Very little is known about the circumstances that lead a terrorist group to cease their operations in one way rather than another. This study seeks to answer the question what impact the goal-structure of a terrorist group has on their disbandment. A new framework describes the structure of goals by differentiating operative and official goals of terrorist groups along their geographical scope, their final goal’s extent, and the respective effectiveness this is accomplished by. I argue that strategic or abstract goal-structures determine the way a terrorist organisation ends. By applying a multinomial logistic regression model with a novel dataset on 155 groups’ goal-structures, I show that a more strategic goal-structure increases the likelihood of splintering and victory, while an abstract goal-structure increases the likelihood of defeat by police or military force whilst also leading terrorist groups to join non-violent political participation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Literature Review
Roots of Terrorism
Characteristics of Terrorist Groups
Terrorist Groups’ End
Gap & Contribution
Theory
Terrorism
Goal-structure & Criteria
Argument & Causal Mechanisms
Research Design
Datasets, Case Selection & Timeframe
Operationalisation
Regression Model
Analysis
Empirics
Politicisation
Victory
Splintering
Policing
Military Force
Alternative Explanations
Reflections
On the Impact of Goal-Structure
Conclusion
References
Research Objectives & Core Themes
This thesis examines the influence of a terrorist group's "goal-structure"—defined by the scope, extent, and effectiveness of its objectives—on the specific manner in which the group ceases its operations (disbandment). It seeks to move beyond traditional ideological explanations by analyzing how strategic versus abstract goal-structures dictate whether a group ends through victory, splintering, policing, military force, or political integration.
- Analysis of goal-structure as a determinant for terrorist group demise.
- Quantitative investigation using a novel dataset of 155 ended terrorist groups (1998–2006).
- Comparison of strategic versus abstract goal-structures in relation to group outcomes.
- Evaluation of counterterrorism effectiveness and group survival strategies.
Excerpt from the Book
Goal-structure & Criteria
As explained earlier, goal-structure in the context of terrorism groups has been introduced by Piazza (2008a) as an explanatory variable for suicide terrorism. Later, he developed the concept further in order to demonstrate that Islamist Terrorism is not more lethal than other kinds of terrorism but that the goal-structure of Islamist terrorist groups determines their lethality (Piazza, 2009). His work points in a very interesting direction but is not sufficiently theorised, even lacking a proper definition of the concept. Therefore, I will develop my own theory of goal-structure of terrorist groups based on Piazza’s groundwork.
First of all, I define goal-structure as a group of aims aligned in a priority system to achieve a final goal. In other words, goal-structure can be thought of as the overall structure of goals. Organisations and groups always rally around a common goal. But as is known from sociology and the research on organisational behaviour, there is an important difference between official and operative goals (Perrow, 1961). If we only consider the stated goal of a terrorist organisation, for example a territorial change, we cannot gain a full understanding of this organisation’s behaviour since it is largely shaped by operative goals. Those operative goals account for “the host of decisions that must be made among alternative ways of achieving official goals and the priority of multiple goals, and the many unofficial goals pursued by groups within the organisation” (Perrow, 1961, p. 855). Goal-structure contains both dimensions of aims and following, I will describe how the concept can be used on terrorist organisations as an analytical framework.
Summary of Chapters
Introduction: Outlines the research gap regarding how and why terrorist groups cease operations and proposes "goal-structure" as a novel explanatory framework.
Literature Review: Discusses existing research on the roots of terrorism, group characteristics, and the few quantitative studies on how terrorist groups end.
Theory: Defines key concepts, including terrorism and goal-structure, and establishes hypotheses regarding how goal-structures influence specific types of disbandment.
Research Design: Details the methodology, including the construction of a new dataset based on Jones and Libicki (2008) and the application of a multinomial logistic regression model.
Analysis: Presents empirical results, tests the hypotheses against the data, discusses control variables, and addresses alternative explanations for the findings.
Conclusion: Summarizes the major findings and discusses the implications of goal-structure for future research and policy-making in counterterrorism.
Keywords
goal-structure, terrorism, disbandment, ideology, counterterrorism, politicisation, strategic goal-structure, abstract goal-structure, policing, military force, victory, splintering, organizational goals, quantitative analysis
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this research?
The work investigates the factors that determine how terrorist groups end, specifically examining the impact of their "goal-structure" on the mode of their disbandment.
What are the core themes explored in this study?
The study covers group strategy, the distinction between official and operative goals, counterterrorism outcomes, and the limitations of purely ideology-based explanations for terrorism.
What is the central research question?
The research asks: What impact does the goal-structure of a terrorist group have on their disbandment?
Which scientific method is employed?
The author uses a quantitative approach, applying a multinomial logistic regression model to a novel dataset of 155 terrorist groups that ended between 1998 and 2006.
What does the main body of the work cover?
It provides a theoretical framework for goal-structure, details the research design and operationalisation of variables, and offers a comprehensive empirical analysis of five types of group demise: policing, military force, victory, politicisation, and splintering.
Which keywords characterize this thesis?
Key terms include goal-structure, terrorism, disbandment, politicisation, counterterrorism, and organizational behavior.
How does the author define a "strategic" versus an "abstract" goal-structure?
A strategic goal-structure involves limited, tangible aims and a clear, linear roadmap toward achieving them. An abstract goal-structure is characterized by broad, nebulous, and ideological objectives that require a more complex, long-term operative strategy.
Why did the author reject the initial hypothesis for politicisation?
The empirical results surprisingly showed that groups with more abstract goal-structures were more likely to end by politicisation (joining the political process) than those with strategic goal-structures, a finding largely driven by the "effectiveness" criterion.
What is the role of effectiveness in this study?
Effectiveness measures how closely a group's terrorist attacks align with their final proclaimed goals. The study finds it is a significant predictor for almost all types of group disbandment.
- Citation du texte
- Johannes Wander (Auteur), 2016, Understanding the influence of goal-structure on the disbandment of terrorist groups, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/340976
