Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A methodological divide plagues terrorism research. Quantitative and qualitative researchers have drawn mutually exclusive conclusions regarding the root causes of the terrorism. In an attempt to help resolve this conflict, this paper assesses the reliability of the data used by statistical researchers of terrorism. The results demonstrate that issues of construct validity limit the reliability of regression analysis in the field of terrorism; unless quantitative researchers make significant changes in the way they operationalize dependent and independent variables, their work will remain misleading. Ultimately, statistical analysis of terrorism must be paired with other methodologies in order to provide the context necessary to understand raw quantitative data.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Are public views on anti-terrorism policies driven by concerns about future threats or by emotional responses to a prior attack? A terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 is both a harbinger of future threat and a discrete, one-time national trauma. We sought to distinguish between a) perceptions of the future threat of terrorism and b) responses to the 9/11 attacks themselves as predictors of Americans’ national security policy preferences. Using an anonymous Web-based survey methodology, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of US adults (N=1613, 75% response rate) in late 2006 and early 2007. Respondents rated the likelihood of another terrorist attack occurring on U.S. soil in the near future. They also reported any experience of terror-related posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS) in the form of intrusive thoughts and images resulting from 9/11. In addition, respondents expressed their degree of support for anti-terrorism policies in three ways: 1) as having desired an aggressive U.S. response to 9/11, 2) as support for ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 3) as willingness to sacrifice civil liberties for security. Multiple regression analyses adjusting for political affiliation, general psychological distress, exposure to 9/11, and other key variables revealed that both perceived likelihood of future terrorism and 9/11-related PTS independently predicted greater support for all three categories of anti-terrorism policies. Moreover, perceived likelihood and PTS interacted such that perceived likelihood of future terrorism did not predict policy preferences among individuals high in PTS. Public views on future-oriented policies may be disproportionately influenced by distressing experiences from the past.

Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Perhaps one of the most important questions that needs to be answered in order to understand responses to the terrorist threat is how people perceive terrorists, their characteristics and motivations. The way people cope with the terrorist threat is likely to depend on their cognitive appraisal of the source of threat. Decisions about collective actions against terrorism are made based on shared and salient representations of terrorists, their intentions and characteristics.
In the present paper we demonstrate that the way people tend to perceive terrorists is related to their ideas of the best and most effective counter-terrorist actions. When terrorists are perceived as freedom fighters on the side of the enemy, war on terrorism is preferred and possibility of dialogue is rejected. People who perceive terrorist as criminals tend to seek solutions that would guarantee that terrorists are ‘reformed’ and follow the laws and norms of the Western countries. Moreover, the results of the study reveal that framing the image of terrorists as soldiers or criminals results in preference for different counter terrorist strategies but only among people to whom a given image seems convincing (i.e. perception of terrorists as soldiers of the enemy is related to high SDO and perception of terrorists as psychopathic criminals is predicted by high levels of SDO and RWA).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Terrorism and the fight against it are conventionally depicted as opposite in disposition, the former irrational, passionate, bloodthirsty, demonic, the latter rationally defensive, objective, dispassionate, progressive. This paper points to the common roots of both forms of violence, the difficulty of constructing a definition of terrorism which excludes conventional warfare, the use of terrorist activities in proxy wars and the similar seductions of violence in conventional warfare and terrorist attacks. It indicates a reverse othering, a symmetry of mirrors which each side, whether in orientalism or occidentalism, projects unreason on the other whilst claiming rationality for itself. As for the motives for terrorism it notes the common absorption of Western values followed by experiences of rejection and disillusionment.The aetiology, nature and attractiveness of such opposites is therefore of much greater identity than is supposed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: To test the validity of the "New Terror" thesis, this study focuses on 25 International Terror Crises (ITCs) – interstate confrontations that are driven by a terror act. We explore ITCs, and compare them to all other international crises from 1918 to 2005, in order to identify diversity and change and to learn what exactly is new in current terror, if at all. The inquiry is based on a distinction between routine changes, step-level shifts and qualitative transformations. In extending the scope of the "New Terror" debate from terror incidents to ITCs, we expect and indeed find that since 1991, ITCs have become more dangerous in intensity, gravity of threat, terror lethality, mode & locale; somewhat less dangerous in regional spread and much less dangerous in interstate violence. Despite these changes, terror is not the most important danger in the world of crises, and states have adapted over time so as to successfully contain the destabilizing effects of the dual-violence mechanism embedded in ITCs.