scholarly journals To instill fear or love: Terrorist groups and the strategy of building reputation

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seden Akcinaroglu ◽  
Efe Tokdemir
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Group Population ◽  
Territorial Control ◽  
The Government ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Negative Reputation

Why does one terrorist group employ actions that win the hearts and minds of its constituency while another resorts to tactics that alienate their support? The paper investigates terrorist groups’ strategy of building reputation in their constituency/in-group population and non-constituency/out-group population. Studying all domestic terrorist groups between 1980 and 2011 with original data, we find that ethnic/religious groups and those with territorial control invest in positive reputation in their constituency as they can minimize the risks of returns. Radical groups and those with cross-border support, however, tend to build negative constituency reputation. While the former type of group has a small constituency, the latter ones can find resources across borders, which reduces their dependency on the constituency. Lastly, we find that terror groups seeking policy concessions avoid building a negative reputation in their non-constituency as this strategy enhances their chances of negotiating with the government.

scholarly journals Repression Hurts: Coercive Government Responses and the Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula E. Daxecker ◽  
Michael L. Hess
Keyword(s):  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Using Data

The question of how coercive government policies affect the duration and outcome of terrorist campaigns has only recently started to attract scholarly interest. This article argues that the effect of repression on terrorist group dynamics is conditional on the country's regime type. Repression is expected to produce a backlash effect in democracies, subsequently lengthening the duration of terrorist organizations and lowering the probability of outcomes favourable to the government. In authoritarian regimes, however, coercive strategies are expected to deter groups’ engagement in terrorism, thus reducing the lifespan of terrorist groups and increasing the likelihood of government success. These hypotheses are examined using data on terrorist groups for the 1976–2006 period; support is found for these conjectures on terrorist group duration and outcomes.

scholarly journals Special Solicitude: Religious Freedom at America’s Public Universities

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
William E. Thro
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

Rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument that the First Amendment requires identical treatment for religious organizations and secular organizations, the Supreme Court held such a “result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” (Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 189). This “special solicitude” guarantees religious freedom from the government in all aspects of society, but particularly on public university campuses. At a minimum, religious expression and religious organizations must have equal rights with secular expression and secular organizations. In some instances, religious expression and religious expression may have greater rights. The Court’s 2020 decisions in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, reinforce and expand the “special solicitude” of religion. Indeed, Espinoza and Our Lady have profound implications for student religious groups at America’s public campuses. This article examines religious freedom at America’s public universities. This article has three parts. First, it offers an overview of religious freedom prior to Espinoza and Our Lady. Second, it briefly discusses those two cases. Third, it explores the implications of those decisions on America’s public campuses.

Do Foreign Aid Projects Attract Transnational Terrorism?

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Boutton ◽  
Henry Pascoe
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Transnational Terrorism ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Government ◽  
Project Level

AbstractGovernments and NGOs establish aid projects in order to improve the quality of life for local residents around the world. While recent news stories about aid workers being kidnapped or killed by terrorist groups are alarming, they mask a broader question: Are aid projects effective in promoting humanitarian aims and pacifying the areas to which it is sent? Or, conversely, does their presence actually attract more violence? Although humanitarian assistance is ostensibly non-political, aid projects themselves may make popular targets for terrorist groups. In addition to increasing resources available to plunder, aid provides an appealing foreign target, allowing terrorist groups to reach wider audiences with their attacks and to reinforce the narrative that the government lacks capacity to protect and provide for civilians. In this paper we combine subnational, project-level aid data with newly-assembled subnational data on transnational terrorism to explore terrorist targeting of aid locations. After presenting our matched-sample analysis of terrorist targeting of aid, we outline avenues for future inquiry using high-resolution, subnational data to investigate the strategic vulnerabilities of foreign aid projects.

scholarly journals HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF COUNTERING YOUTH POLITICAL TERRORISM BY THE POLICE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY AND CONCLUSIONS FOR PRESENT-DAY RUSSIA (TERROR GROUP ‘RED ARMY FRACTION’ TAKEN AS AN EXAMPLE)

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-11
Author(s):  
Ilya Leonidovich Morozov
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Red Army ◽  
The Government

‘Red Army Fraction’ is a youth extremist left-wing terror group that was active in the 1970–1980s on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. The terror group and its ideology originated mostly in Western German university circles. Most representatives of the group were descendants from wealthy families of high social standing. The ideology of the group included a mix of concepts related to social equity, preventing autocratic tendencies in the government machinery and interventions of Western countries against developing ‘third world’ countries and peoples. State security system of West Germany was unable to suppress the terror group for over two decades. The group finally announced its voluntary dissolution in 1998 due to a dramatic change in socio-political climate and general crisis of the left-wing political ideology. The growth of oppositional sentiments among present-day Russian young people is partially similar to the students’ unrest that had place in Western Europe in the 1960s and gave rise to terrorist groups. This makes the study of West Germany’s experience in countering the threat important.

scholarly journals SVM ALGORITHM FOR PREDICTING RICE YIELDS

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-54
Author(s):  
Nur Nafi'iyah
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Rice Yield ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Svm Algorithm ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Rice Yields ◽  
The Government ◽  
Linear Svm

Agriculture in Indonesia is highly dependent on reservoir irrigation water sources and rain. Because some agricultural land in Indonesia is rainfed. Plants in Indonesia rely on water from rain and irrigation. Weather conditions greatly affect the number of farmers' harvest. Farmers often experience crop failures due to changing weather. From data from the Central Statistics Agency, it is stated that the number of rice yields in 2019 decreased by 7.76% compared to 2018. In order to avoid rice imports and rice food shortages, a breakthrough is needed that can help the government in making policies. One of the breakthroughs is creating a rice yield prediction system. The research process consisted of collecting data via the web: https://www.pertanian.go.id/home/?show=page&act=view&id=61. The data shows the variables of province, year, land area, production. The total number of data is 170 rows, with a division of 130 lines for training, and 40 for testing. Furthermore, the data is processed and processed and normalized. The results of data processing are then trained and predicted with a linear SVM kernel. The results of SVM prediction with original data without normalization of MAPE 6635.53%, and RMSE 1094810.74. The results of SVM prediction with normalized data first, the MAPE value was 9427.714%, and RMSE 0.017.

Malaysia: Adapting to the dynamic changes of terrorist threats

2019 ◽  
pp. 102-127
Author(s):  
Kamarulnizam Abdullah ◽  
Ridzuan Abdul Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Surveillance Technology ◽  
Adaptive Capability ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Reasonable Evidence ◽  
The Government ◽  
Heart And Mind ◽  
Trial Failure ◽  
New Strategies

Threats posed by the current religiously inspired terrorist groups leave Malaysia with no choice but to adapt to new strategies and approaches. Not only the threats have become more global in terms of networking and influences, but also the use of Islam to justify their attacks produces great challenges to the country and its security enforcement apparatus. At the macro level, Malaysia’s promotion on moderation and wasatiyah, as part of its counterterrorism campaign has been widely accepted by the international community. At home, the campaign of winning heart and mind continues to become an essential strategy of the government. Malaysia’s success in countering major terror threats since independence has also been credited to the role played by the police’s Special Branch (SB) Unit and the existence of preventive laws. Yet when those preventive laws were repealed, amid changing political climate and democracy in the country, the enforcement authorities particularly the police’s Special Branch are forced to re-strategize their intelligence gatherings and to learn vigorously the legal process. They are forced to be equipped with higher legal knowledge since the new laws required reasonable evidence to be presented during the trial, failure which could have be resulted in a dismissal of the charges. At the same time, the force is also upgrading its tactical skills and surveillance technology given the current terrorists’ adaptive capability with a loosely connected decentralized network.

Medical Diplomacy and the Battle for Hearts and Minds

2021 ◽  
pp. 204-226
Author(s):  
Michael L. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Good Care ◽  
Vulnerable Patients ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
The Government ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Provincial Reconstruction Teams

Medical diplomacy leverages health care to win hearts and minds, pacify war-torn communities, and gather intelligence. Charging that medical diplomacy exploits vulnerable patients, critics chastise military medicine for repudiating the neutrality it requires to deliver good care. Military medicine, however, is not neutral. But it must be effective and looking at the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, medical diplomacy does not usually offer good care. MEDCAPs (Medical Civic Action Programs) and PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) fail to provide civilians with quality treatment. Suggestions for improvements abound and if medical diplomacy proves effective, then humanitarian force may utilize medicine for military advantage, pacification, and stabilization during armed conflict. At the same time, humanitarian war requires close cooperation between military forces and civilian-relief NGOs (nongovernmental organizations). Ideally, the former provides security and funding, while the latter work with local officials and stakeholders to build health care infrastructures and restore confidence in the government.

Alfabeticemos! Let’s Teach Literacy!

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-104
Author(s):  
Deborah Shnookal
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Literacy Campaign ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Hearts And Minds

The Cuban revolutionary government prioritized education reform as the key to lifting the country out of underdevelopment and creating a new political culture of participatory democracy, epitomized by the 1961 literacy campaign. Fidel Castro’s opponents, however, regarded this campaign as evidence of the “communist indoctrination” by the government of young Cubans and were therefore determined to “save” as many children as possible by sending them to Miami until Castro was ousted. This chapter takes a detailed look at how the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation unfolded with the mobilization of 100,000 teenagers as literacy brigadistas to teach in the mountains and remote parts of the island. It examines the objectives of the campaign, the recruitment propaganda used to mobilize the Conrado Benítez brigades, how the campaign affected relations between parents and children, and the impact that participation in the campaign had on a generation of revolutionary youth.

scholarly journals Why Do States Intervene in the Elections of Others? The Role of Incumbent–Opposition Divisions

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Bubeck ◽  
Kai Jäger ◽  
Nikolay Marinov ◽  
Federico Nanni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Polarization Measurement ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The Government

Abstract Why do states intervene in elections abroad? This article argues that outsiders intervene when the main domestic contenders for office adopt policy positions that differ from the point of view of the outside power. It refers to the split between the government's and opposition's positions as policy polarization. Polarization between domestic political forces, rather than the degree of unfriendliness of the government in office, attracts two types of interventions: process (for or against democracy) and candidate (for or against the government) interventions. The study uses a novel, original data set to track local contenders’ policy positions. It shows that the new policy polarization measurement outperforms a number of available alternatives when it comes to explaining process and candidate interventions. The authors use this measurement to explain the behavior of the United States as an intervener in elections from 1945 to 2012. The United States is more likely to support the opposition, and the democratic process abroad, if a pro-US opposition is facing an anti-US government. It is more likely to support the government, and undermine the democratic process abroad, if a pro-US government is facing an anti-US opposition. The article also presents the results for all interveners, confirming the results from the US case.

Blurring the Lines

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brunstetter
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
Clear Line ◽  
Western Democracies

Law enforcement is often seen as the de facto, and relatively pure, alternative to contemporary just war. If we are not at war, then the more restrictive law enforcement is the viable paradigm. This chapter interrogates two assumptions underlying this view. It begins by demystifying the unwritten assumption that the liberal law enforcement paradigm associated with Western democracies is the idealized foil to just war. Using France, whose postcolonial legacy complicates the turn to the Western liberal paradigm as an illuminating case, the chapter explores how domestic warlike violence creates a state of fractured order—the violence and potential for abuses of power that permeate society as the government seeks to balance security and individual rights. The chapter then turns to the transnational context to challenge the view that there exists a clear line between the state of war and the state of peace. Mali serves as a paradigmatic case to illustrate how the effectiveness of law enforcement is curtailed in spaces of contested order where heavily armed terrorist groups challenge the authority of the state, thus prompting a turn to Special Forces and drones to restore order. In both contexts, the chapter identifies a shift away from the restrained norms that typically govern the use of force in law enforcement to more warlike uses of force that blur the lines between peace and war. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how this shift might inform the ethics of limited force, which lies between law enforcement and just war.

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