Research
Working papers:
“Anonymous Attackers: An Alternative Logic to Credit-taking in Terrorism.” Paper available upon request
Abstract: Acts of terrorism left unclaimed have puzzled scholars in the study of terrorism and counterterrorism policymakers alike. The very idea to commit an act of terrorism, but not take credit for it runs contrary to the conventional wisdom of credit-taking and political communication in terrorism. Extant literature has understood terrorist groups as unitary actors, failing to account for inter-group variation and individual preferences. As a consequence, unclaimed terrorism, or attacks left unclaimed, present a dilemma to the rational model where acts of terrorism are understood to be a form of costly signaling. If such a costly form of ‘signaling’ is authorized by a group, how do so many attacks go unclaimed? This paper explores an alternative theoretical approach to answer the question, what explains the incidence of unclaimed or “anonymous” terrorism? I present an argument about the role of low-level members of terrorist organizations as central agents in the prevalence of attacks that are registered as unclaimed. Utilizing data from the Global Terrorism Database and the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behaviour dataset, I show that countries with less cohesive or weakly organized groups, on average, see a higher rate of unclaimed terrorism.