The nefarious helping hand: Anti-corruption campaigns, social service provision, and terrorism

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 356-375

  Magouirk, Justin ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^b NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

Anti corruption; Cheap talk; Signaling; Social services; Terrorism

Indexed keywords

EID: 46749103684     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: 15561836     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550802073318     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. This research was performed while on appointment as a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Fellow under the DHS Scholarship and Fellowship Program, a program administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for DHS through an interagency agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). I would like to thank Robert Axelrod, Scott Atran, Ashu Varshney, Stephen Kaplan, Jim Morrow, Mark Tessler, Joel Simmons, Megan Reif, David Rapoport, and Lawrence Rubin for helpful comments and critiques.
2. The Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (New York: United Nations, 2004) defined terrorism as "any action... that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."
3. An extremist group is any group that espouses, utilizes, or is linked to violence (through funding mechanisms or media) at the national or international level.
4. See S. Atran, "Mishandling Suicide Terrorism," The Washington Quarterly 27 (2004): 67-90 for other examples of soft strategies.
5. Social goods are public goods (non-rival and non-excludable), club goods (impure public goods for which some exclusion is possible), and private goods (completely excludable) provided to population members in the realm of health care, education, busing services, basic welfare services, job services, garbage collection, water services, natural and war-related disaster relief, and other social services. For a discussion of social goods, see S. Berman, "Islamism, Revolution, and Civil Society," Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 257-273.
6. Anti-corruption campaigns are programs that attempt to identify and eliminate the use of public office or other positions of power (public, private, and social) for illegitimate private gain. See "Anti-Corruption Activities" section for operationalization.
7. Social service provision is more common among groups who operate within defined territorial boundaries (i.e., Hamas, Hizballah) than among global groups like Al-Qaeda.
8. Cheap talk is communication without cost. For example, a person can make a promise, but if there is no mechanism to ensure that the promise is carried out, then there is no cost associated with the assurance.
9. Anti-corruption campaigns must involve costly action, not just accusations.
10. See David C. Rapoport, "Modern Terror: The Four Waves," in Audrey Cronin and J. Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46-73 for a discussion of the four waves of terrorism. The four waves refer to the "Anarchist Wave," the "Anti-Colonial Wave," the "New Left Wave," and the "Religious Wave." The "fourth wave" discussed in this paper refers to the recent "Religious Wave" of terrorism.
11. See J. L. Esposito, Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995);
12. G. Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002);
13. J. Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004);
14. S. Carapico, Civil Society in the Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
15. R. Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Harik's work is controversial.
16. For alternative takes on Hizbollah, see S. P. Yadav, "(En)durable Syncretism: Hizballah in the 'Space Between,'" In Dennis Galvan and Rudra Sil, eds., Reconfiguring Institutions Across Space and Time: Syncretic Responses to Challenges of Political and Economic Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 114-136;
17. L. Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006);
18. A.R. Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
19. See Z. Abuza, Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003);
20. D. Byman, et al., Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2001);
21. M. Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
22. For books on Hamas, see Z. Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
23. K. Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000);
24. S. Mishal and A. Sela', The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000);
25. M. Levitt, 2006 (see endnote 12).
26. See Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research Press Release (2005). "Six weeks Before the Parliamentary Elections: Fatah Makes Further Gains Compared to September 2005 Results." http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/ polls/2005/p18epressrelease.html
27. See B. Tejerina, "Protest Cycle, Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country," Nations and Nationalism 7 (2002): 39-57. ETA operates on the basis of coercion today and no longer maintains support among the population.
28. D. Rapoport, 2004 (endnote 10).
29. See J. Weinstein, "Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (2005): 598-624.
30. I do not demonstrate in a large-N, empirical way that those terrorist groups utilizing social service provision strategies utilize less coercion against the population than groups that refrain from providing social service activities. I leave this for future research.
31. See J. Esposito, 1995 (endnote 11), 147.
32. See D. Samuels, "In a Ruined Country," The Atlantic Monthly 296 (2005): 60-91.
33. See Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research Press Release, 2005 for Hamas (endnote 14). See Harik 2004, 86-87 (endnote 11) for Hizballah.
34. See See D. Samuels, 2004 (endnote 20): 60-91.
35. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release, "Hamas's Use of Charitable societies to Fund and Support Terror," September 22, 2003, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/9/Hamas- s%20use%20of%20charitable%20societies%20to%20fund%20and%20su. Harik, 2004 (endnote 11); Esposito, 1995 (endnote 11): 140-142, 147.
36. For the anti-corruption argument, the model assumes that the existing government is corrupt.
37. An important caveat to this argument is that a certain minimum threshold of social provision that would invoke a response from the population would probably have to be met to provide a credible, costly signal.
38. J. Weinstein, When Revolutionaries Become Killers: Sources of Violence in Civil War, Ph.D. Dissertation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2003).
39. See Harik, 2004 (endnote 11).
40. See Human Rights Watch 2002, Section VI, Financial and Logistical Support. See also Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release 2003 (endnote 23), which claims that Hamas maintains a budget of $25-30 million for its dawa (or preaching) activities (which include education and social services). The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that this takes up the "lion's share of Hamas's Budget."
41. See J. Weinstein, 2003 (endnote 26).
42. I would like to thank Bob Axelrod for pointing out this example.
43. Previous statements by the Muslim Brotherhood on their website alluded to this.
44. See T. Sandler and D. Arce M., "Terrorism and Game Theory," Simulation & Gaming 34 (2003): 319-337 for a nice overview of the literature through 2003.
45. See B. Overgaard, "The Scale of Terrorist Attacks as a Signal of Resources," Journal of Conflict Resolution 38 (1994), 452-478
46. and H. Lapan and T. Sandler, "Terrorism and Signaling," European Journal of Political Economy 9 (1993): 383-397 for an examination of how terrorist groups can signal their capabilities to the government via terrorist attacks.
47. See B. Hoffman and G. McCormick, "Terrorism Signaling andSuicide Attacks," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27 (2004): 243-281 for an example of suicide bombing as a signal of group character and objectives.
48. See D. Arce M. and T. Sandler, "Terrorist Signaling and the Value ofIntelligence," British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming, for examples of terrorist attacks as signals which governments can utilize to discern whether a group is politically motivated or militant.
49. See also A. Kydd and B. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization 55: 263-296 for a signaling model dealing with peace negotiations involving three actors - a terrorist group, a government, and a potential peace partner.
50. See K. Siqueira and T. Sandler, "Terrorists versus the Government: Strategic Interaction, Support, and Sponsorship," Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (2006): 878-898.
51. The alternative modeling explanation is that groups must decide whether or not to carry out anti-corruption programs within their organizational ranks.
52. Jeremy Weinstein also focuses on the importance of informational asymmetries. He seeks to explain how rebels attempt to attract "the right type of potential recruit" given uncertainty about the commitment level of potential volunteers. See J. Weinstein, 2003 (endnote 26). Weinstein utilizes a signaling model to understand how potential volunteers from the population signal their commitment to the rebel organization. In contrast, I utilize a signaling model to understand how terrorist organizations signal their commitment to the population (the inverse of Weinstein's model).
53. See I. Cho and D. Kreps, "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 102 (1987): 179-221.
54. A. Ayalon, "Fighting Terrorism: Lessons from the Front Line" in R. B. Satloff, ed., War on Terror: The Middle East Dimension (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002).
55. It is assumed that the Social group also has a non-instrumental benefit in providing for the population.
56. In the model, the cost of provision for the Social group is normalized to 0 and the difference in cost between the Social and Resource group, z, is assigned to the Resource group. This has no effect on the results.
57. See Alexander A. Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
58. Here I am assuming that infrastructure does not entail indirect instrumental benefits such as road construction or creation of markets.
59. This scenario should be less likely given the constraints on the Resource group. See the appendix for the explicit requirements.
60. This follows from the fact that organizations have difficulty surviving without ongoing support.
61. See M. Moore, "In Gaza, New Hamas-Dominated Council Attends to Basics: Public Services Win Praise of Residents," Washington Post Foreign Service, May 16, 2005.
62. Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research Press Release, "Sharp Decrease in Support for Suicide Bombings Inside Israel and Satisfaction with the Performance of Abu Mazin, but HAMAS' Popularity Increases while Fatah's Decreases," March 14, 2005.
63. Hamas also obtains support due to the fact that it is a successful national "resistance" organization.
64. See PSR Press Release, December 11, 2005 (endnote 14).
65. See J. Morrow, Game Theory for Political Scientists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).