Re-examining the evidence on the electoral impact of terrorist attacks: The Spanish election of 2004

This paper re-examines the electoral effect of the 11-M terrorist attacks in Madrid. Previous research has focused on post-electoral surveys to construct counterfactuals for the evaluation of the electoral impact of the attack. Bali (Electoral Studies, 2007) claims that the terrorists attacks had an important electoral impact while Lago and Montero (2005) claim the opposite. In this paper I propose to re-examine the evidence using a methodological approach based on actual votes instead of opinions revealed by surveys, and the difference-in-differences estimator. The calculations under the counterfactual of “no terrorist attack” support the forecasts of the polls taken prior to the terrorist attack and the results of Bali (2007). The incumbent (conservative) party would have won the election with between 42% and the 45% of the votes, while the socialist party would have obtained 37% of the votes.     

Terrorist success in hostage-taking missions: 1978–2010

This article investigates the determinants of logistical and negotiation successes in hostage-taking incidents using an expanded dataset that runs from 1978 to 2010. Unlike an earlier study, the current study has a rich set of negotiation variables in addition to political, geographical, and organizational variables associated with the perpetrators or targets of the attacks. The 33 years of data permit a split into two subperiods: 1978–1987 and 1988–2010, before and after the rise of religious fundamentalist terrorist groups. Logistical success depends on resource and target vulnerability proxies, while negotiation success hinges on bargaining variables. Among many novel findings, democracy significantly hampers logistical success throughout the entire period. Kidnappings, tropical climates, and high elevations foster logistical success. Religious fundamentalist terrorists’ logistical advantage during 1978–1987 was lost during 1988–2010. Abducting protected persons, making demands on the host country, and staging incidents in a democracy limit negotiation success for the terrorists. If terrorists moderate or replace one or more demands, the likelihood of negotiation success for the terrorists goes up.     

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis

Abstract

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been intensively examined as both tactical and strategic intelligence failures but less attention has been paid to the policy failures which preceded them. Perhaps this is due to the presumption that intelligence analysis influences decision-making as a precursor to and foundation for policy. This assumption about the influence of analysis on decision deserves a much closer examination. The 9/11 terrorist attacks provide a good case to study for greater understanding of the influence, or lack of influence, that intelligence analysis has on decision-making. Specifically, the 9/11 Commission Report identifies as a significant failure the lack of a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat between 1998 and 2001, and implies that if one had been produced it might have helped enable decision-makers to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In other words, a failure of strategic intelligence analysis lay at the foundation of the failure to prevent 9/11. But was this really the case? This article takes a closer look at the case of the missing National Intelligence Estimate by first evaluating what decision-makers knew about the threat prior to the 9/11 attacks, the policies they were implementing at the time, and the extent to which the hypothetical National Intelligence Estimate described by the 9/11 Commission would have mattered in terms of influencing their judgement and policy for the better. It concludes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were more a failure of policy than strategic intelligence analysis.     

Role of Social Media in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses

Social media have become an indispensable tool in modern political campaigns, yet little is known about their impact, especially at the important primary and caucus stages of the US presidential elections. This study investigates the effects of visiting political party and candidate websites as well as following presidential candidates, posting political comments, and liking or sharing political content on social media on participation in the primary stage of the 2016 US election. The results of a precaucus survey in Iowa show that active use of social media tends to have positive effects, while passive social media use has a negative impact on likelihood of caucus attendance. Recommendations for campaigns include redirecting attention away from passive website viewing and developing social media content that will generate likes and shares.     

Terrorism and the Railroads: Redefining Security in the Wake of 9/11

This article examines the impact of the 9/11 attacks on railroad security. Railroad security has been traditionally defined as a problem of trespass and liability for deaths, injuries, and property damage sustained or caused by trespassers. It argues that the private freight railroad industry, not government, has largely directed the efforts to prevent terrorism and share information on suspected terrorist threats, through the prompt formation of a loosely coupled network of organizations coordinated by the industry trade association, the American Association of Railroads. The freight railroad network approach is contrasted with the efforts of Amtrak to gain public funds for its security efforts by connecting its survival with homeland security. Kingdon's model of the policy process is used to explain how 9/11 has presented an opportunity for railroads to use policy windows to gain benefits for the industry while at the same time resisting possible reregulation. It contrasts the network approach with the traditional hierarchical-bureaucratic form of organization used in the design of the Department of Homeland Security, and suggests it poses a valuable case study to see how information can be shared between widely divergent types of organizations, and test how best to prevent future terrorist events.     

Political Participation Online: The Replacement and the Mobilisation Hypotheses Revisited

This article discusses the state of political participation online more than ten years after the Internet's great popular breakthrough as an everyday medium. Denmark is used as a case study to critically re‐examine the frequently discussed replacement and mobilisation hypotheses on behalf of the Internet. The pure replacement hypothesis is rejected. Instead, it is found that the Internet still supplements rather than replaces other media, even among heavy Internet users. The Internet is one among several media used by ‘media omnivores’, and political participation online supplements rather than substitutes offline participation. More interesting, the mobilisation hypothesis is partly confirmed. Even though some online participation patterns resemble traditional ones, it seems as if the Internet finally is starting to mobilise younger generations. Further, traditional predictors behind political participation, efficacy and social capital seem to have less impact on online political participation. In the end, these findings are related to more overall discussions on the democratising potential of the Internet.     

The 22 July Terrorist Attacks in Norway: Impact on Public Attitudes towards Counterterrorist Authorities

Did the terrorist attacks in Norway affect citizens’ attitudes to security‐related institutions and policies? To answer this question this study pools two cross‐sectional surveys, collected shortly before and after the 2011 terrorist attacks, to determine the attacks’ effects on people's attitudes. One important finding is that general support for the institutions responsible for security increased slightly, whereas specific support for government agencies capability to prevent and cope with crises decreased markedly. A second important finding concerns the potential for politicisation of crises: On issues of security, the distance between right‐wing voters and other party voters increased after the attack. Irrespective of party attachment, Norwegians have become less satisfied with governmental policies on security‐related issues, but dissatisfaction has increased significantly more among right‐wing than among left‐wing voters. Thus, even in a country where politicians responded to the crisis with an appeal to togetherness and common values, citizens’ attitudes on security policies were politicised.     

How terrorism affects political attitudes: France in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 attacks

This study investigates what impact the terrorist attacks in Paris (2015) and Nice (2016) had on political attitudes in France. Drawing on nine cross-sectional surveys, it tests the premises of three major theories of opinion change that predict contrasting shifts in opinion among ordinary citizens according to their ideological position in the aftermath of terrorist attacks: the Reactive Liberals Hypothesis (RLH), the Terror Management Theory (TMT), and the Bayesian Updating Theory (BUT). In line with both RLH and BUT, the findings show that left-wing sympathisers shifted toward the right following the attacks. However, the results suggest that, in line with BUT, the attacks only had a significant impact on attitudes toward security, while they had no effect on attitudes toward immigration, or toward moral and socio-economic issues.     

Terrorist attacks and Europeans’ attitudes towards immigrants: An experimental approach

Over the past several years an increasing number of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam and targeting civilians have taken place in many Western democracies, calling for more research on the impact of these exogenous events on citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study examines the short-term effect of the Paris attacks of the night of 13 November 2015 on the attitudes towards European Union (EU) and non-EU immigrants across 28 EU countries. Employing Eurobarometer 84.3 survey data collected in 28 European countries between 7 and 17 November 2015, the design allows the testing of individual attitudes before and after the Paris attacks and the spillover effects of this event in all European countries. It is found that the Paris attacks had a significant negative effect on attitudes towards immigrants, especially among educated and left-wing individuals. Moreover, the negative effect was stronger in countries where the national political-ideological climate was more positive towards immigrants. These findings are explained by theorising that first emotional reactions to the attack are the results of coping mechanisms whereby individuals are confronted with disconfirmation/confirmation of their previous beliefs: individuals who experience stronger stereotype disconfirmation are the most negatively affected by the terrorist attack. Overall, the study holds important implications for understanding the short-term impact of terrorist attacks on public attitudes towards immigrants.     

After Charlie: the unravelling of the French republican response

Starting with the assault on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, the French Republic has endured a series of terrorist attacks, culminating in the massacre of civilians on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on 14 July 2016, an outrage deliberately and symbolically timed to coincide with the Bastille Day celebration. During this period, the governing and other elites in France attempted to foster a sense of national unity around key republican values as the most effective response to the threat posed by terrorism. After examining the inconsistent postures struck by the French socialist government in the months following the outrages of 2015 and 2016, Raymond’s article will analyse the contradictions of the previous administration in order to illustrate the argument that the problematic relationship between race, identity and secularism cuts across the traditional ideological cleavages of left and right. The failure of leading mainstream political figures to articulate an effective and unifying discourse in the face of the terrorist threat to France is not, however, purely a failure of communication. Raymond will address the adequacy of a blueprint for social cohesion shaped by the Third Republic and exemplified by the formal separation of church and state in 1905. He considers whether the traditional understanding of what it means to belong to the ‘one and indivisible’ republic has problematized the sense of national self-esteem and contributed to the current tension in France.     

The political economy of freedom, democracy and transnational terrorism

We conduct an empirical analysis of data relating measures of economic and political freedom to the occurrence of transnational terrorism 1996–2002. We use binary logistical regression models to predict the probablities that a country will experience transnational terrorist attacks and that a given terrorist originates in a particular country. We find that the extent of political rights and civil liberties is negatively related with the generation of transnational terrorists from a country, but where the former is also negatively related with the occurrence of transnational terrorism in a country, the latter exhibits a non-linear relationship. A number of alternative explanations are disconfirmed: transnational terrorism is unrelated to inequality, economic growth, education, poverty, etc., while a society's fractionalization has mixed importance, and the religious composition has no or little association with attracting or producing transnational terrorism. A more trade-oriented economy seems consistently to associate with smaller probabilities of a country experiencing and generating transnational terrorism.     

Nonformal Education, Political Participation, and Democracy: Findings from Senegal

The relationship between nonformal education (NFE) and democracy has not been subject to empirical examination. Given the prominence that NFE has gained in many countries, such as those in Africa, this inattention is unfortunate. Using data from a survey involving a probability sample of 1484 Senegalese citizens, this paper examines the effects of education, both formal and nonformal, on political participation among rural Senegalese. The results indicate that NFE and formal education tend to have similar effects on several political behaviors, but the effect of NFE generally appears to be stronger. NFE has a positive impact on political participation. NFE increases the likelihood that one will vote and contact officials regarding community and personal problems. In addition, NFE has a strong, positive impact on community participation.Michelle T. Kuenzi, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Pkwy, Box 455029, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5029, USA (michele.kuenzi@ccmail.nevada.edu)     

The politics of response to terror: the reshaping of community and immunity in the aftermath of 7 July 2005 London bombings

This article explores the politics of response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, by analysing UK counter-terrorism institutional campaigns in the three years following the attack. By drawing on the interpretive category of community/immunity, the semiotic analysis of counter-terrorism campaigns aims to describe their representation of the political community and citizen in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The article argues that the counter-terrorism discourse relies on two contrasting tendencies: on the one hand, the unifying force that brings people together in the name of common values; and on the other, the necessity to weaken communitarian bonds in order to allow the citizen to control and check-up on others, reporting “anything suspicious” to authorities. In these texts, the figure of the citizen surveillant clearly emerges. Surveillance activities are shaped around the representation of the terrorist event, from the image of the terrorist in normal everyday life to the actual attacks. Paradoxically this brings about a mimicry effect. The surveillance action carried out by the citizen and the imagined actions of the preparation of a terrorist attack partially overlap in the way they are described and visually represented.     

What's left after right-wing extremism? The effects on political orientation

Does radical right political violence favour or hinder public support for right-wing stances? Numerous existing studies have demonstrated that Islamic terrorism provokes a conservative shift, increases nationalism and induces negative sentiments towards immigration. However, little is known about the consequences of far-right terrorism, despite its incidence in Western societies. We leverage four waves of the British Election Study (BES) and use a quasi-experimental design to analyse individual political orientations shortly before and after terrorist attacks. We find that respondents distance themselves from the ideology associated with the perpetrator and shift away from ideological positions at the right end of the political spectrum. Furthermore, respondents are less likely to report nationalistic attitudes and immigration skepticism, core tenets of extremist right-wing political ideologies. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of the perpetrators and their driving goals are crucial factors shaping the impact of terrorism on public sentiments.     

Registrants,Voters, and Turnout Variability Across Neighborhoods

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses—well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants—suggests that ones neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate- and individual-level information about voters.     

Bioterrorism, Fear, and Public Health Reform: Matching a Policy Solution to the Wrong Window

During the 1990s, terrorist actions using biological weapons and the fear that rogue states possessed such weapons placed bioterrorism on the political agenda, a policy window widened by the September 11 attacks. Advocates for improving the U.S. public health infrastructure attempted to use this window to obtain the resources necessary for modernization. This article examines those efforts and identifies significant problems arising from a mismatch between the goals of public health policy entrepreneurs and the policy window used to address them. By defining bioterrorism as a security rather than a public health issue, policy entrepreneurs squander the opportunity to institute broad-based reforms that would improve not only the ability to manage a terrorist incident, but also meet other public health needs. The bioterrorism program proves a useful case study in how the goals of policy entrepreneurs can be displaced by attaching policy preferences to the wrong policy stream.     

Terrorist Threat,Leadership, and the Vote: Evidence from Three Experiments

From 9/11 in the U.S. to train, subway, and airport bombings elsewhere, individuals frequently must make political decisions in the shadow of terrorist attacks. To date, few studies have examined how times of terror threat influence voters’ decision-making processes. Using data generated from three experiments we show that, in times of terrorist threat (compared to good times), individuals weight leadership more heavily in the voting booth. Our results also shed light on how much weight is given to other determinants of the vote (issues and partisanship) across these two conditions.     

9/11 Myths,Islam, and American Cultural Conflict

Mythological thinking about events of mass violence is common in modern societies and this thinking frequently focuses on dynamics of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Myths about the 9/11 terrorist attacks can be found on political right and left. On the right, the United Flight 93 memorial is described as an Islamist plot designed to denigrate the victims and venerate Islamist terrorism. On the left, the 9/11 attacks are viewed as orchestrations of an imperialist American government interested in vilifying and subjugating Muslims. Both myths are easily debunked with empirical data, but the power of mythological thinking about such events is such that data-based criticism has limited power to change the minds of adherents to myth.     

Partnership and Continuous Improvement in Countering Twenty-First Century Terrorism

I will shortly be retiring as Director General of the SecurityService (M15), responsible for protecting the UK's nationalsecurity from terrorism as well as other threats. My successorwill inherit huge challenges, many of which will be shared withthe Police Service.