker (November 19): 36–41.Google Scholar
Hudson, Rex A. 1999. “The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” Report prepared under Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Krueger, Alan, and Maleckova, Jitka. 2003. “Education, Poverty, and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?Journal of Economic Perspectives 17(4): 119–144 (Fall).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kydd, Andrew, and Walter, Barbara. 2002. “Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence.” International Organization 56(2): 263–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Quan, and Schaub, Drew. 2004. “Economic Globalization and Transnational Terrorism: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 48(4): 230–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97(3): 343–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piazza, James A. 2003. “Rooted in Poverty?: Terrorism, Poor Economic Development and Social Change,” mimeo., Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Russell, Charles, and Miller, Bowman. 1983. “Profile of a Terrorist,” reprinted in Perspectives on Terrorism, 45–60. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc.Google Scholar
Stern, Jessica. 2003. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. New York: Ecco-HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Taylor, Maxwell. 1988. The Terrorist. London: Brassey's Defence Publishers.Google Scholar
Wintrobe, Ronald. 2006. Rational Extremism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×