Iterate - Monitoring Transnational Terrorism (From Behavioral and Quantitative Perspectives on Terrorism, P 153-174, 1981, Yonah Alexander and John M Gleason, eds. - See NCJ-84379)

• NCJ Number: 84382
• Author(s): E Mickolus; E Heyman
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: Pergamon Press, Inc
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Originally presented to the Joint National Meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute for Management Sciences, New York, May 1-3, 1978.

Annotation

Findings are presented from a literature survey of terrorism, noting which variables theorists find crucial in describing, explaining, and predicting terrorist activity, and categories for describing the structure of a given transnational terrorist incident are presented.

Abstract

For purposes of data gathering, terrorism is defined as 'the use, or threat of use, of anxiety-inducing extranormal violence for political purposes by any person or group, whether acting for or in opposition to established governmental authority, when such action is intended to influence the attitudes and behavior of a target group wider than the immediate victims.' Transnational terrorism, the subject of this study, is terrorist action conducted by basically autonomous nonstate actors, whether or not they have some degree of moral or material support from sympathetic governments. To test the utility of the categories to describe the structure of any transnational terrorist incident, the Rand Corporation's chronology of international terrorism from 1968 through the beginning of 1974 was used to generate 539 cases. The data have been used to evaluate suggested hostage negotiation options, conduct general surveys of global terrorism, examine the effect of the media in spectacular incidents upon subsequent terrorist activity, and study global diffusion patterns of transnational terrorism over time. Tabular data show (1) the location of the start of transnational terrorist incidents, (2) the groups claiming responsibility for incidents, (3) the number of incidents by region, of state involvement in terrorism, and (4) correlations between types of national involvement. General categories and variables in each category that describe terrorist incidents are appended. Eight notes and about 60 references are listed.