Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-2bw5x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-30T02:00:01.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do Terrorists Win? Rebels' Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2015

Virginia Page Fortna
Get access

Abstract

How effective is terrorism? This question has generated lively scholarly debate and is of obvious importance to policy-makers. However, most existing studies of terrorism are not well equipped to answer this question because they lack an appropriate comparison. This article compares the outcomes of civil wars to assess whether rebel groups that use terrorism fare better than those who eschew this tactic. I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of terrorism relative to other tactics used in civil war. Because terrorism is not a tactic employed at random, I first briefly explore empirically which groups use terrorism. Controlling for factors that may affect both the use of terrorism and war outcomes, I find that although civil wars involving terrorism last longer than other wars, terrorist rebel groups are generally less likely to achieve their larger political objectives than are nonterrorist groups. Terrorism may be less ineffective against democracies, but even in this context, terrorists do not win.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , Summer 2015 , pp. 519 - 556
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2015 

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abadie, Alberto. 2006. Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism. American Economic Review 96 (2):50–56.Google Scholar
Abrahms, Max. 2005. Review of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert A. Pape. Middle East Policy 12 (4):176–78.Google Scholar
Abrahms, Max. 2006. Why Terrorism Does Not Work. International Security 31 (2):42–78.Google Scholar
Abrahms, Max. 2012. The Political Effectiveness of Terrorism Revisited. Comparative Political Studies 45 (3):366–93.Google Scholar
Acosta, Benjamin. 2014. Live to Win Another Day: Why Many Militant Organizations Survive yet Few Succeed. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 37 (2):135–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arreguín-Toft, Ivan. 2001. How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. International Security 26 (1):93–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asal, Victor, and Rethemeyer, R. Karl. 2008a. The Nature of the Beast: Organizational Structures and the Lethality of Terrorist Attacks. Journal of Politics 70 (2):437–49.Google Scholar
Asal, Victor, and Rethemeyer, R. Karl. 2008b. Dilettantes, Ideologues, and the Weak: Terrorists Who Don't Kill. Conflict Management and Peace Science 25 (3):244–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balch-Lindsay, Dylan, Enterline, Andrew J., and Joyce, Kyle A.. 2008. Third-Party Intervention and the Civil War Process. Journal of Peace Research 45 (3):345–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bapat, Navin A. 2006. State Bargaining with Transnational Terrorist Groups. International Studies Quarterly 50 (1):213–29.Google Scholar
Bloom, Mia. 2005. Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Boulden, Jane. 2009. Terrorism and Civil Wars. Civil Wars 11 (1):5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braumoeller, Bear F. 2004. Hypothesis Testing and Multiplicative Interaction Terms. International Organization 58 (4):807–20.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan, and Dickson, Eric S.. 2007. The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization. American Journal of Political Science 51 (2):364–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgoon, Brian. 2006. On Welfare and Terror: Social Welfare Policies and Political-Economic Roots of Terrorism. Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (2):176–203.Google Scholar
Chenoweth, Erica. 2010. Democratic Competition and Terrorist Activity. Journal of Politics 72 (1):16–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chenoweth, Erica. 2013. Terrorism and Democracy. Annual Review of Political Science 16:355–78.Google Scholar
Coggins, Bridget. 2011. Friends in High Places: International Politics and the Emergence of States from Secessionism. International Organization 65 (3):433–67.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Martha. 1981. The Causes of Terrorism. Comparative Politics 13 (4):379–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Martha, ed. 1983. Terrorism, Legitimacy, and Power: The Consequences of Political Violence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Martha. 2011. Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes, and Consequences. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cronin, Audrey K. 2003. Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism. International Security 27 (3):30–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Audrey K. 2006. How al-Qaida Ends: The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups. International Security 31 (1):7–48.Google Scholar
Cronin, Audrey K. 2009. How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cunningham, David E., Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, and Salehyan, Idean. 2009a. It Takes Two: A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (4):570–97. Data available at <http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ksg/eacd.html> Version 2.4. Accessed 13 January 2010.Google Scholar
Cunningham, David E., Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, and Salehyan, Idean. 2009b. Data Coding Notes. Available at <http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/53/4/570/suppl/DC1>. Accessed 25 January 2010.CrossRef.+Accessed+25+January+2010.>Google Scholar
DeNardo, James. 1985. Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy of Protest and Rebellion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
DeRouen, Karl, and Sobek, David. 2004. The Dynamics of Civil War Duration and Outcome. Journal of Peace Research 41 (3):303–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dow, Jay K., and Endersby, James W.. 2004. Multinomial Probit and Multinomial Logit: A Comparison of Choice Models for Voting Research. Electoral Studies 23 (1):107–22.Google Scholar
Enders, Walter, Sandler, Todd, and Gaibulloev, Khusrav. 2011. Domestic Versus Transnational Terrorism: Data, Decomposition, and Dynamics. Journal of Peace Research 48 (3):319–37.Google Scholar
Eubank, William L., and Weinberg, Leonard. 1994. Does Democracy Encourage Terrorism? Terrorism and Political Violence 6 (4):417–63.Google Scholar
Fazal, Tanisha M. 2013. Secessionism and Civilian Targeting. Paper presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August, Chicago.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2003. Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. American Political Science Review 97 (1):75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Findley, Michael G., and Young, Joseph K.. 2012a. Terrorism and Civil War: A Spatial and Temporal Approach to a Conceptual Problem. Perspectives on Politics 10 (2):285–305.Google Scholar
Findley, Michael G., and Young, Joseph K.. 2012b. More Combatant Groups, More Terror? Empirical Tests of an Outbidding Logic. Terrorism and Political Violence 24 (5):706–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortna, Virginia Page. 2008. Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fortna, Virginia Page. 2014. Choosing Terror: Rebels' Use of Terrorism in Internal Armed Conflict, 1970–2010. Unpublished manuscript, Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
Fortna, Virginia Page, Lotito, Nicholas, and Rubin, Michael. 2014. The Causes and Consequences of Terrorism: [Toward] Introducing a New Dataset on Terrorism in Civil Conflicts 1970–2012. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, March, Toronto.Google Scholar
Gleditsch, Nils P., Wallensteen, Peter, Eriksson, Mikael, Sollenberg, Margareta, and Strand, Håvard. 2002. Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset. Journal of Peace Research 39 (5):615–37. Data available at <http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/>. Accessed 1 April 2010.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff. 2006. A Theory of Categorical Terrorism. Social Forces 84 (4):2027–46.Google Scholar
Gould, Eric D., and Klor, Esteban F.. 2010. Does Terrorism Work? Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (4):1459–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heger, Lindsay L. 2010. In the Crosshairs: Explaining Violence Against Civilians. PhD diss., University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Bruce. 2006. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Seth G., and Libicki, Martin C.. 2008. How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krause, Peter. 2013. The Political Effectiveness of Non-State Violence: A Two-Level Framework to Transform a Deceptive Debate. Security Studies 22 (2):259–94.Google Scholar
Kydd, Andrew H., and Walter, Barbara F.. 2002. Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence. International Organization 56 (2):263–96.Google Scholar
Kydd, Andrew H., and Walter, Barbara F.. 2006. The Strategies of Terrorism. International Security 31 (1):49–80.Google Scholar
LaFree, Gary, and Dugan, Laura. 2007. Introducing the Global Terrorism Database. Terrorism and Political Violence 19 (2):181–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laitin, David D., and Shapiro, Jacob N.. 2008. The Political, Economic, and Organizational Sources of Terrorism. In Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness, edited by Keefer, Philip and Loayza, Norman, 209–32. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, David A. 2002. Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. Dialogue IO 1 (1):15–29.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Adria S. 2010. Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings Against Colonial Rule. International Security 35 (2):88–122.Google Scholar
Li, Quan, and Schaub, Drew. 2004. Economic Globalization and Transnational Terrorism: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis. Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (2):230–58.Google Scholar
Lindberg, Jo-Eystein. 2008. Running on Faith? A Quantitative Analysis of the Effect of Religious Cleavages on the Intensity and Duration of Internal Conflicts. MA thesis, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway.Google Scholar
Lyall, Jason. 2010. Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration. International Organization 64 (1):167–92.Google Scholar
Mao, Tse-Tung. 1961 [1937]. On Guerrilla Warfare. Translated by Griffith, Samuel B.. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Mason, T. David, Weingarten, Joseph P., and Fett, Patrick J.. 1999. Win, Lose, or Draw: Predicting the Outcome of Civil Wars. Political Research Quarterly 52 (2):239–68.Google Scholar
McCormick, Gordon H. 2003. Terrorist Decision Making. Annual Review of Political Science 6:473–507.Google Scholar
Merari, Ariel. 1993. Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency. Terrorism and Political Violence 5 (4):213–51.Google Scholar
Metelits, Claire. 2010. Inside Insurgency: Violence, Civilians, and Revolutionary Group Behavior. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Minorities at Risk Project. 2009. Minorities at Risk Dataset: “Minority Group Assessments” and “Chronologies.” College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management. Available at <http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/data.asp>. Accessed 29 November 2012..+Accessed+29+November+2012.>Google Scholar
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). 2008. Terrorist Organization Profiles (TOPs). Available at <http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/>. Accessed 29 November 2012..+Accessed+29+November+2012.>Google Scholar
Nemeth, Stephen. 2014. The Effect of Competition on Terrorist Group Operations. Journal of Conflict Resolution 58 (2):336–62.Google Scholar
Pape, Robert A. 2003. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. American Political Science Review 97 (3):343–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pape, Robert A. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Pape, Robert A., and Feldman, James K.. 2010. Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sambanis, Nicholas. 2008. Terrorism and Civil War. In Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness, edited by Keefer, Philip and Loayza, Norman, 174–208. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Cuenca, Ignacio, and de la Calle, Luis. 2009. Domestic Terrorism: The Hidden Side of Political Violence. Annual Review of Political Science 12:31–49.Google Scholar
Satana, Nil S., Inman, Molly, and Birnir, Jóhanna K.. 2013. Religion, Government Coalitions, and Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence 25 (1):29–52.Google Scholar
Schmid, Alex P., and Jongman, Albert J.. 1988. Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature. Rev. ed. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Silke, Andrew. 1996. Terrorism and the Blind Man's Elephant. Terrorism and Political Violence 8 (3):12–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanton, Jessica A. 2009. Strategies of Violence and Restraint in Civil War. PhD diss., Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
Stanton, Jessica A. 2013. Terrorism in the Context of Civil War. Journal of Politics 75 (4):1009–22.Google Scholar
Stephan, Maria J., and Chenoweth, Erica. 2008. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. International Security 33 (1):7–44.Google Scholar
Svensson, Isak. 2007. Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (6):930–49.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jakana. 2014. Rewarding Bad Behavior: How Governments Respond to Terrorism in Civil War. American Journal of Political Science 58 (4):804–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, Thomas P. 1964. Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation. In Internal War: Problems and Approaches, edited by Eckstein, Harry, 71–99. London: Free Press.Google Scholar
Uppsala Conflict Data Program. 2012. UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University. Available at <www.ucdp.uu.se/database>. Accessed 29 November 2012..+Accessed+29+November+2012.>Google Scholar
Walter, Barbara F. 2002. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. 1974. Political Organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Reed M., and Kathman, Jacob D.. 2014. Too Much of a Bad Thing? Civilian Victimization and Bargaining in Civil War. British Journal of Political Science 44 (3):1–22.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Fortna supplementary material

Fortna supplementary material 1

Download Fortna supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 463.4 KB
Supplementary material: PDF

Fortna supplementary material

Fortna supplementary material 2

Download Fortna supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 98.9 KB
Supplementary material: File

Fortna supplementary material

Fortna supplementary material 3

Download Fortna supplementary material(File)
File 444.9 KB