Time Is of the Essence: Temporality and Competition as Drivers of Terrorist Credit-Taking

Despite widespread focus on the communicative function of terrorism, terrorists frequently forgo claiming responsibility for their attacks. So why don’t terrorists claim their attacks? The scholars who have attempted to answer this question have primarily focused on group- and target-based differences. I propose an alternative theory, emphasizing the importance of temporality. Intuitively, the passing of time following group entry should change the utility of verbal claims of responsibility as an emerging group cannot rely on a previously established reputation. Levels of terrorist competition over time further influence verbal credit-taking-especially when competitors share attack styles-leading to decreased credit-taking over time in terrorist monopolies relative to competitive settings. I explore these dynamics through case-studies of Canada and Ireland during the 1960–1970s. Canada poses a monopoly case, whereas the Irish case experienced extensive intra- and inter-group competition. Coding newspaper articles, I appended the Canadian Incident Database with a measure of verbal credit-taking and juxtaposed it with Domestic Terrorist Victims data. Results show the expected newcomer dynamic, backing a temporal theory, yet neither intra- nor inter-group competition showed any effect despite the most-likely nature of the cases.