Terrorist Organization Typologies and the Probability of a Boomerang Effect

Since the 1970s, many researchers have proposed typologies to sort the phenomenon of terror into different categories and to divide terror organizations into groups based on various characteristics of their activities. These typologies were designed to facilitate understanding of the phenomenon of terror and of terror organizations’ processes, structures and operative methods. They relied on a variety of diagnostic criteria such as: motives for using terror, targets of the attacks, terrorists’ demands, organizational structure; arenas of operation; and more. This article surveys major typologies of terror, notes the differences between them, presents a model to combine the different classifications of the typologies into a single typology, and proposes a new typology that sorts terror organizations by the variables that limit their activities. The proposed typology makes it possible to analyze terror organizations’ behavior and even to forecast their reactions to a situation in which they are attacked by the enemy state—the boomerang effect.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

The Discourse of Terror Threats: Assessing Online Written Threats by Nigerian Terrorist Groups

Online threats by terrorist groups are viewed as a special type of discourse that sends menacing explicit messages, expressing not only an intention to cause a direct physical harm to the threatened, but also to show a commitment to destroy public property or cause a change of system or government. This study applies critical discourse analysis with some insights from pragmatics to analyze the discourse-pragmatic contents of terror threats by two terrorist groups in Nigeria—Boko Haram and Ansaru. Explicit and implied threats are examined from seven online publications by these groups written between 2009 and 2012. This study shows that terror threats by Nigerian terrorist groups are intertextually and ideologically related to threats associated with Al Qaeda and global jihad, which also goes further to establish their strong link and influence with other terror groups around the world. The findings also show that the structure of terror threats is significantly different from the conventional formula for verbal threats.     

Hizbullah Terrorism Finance: Fund-Raising and Money-Laundering

Hizbullah, which has been designated a terrorist entity in several international jurisdictions, depends upon a substantial mobilization of financial resources to support its complex, multi-faceted organizational apparatus, its domestic activities in Lebanon, and its far-reaching transnational operations. This study surveys Hizbullah's resourcing requirements, and examines the role of military assistance from Iran and Syria along with Hizbullah's own reliance on front organizations, clandestine networks, business enterprises, propaganda media, and local exactions to generate funding for operational activities. Particular attention is directed at the diversion of charitable contributions, the exploitation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), involvement in criminal activities and contraband trade, and the money laundering mechanisms utilized to transfer funds to where they are required. It also reviews efforts by international authorities to staunch the flow of financial resources to terror groups, activities and operations, including their effect on Hizbullah terrorism finance.     

How local governments prioritize multiple conflicting goals: Beyond the sole-goal perspective

Understanding how public organizations prioritize goals is crucial in studying goal-setting in the public sector. However, the extant literature has mostly adopted a sole-goal perspective and neglected the influences of the interplay among multiple goals. This article extends the literature by going beyond the sole-goal perspective and adopting a multigoal perspective to further explore the complexities in public organizations' goal prioritization when facing multiple conflicting goals. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of performance information use and interorganizational interactions, the main arguments of this study are twofold. First, an organization's prioritization of a particular goal will be positively associated with the performance gap in its conflicting goal. Second, organizations tend to adopt a differentiation strategy in the prioritization of multiple conflicting goals. Empirical findings based on the investigation of Chinese city-level governments' prioritization of environmental goals when confronting conflict between environmental protection and economic development goals support our arguments.     

Preventive veto and obstructive veto: the imposition of public policy by organizations on the margins of government

This article argues that powerful organizations at the margins of government (i. e,, contractors, franchisers, quangos, state-owned corporations, etc.) which provide vital public services are able to impose public policy on the electorate and elected officials in democratic countries. These organizations' enormous resources, including not only their tangible assets, but also freedom from accountability and dependent clientele, constitute both a source of power and vital vested interests. Illustrating with the example of the Kupat Holim Sick Fund of Israel, it shows how when these interests are significantly jeopardized, the organizations impose veto power: a preventive veto at the policy making stage or an obstructive veto at the policy implementation stage. Both types of veto enable them to appropriate the major instruments of policy making - allocation, regulation, and restructuring - from elected government. This ability undermines the traditional relationship between the electorate and elected and raises questions about the risks to democracy inherent in the proliferation of such bodies on the margins of government.     

It Comes with the Territory: Why States Negotiate with Ethno-Political Organizations

Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organization with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade, and the international community is more likely to formally recognize any facts on the ground as a new status quo. Our analysis of 118 organizations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1980–2004 reveals that territorial control is the most important determinant of intrastate negotiation. In regards to existing scholarship, this suggests that a certain type of successful violence works—not all violence and not only nonviolence—while certain types of strong organizations—those that control territory—are more likely to reach negotiations with the state than weak ones.     

Service-Seeking Behavior,Perceptions of Armed Actors,and Preferences Regarding Governance: Evidence from the Palestinian Territories

Armed non-state actors, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, are visibly engaged in providing social welfare in addition to participating in violence. A number of scholars have suggested that there is a relationship between service provision by terrorist organizations and support from service recipients, and have indicated that terrorist organizations use service provision strategically for this purpose. However, few studies have examined the experiences and opinions of service recipients themselves to understand if services do indeed influence populations' political loyalties and opinions regarding violent activities. Using data from more than 1,000 low to moderate income individuals in Palestine, this study seeks to understand if and how receiving services from a specific organization engenders loyalty to the organization, passive acceptance and/or favorable approval of the organizations' violent activities, and the likelihood of participation in the organization's violent activities. This paper explores if and how provision of aid and “governance” services by armed non-state actors is correlated with various aspects of individuals' experiences of conflict, such as their opinions about the use of violence and various strategies for attaining peace, their fellow community members' likelihood to join armed groups and engage in fighting, and their preferences regarding state structure and legal system.     

ORGANIZATIONAL PATHWAYS TO COMPLIANT REFORM IMPLEMENTATION: EVIDENCE FROM MEXICAN CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

A technocratic pathway to public management reform stresses the need for committing sizeable resources to reform implementation. Building on an institutional framework, we argue that there are alternative pathways to compliant implementation for government agencies with limited resources. Our comparative study of 55 Mexican government agencies that were the object of the 2003 Civil Service Reform Act reveals the co‐occurrence of both technocratic and institutional pathways to compliant implementation. The common denominator across pathways in organizations with limited resources was the absence of strong oppositional norms (patronage) and the presence of robust interpersonal trust. We conclude that the role played by available resources in compliant reform implementation is far from straightforward, and depends on different combinations of public organizations' endogenous characteristics.     

The Effect of Female Suicide Attacks on Foreign Media Framing of Conflicts: The Case of the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict

The study examines the effect of female suicide attacks on foreign media framing of conflicts. Examining the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, 2,731 articles were sampled that covered terrorist events (American, British, and Indian press); 625 appeared in the week following a female's suicide attack, 97 reported an attack by a female perpetrator. The findings suggest that foreign media discourse around female suicide bombers promotes more messages about the society within which the terrorists are embedded. Since the coverage of female terrorists tends to provide more detailed information about the perpetrator, it focuses more on the terror organizations’ side of the conflict's story.     

The Emergence of Female Suicide Terrorists

Female suicide terrorists do not differ significantly from their male counterparts in terms of individual motivations. Although societal oppression may play a minor role in their self-recruitment to terror organizations women do not bomb themselves primarily to drive a feminist cause. Instead they act out of motivations inside conflict zones of trauma, revenge, nationalism, expression of community outrage and in non-conflict zones feelings of alienation, marginalization, negative self-identity, and a desire to act on behalf of those inside conflict zones. Groups find it to their advantage to use female bombers as they receive more media attention, increased sympathy for the terrorist cause, are able to pass security measures more easily than men, and are more dispensable because they are rarely in leadership positions.     

German Leftist Terrorism and Israel: Ethno-Nationalist,Religious-Fundamentalist,or Social-Revolutionary?

The relationship of the three leftist terrorist organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel can be summarized, in somewhat abbreviated fashion, as follows: All three groups, the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion; RAF), June 2 Movement (Bewegung 2. Juni), and Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen), and the milieu from which they emerged in West Berlin, Munich, Heidelberg, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, hated America, Americans, Israel, and Jews. They participated in the international terror war against Israel and did not shy away from attacks on Jews and Jewish facilities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The three organizations mentioned, for all their differences, are, to be reckoned among the organizations coming out of leftist traditions that, like the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), after the end of the Shoah and the Second World War, and in the name of a supposed struggle against fascism, conducted antisemitic propaganda, supported the war of terror against Israel, and publicly justified and supported those groups and institutions working in the same direction.     

Electoral breakthroughs in Croatia and Serbia: Women's organizing and international assistance

This article investigates the role of women's organizations and activists in the electoral breakthroughs in Serbia and Croatia in 2000. When, how, and to what effect, it asks, did women organize during transformational moments to promote their goals of political liberalization and gender equality? I argue that political opportunities—shaped by the domestic constellation of forces and international assistance programs—are essential to explaining political success. I identify what I call the insider/inclusionary strategy that characterizes women's organizing in Croatia and the outsider/oppositional strategy that characterizes women's organizing in Serbia. These strategies resulted in different immediate outcomes for women's political equality in the electoral breakthroughs in Croatia and Serbia.     

公共外交与中美软实力战略

全球化的发展和信息化的进程带来了国际政治权力资源的变化,文化、科技、知识和信息等软实力资源在国际关系中的地位日益凸显。这不仅催生了软实力理论的产生和发展,而且也影响了国家外交形式并正改变着外交的内容,由此公共外交在国际舞台上扮演着越来越重要的角色。软实力成为理解国际关系变化和外交政策的一个新的理论视角,理所当然地成为了公共外交的理论支撑,而公共外交本身也是软实力建设的重要内容和战略路径。中美软实力战略的差异导致了双方对公共外交认知的差异。本文在比较中美软实力战略的视角下,从公共外交的主体、受体、传播内容以及传播媒介等方面来分析美国公共外交的特点,同时从这四个方面来论述中国公共外交体系的构建。     

Organizational commitment in public servants through civic engagement

The public service motivation (PSM) theory has emphasized the distinctive motivational character of public employees in serving public institutions. However, scarce research has explored whether public service motivation extrapolates to civic engagement as another way to participate in public affairs. We contend that public employees' stronger sense of public interest expands toward higher engagement levels in social, economic, political, and civic organizations. Using data from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey from 2017 to 2020 in 77 countries—this study compares the degree of civic engagement of public servants with general citizens' level of engagement. Results across all world regions, except Africa, support the hypotheses that public servants are more willing to participate in civic organizations. However, public employees' civic engagement is contingent on organizational type (modern vs. traditional) and bureaucratic rank (top- vs. street-level), for street-level bureaucrats participate more in traditional but not modern organizations.     

What Makes a Key Player in Interorganizational Social Policy Networks? The Case of Uruguay

ABSTRACT

Networks of organizations involved in public policy implementation require strong interaction, concerted action and high degrees of collaboration to be effective. However, little is known about how different types of organizations involved in implementation of multi-sectoral social policies interact in these networks. In this article the relationship between organizational characteristics and network position is explored, as well as how the intensity of collaborations can also determine organizations’ involvement in networks. The nature of funding (public/private) and the remit of activity of organizations are found to determine their influence and importance in social policy networks. Furthermore, the network position of the organizations also depends on the level of intensity of their interactions. These results can guide public administrators when developing and promoting networks to involve a particular type of actor and also policymakers as to which types of ties are more aligned with the implementation of a particular policy.     

The Imagined Globe: Remapping the World Through Public Diplomacy at the Asia Society

Debates about public diplomacy have recently turned to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in what had been primarily a conversation about state-to-state affairs. We contribute to this conversation through an in-depth analysis of the Asia Society. Founded by John D. Rockefeller III in 1956, the Asia Society was established to educate Americans about Asia at a time when there was much less contact between the USA and Asia. Since then, the institution has undergone several reinventions, each contributing to and reflecting changing understandings of Asia and its relationship to the USA. We track the kinds of artwork the Asia Society collects and puts on display, the range of countries it categorizes as Asian, and the goals and content of its programming to reveal these shifts in scale and focus and demonstrate how they mirror and drive forward shifts in US-Asian relations. We argue that understanding how cultural institutions contribute to changing geographic imaginaries and geopolitics is an important, often overlooked aspect of public diplomacy. They are both a catalyst and reflection of changing political economic dynamics that, in turn, shape how citizens imagine their world and their nation’s place within it.

     

Rallying or Criticizing? Media Coverage of Authorities' Reaction to Terror Attacks Targeting Sporting Events

The reaction of authorities to terror attacks or threats has the potential to attract both support and criticism. The current study aims to examine the international media's discourse surrounding authorities' reaction to sporting events that have suffered from terror attacks or terror threats. A comparison is made between events that are canceled and events that take place as planned despite the attack or threat. Our findings indicate no significant differences between the coverage of events that are canceled and those that continue as planned. The evidence actually exhibits greater levels of support rather than criticism of authorities in international media coverage.     

Are transformational and transactional types of leadership compatible? A two‐wave study of employee motivation

Transformational and transactional leadership strategies have become prominent in public administration research, but it is unclear whether they are compatible or whether they could undermine each other. We examine the combined and interactive effects of transformational and three types of transactional leadership (contingent verbal rewards, material rewards, and sanctions) on employee work motivation, conceptualized as work engagement and intrinsic motivation. Panel analyses using repeated measures of 385 leaders and 3,797 employees show that transformational leadership and contingent verbal rewards increased employee motivation. However, simultaneous use of contingent material rewards undermined the benefits of transformational leadership. Thus, the motivational potential of service‐ or community‐oriented visions was undercut when leaders also appealed to extrinsic material motives. This could help explain why financial incentives do not always have the expected benefits in public organizations. We therefore argue that research and practice should pay more attention to how different leadership strategies work in combination.     

Discourses of war,geographies of abjection: reading contemporary American ideologies of terror

This article critically details the strategies and ideologies that inform three key post-9/11 volumes on the politics of terror, war making and national security in the USA. These texts, by renowned American ‘masters of statecraft’ Robert Kaplan, Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Ledeen, encourage the USA's political and military leadership to embrace terror and violence and to be continuously at war against alleged American enemies. The article argues that these writings are representative of what French post-structuralist and gender scholar Julia Kristeva has called abjection. Indeed, these literatures require their readers to be one with hatred and destruction, and to violently reject anything that appears to be un-American. Their ideologies—which have been immensely influential in post-9/11 American national security circles—aim to prepare and condition American citizens for years of ongoing violence, war and possibly terror. They encourage hatred towards enemies that may not even have been named yet. By openly propagating these kinds of discourse, these scholars' texts render the prospect for peace (in Iraq, the Middle-East and everywhere else) in the 21st century ever more difficult to achieve.