Leo, Sarah; (2020) Allocating carrots and sticks: How governments deal with terrorist violence. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Why do some governments succeed in their fight against terrorism while others fail? We lack theoretical frameworks which explain how governments select varying strategies when countering different terrorist groups. As a consequence, we do not know whether this choice is utility-maximising. I argue that governments have two options when countering terrorism: to reward or to punish. Punishing efforts are coercive and often involve military action or the detention of extremists. Rewarding efforts are conciliatory and can range from a mere willingness to negotiate, to making political concessions. My core argument is that to understand this allocation, we must examine the ways in which terrorist groups differ from one another. I develop game-theoretical models on the impact of three group-level characteristics. First, the resilience of a terrorist group, which determines its chances of survival after punishing blows. Governments should prefer to reward those high in resilience to avoid prolonged campaigns. Second, the nature of the group’s ties with the civilian population determines how its support base may be affected by counterterrorism. I expect governments to favour rewarding groups with strong ties as punishment could risk civilian backlash. Third, the viability of a group’s demands, which indicates whether rewards are an option. I generate a dataset with information on 36 terrorist groups and the weekly counterterrorism intensity with which they have been rewarded or punished between 2005 and 2017. Using these data, I compare a government’s historical allocation of counterterrorism with the utility-maximising choice determined by my theoretical models. I find that governments only allocate weekly net-rewards (where reward outweighs punishment) to groups that have high resilience, strong civilian ties and viable demands. Punishing efforts dominate for all other group types—even when rewards would yield greater utility. I present further insights into the effect of each individual group characteristic.

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