Whose Turn is it? Evaluating Casual Relationships Between Terrorist Ideologies

• In Event: Terrorism Grievances, Ideology, and Violence

Abstract

Terrorism, in its base nature, is an act or threatened act of violence, with a political motive, perpetrated to gain an audience. This stems from a set of previously held belief systems or ideologies, and any attack against said belief system is often perceived as an attack against the actor which, as they believe, may justify violence. Attacks against an ideology can take many forms, but one method that has yet to be explored is whether an attack by one ideology may influence the rate of offending of another by reasoning of retaliation. Drawing from the conflict perspective of tit-for-tat framing, the current study explores the relationship between far-right, far-left, and jihadi ideologies by approaching terrorist attacks as a product of retaliatory action between belief systems. Therefore, using a time-series vector autoregression (VAR) analytic methodology, the study will explore the dynamic relationship between conflicting ideologies by examining the causal mechanisms of event patterns through a series of lagged profiles. Doing so will contribute to terrorist-related literature by developing an understanding of how differing extremist ideologies influence each other’s rate of offending, as well as map the current trend of event frequencies within each overarching group.

Author

• Austin Charles Barber, Michigan State University