积重难返的巴基斯坦恐怖主义

由于历史宿怨、地理环境、宗教信仰和国家政策等多方面原因,南亚地区一直是恐怖主义滋生和发展的沃土,这在巴基斯坦表现得尤为明显。“9·11”事件后,巴基斯坦成了打击恐怖主义的前沿阵地。在美国和国际社会的压力下,巴政府对恐怖主义组织采取了一系列打击行动,但效果并不明显,而且还遭到了恐怖主义的严重报复式袭击。恐怖主义在巴基斯坦早已根深蒂固,呈积重难返之势。     

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.     

Pathways into Terrorism: Understanding Entry into and Support for Terrorism in Asia

ABSTRACT

How do individuals join Islamist extremist groups? Why do individuals support such groups? What factors contribute to a decision to join? What are the pathways into Islamist extremist groups? Drawing on examples from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, the articles in this special issue address these critically important questions drawing on original fieldwork, new datasets and large scale national survey research. These articles explore the experiences and perceptions of men and women, South and Southeast Asians, living in majority Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Collectively, they illustrate the importance of social bonds&kinship ties, friendship, teacher-student ties and online relationships in creating a powerful sense of community that fosters a sense of belonging and eventual commitment. The goal of this special issue is to highlight the contributions that Asian cases can make to the often Middle Eastern and European-centric discourses on radicalization, joining and support for militancy.     

国际恐怖主义问题与反恐怖斗争合作

进入新世纪,恐怖主义乌云仍浓重地笼罩着全球。中亚、南亚、非洲不断发生的大规模人质绑架事件,世界各地频繁的爆炸、暗杀,给国际社会、无辜民众带来极大的危害。恐怖主义这个毒瘤仍在蔓延、膨胀,对世界和平与发展构成重大威胁。 面对日益猖獗的恐怖活动,国际社会一直在努力寻找打击恐怖主义的有效途径,特别     

Terrorism and Democracy: Perpetrators and Victims

Most observers believe that the 'democratic rules of the game' provide a peaceful means for resolving political conflicts. This may be true but not all groups or even single individuals in democratic societies need play by these rules. This analysis uses two data sets: one that classifies most countries of the world based on how they were ruled in the mid-1980s, and the other on the frequency with which their nationals either perpetrated or were victimized by terrorists attacks, to investigate the relationship between terrorism and democracy. The findings suggest that stable democracy and terrorism go together. An analysis of the data reveal that terrorist attacks occur most often in the world's most stable democracies, and that, further, both the perpetrators and victims of those attacks are citizens of the same democracies.     

Repression and Terrorism: A Cross-National Empirical Analysis of Types of Repression and Domestic Terrorism

While some scholars have theorized that repression reduces terrorism because it raises the costs of participating in terrorist activity by dissidents, others argue that repression stimulates terrorism by either closing off nonviolent avenues for expressing dissent or by provoking or sharpening grievances within a population. This study investigates these contradictory sets of expectations by considering whether or not different specific types of repression yield different effects on patterns of terrorism in 149 countries for the period 1981 to 2006. By assessing the impact of nine specific types of repression on domestic terrorism, the study produces some interesting findings: while, as expected, forms of repression that close off nonviolent avenues of dissent and boost group grievances increase the amount of domestic terrorism a country faces, types of repression that raise the costs of terrorist activity have no discernible suppressing effect on terrorism.     

Trade liberalization and the new regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: taking stock of recent events

In the aftermath of the regional financial crisis of 1997–98,many Asian economies have underscored the need consciously andaggressively to explore alternative liberalization paths or‘fallback positions’. This is where the ‘newregionalism’ or new regional trade agreements (RTAs) becomerelevant. This paper explores some of the primary rationalebehind, and main concerns regarding, the proliferation of bilateraland plurilateral trade pacts in the Asia-Pacific region. Italso considers the ‘dynamic time path’ of AsianRTAs. Do they facilitate or hinder multilateral trade liberalization?     

Terrorism and trust

Trust enables us to simplify and understand complicated realities and orientate ourselves in them, which we do through symbolic systems, including myth and religion. Terrorism results when those systems generate extreme distrust, especially between ethnic or religious groups. Within nation-states pre-conditions of trust include normative coherence, stability, openness and accountability. In international relations these pre-conditions are more difficult to establish. But it is still possible. The process usually includes reaction to a crisis, the creation of good personal relationships between leaders, mutual concessions, well-documented agreements with provision for verification, and opportunities for populations to get to know each other.     

Terrorism and Profiling

A key problem for counterterrorism is how large numbers of individuals can be screened most efficiently to discover terrorists. This question arises at security checkpoints of all kinds, from roadblocks to airline security counters. Some argue that certain categories of individuals, for instance, young Muslim men in the airline context, should be screened more heavily than others. Others deride this as racial profiling, and argue that any such scheme would be easily evaded. I examine a model of searching for terrorists among a population divided into categories that vary in their potential reliability or ease of recruitment as agents of terrorist attacks. The equilibria in the model feature profiling, in that different categories are searched with different intensities. Practical difficulties in implementing a rational profiling scheme are discussed.     

Terrorism Research: The Record

Looking back at the beginnings of academic research on terrorism just over 40 years ago, it is extraordinary to see that what was once a marginal subject for social science has developed into a full-fledged program of “terrorism studies.” In fact, recently a sociologist considered the subject of sufficient importance to write a doctoral dissertation and then a book on the “social construction” of the field (Stampnitzky 2013). This essay highlights some examples of the contributions scholars from different disciplines have made to understanding terrorism. There is no consensus on any general theoretical laws of terrorism (there is no equivalent of a democratic peace theory, for example), but researchers have defined key concepts and deepened explanations of cause, effect, and process.What follows identifies four interrelated areas of explanatory inquiry into terrorism that have emerged over years of research: the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy of opposition, the determinants and consequences of counterterrorism policies, how campaigns or waves of terrorism end, and how analysis of terrorism can be situated in a broader theoretical framework rather than treated as a phenomenon sui generis. Particular emphasis is placed on studies that are comparative and/or that situate the specific case of terrorism in a general theoretical perspective.     

Support for Terrorism: The Role of Beliefs in Jihad and Institutional Responses to Terrorism

ABSTRACT

Passive support for terrorism refers to expressions of sympathy for acts of terrorism and/or the justifications (ideology) used by terrorist groups to legitimise their beliefs and actions. One form of passive support is whether Muslims feel terrorists have valid grievances. Appealing to a sense of grievance is a key way that violent Islamists attempt to recruit fellow Muslims to their cause. Using survey data collected from 800 Muslims living in Australia, this paper examines factors that lead Muslims to believe that terrorists have valid grievances. Factors examined include beliefs in jihad and attitudes towards counterterrorism policing and laws. Other variables included in the analysis are social identity, age, gender, income, religious denomination (Sunni vs. Shia), religious commitment, i.e., Mosque attendance, and recent contact with police. The most significant predictor of passive support for terrorism was found to be particular beliefs in jihad. The perceived legitimacy of counterterrorism laws and trust in police were also important. Implications for countering extremist ideology and generating community cooperation in counterterrorism will be considered.     

Towards consolidating democracy: The paradoxical role of democracy groups in Thailand

Civil society is thought to contribute to consolidating democracy, but exactly how this happens is not especially well understood. This article examines the recent experiences of ‘democracy groups’ in Thailand. While acknowledging there are other factors that contribute to democratic consolidation, it finds the cumulative effect of Thailand's intermediating organizations, such as democracy groups, appears to be a redistribution of information and resources in ways that are causing changes in state‐society relations, making the country more pluralistic and contributing to consolidating democracy. Democracy groups and other civil society organizations are providing a widening circle of Thais with virtually unprecedented opportunities to participate in the policy‐making process. Yet despite their accomplishments, these groups might have greater consolidating effects if they themselves adhered more to democratic norms and procedures. Nevertheless, without democracy groups and other civil society organizations, Thailand would be less democratic than it is, although democracy is not fully consolidated yet.     

Surveying American State Police Agencies About Terrorism Threats,Terrorism Sources,and Terrorism Definitions

This study presents American state police agencies' perceptions about three significant terrorism and public safety issues. First, we asked about the threat posed by specified extremist groups nationally and to their state. We asked about the number of such groups and their supporters, and the number of activities each group participates in during a typical year in their state. We also asked about the number of criminal incidents each group commits and the number of their supporters arrested in a typical year. Second, we asked the agencies to rate the usefulness of fifteen specified terrorism sources. Third, we queried the agencies about their views of eight terrorism definitions. These data were collected by surveying the fifty state police agencies in the United States. We discovered widespread concern about the criminal activities of various extremist groups, with a particular concern about the threat of Islamic jihadists. Interestingly, although the top rated threat was Islamic jihadists, the respondents indicated that other types of groups were much more criminally active. Further, respondents indicated that various open and non-open sources were valuable terrorism sources. Finally, most respondents reacted more favorably to official terrorism definitions—especially the FBI's—as opposed to academic definitions. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our findings and we outline directions for future research.     

Bringing direct democracy back in: toward a three-dimensional measure of democracy

Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing one crucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gap that does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variation among democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is strongly anchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missing dimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, while avoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted in democratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using Latin American cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without the typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not only sound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others when testing relevant hypotheses.     

Defending democracy with international law: preventing coup attempts with democracy clauses

In recent decades many regional inter-governmental organizations have adopted agreements committing all member states to maintain democratic governments, and specifying punishments to be levied against member states that revert to authoritarianism. These treaties have a surprisingly high enforcement rate – nearly all states subject to them that have experienced governmental succession by coup have been suspended by the relevant IGO(s). However, relatively little is known about whether these treaties are deterring coups. This article offers an original theory of how these international agreements could deter coups d’état, focusing on the way that a predictably adverse international reaction complicates the incentives of potential coup participants. An analysis of the likelihood of coups for the period of 1991–2008 shows that states subject to democracy were on average less likely to experience coups, but that this finding was not statistically significant in most models. However, when restricting the analysis to democracies, middle-income states with democracy clauses were significantly less likely to experience coup attempts. Moreover, the African democracy regime appears to be particularly effective, significantly reducing the likelihood of coup attempts for middle-income states regardless of regime type.     

Terrorism and the European community: Towards 1992

This article uses ITERATE data on international terrorism 1968–2004 to test Rapoport's wave-like behavior of modern terrorism. While the interpretation encompasses a much longer period of time than can be tested empirically with readily available data, it is possible to examine the past 3–4 decades of terrorist activity for traces of the coming and going of old and new groups. The article codes the type of group (anarchists, nationalists, leftists/Marxists, and religious fundamentalists) and then examines the type of tactics employed, deaths, and targets across time. The results confirm the presence of heterogeneous, wave-like behavior that conforms to the Rapoport interpretation as new and old groups/tactics/issues cycle in and out of activity.