IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v115y2021i1p31-50_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Wane of Command: Evidence on Drone Strikes and Control within Terrorist Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • RIGTERINK, ANOUK S.

Abstract

This paper investigates how counterterrorism targeting terrorist leaders affects terrorist attacks. This effect is theoretically ambiguous and depends on whether terrorist groups are modeled as unitary actors or not. The paper exploits a natural experiment provided by strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) “hitting” and “missing” terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Results suggest that terrorist groups increase the number of attacks they commit after a drone “hit” on their leader compared with after a “miss.” This increase is statistically significant for 3 out of 6 months after a hit, when it ranges between 47.7% and 70.3%. Additional analysis of heterogenous effects across groups and leaders, and the impact of drone hits on the type of attack, terrorist group infighting, and splintering, suggest that principal-agent problems—(new) terrorist leaders struggling to control and discipline their operatives—account for these results better than alternative theoretical explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Rigterink, Anouk S., 2021. "The Wane of Command: Evidence on Drone Strikes and Control within Terrorist Organizations," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 31-50, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:31-50_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055420000908/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Georgia Papadogeorgou & Kosuke Imai & Jason Lyall & Fan Li, 2022. "Causal inference with spatio‐temporal data: Estimating the effects of airstrikes on insurgent violence in Iraq," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 84(5), pages 1969-1999, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:31-50_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.