The Outbidding Model of Terrorist Group Politics: Violent Intergroup Dynamics and Domestic Terrorist Campaigns
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Outbidding is a recent addition to the discussion of terrorist group behavior that relates to intergroup dynamics where two or more terrorist groups seek to expand their market share in the political marketplace to capture greater resources that will enhance a group’s security and capability. Outbidding enriches the discussion of terrorist group behavior by noting separate inputs into the strategic calculus. Terrorists seek to coerce and intimidate target states and complete against challenger groups for leadership of the cause they fight for. To date outbidding has been analyzed to include a variety of outcomes: lethality, substitution/competition, and the decision to use violence versus alternative means of political engagement. Results from a series of studies suggest that intergroup dynamics are a significant factor in explaining terrorist group behavior. However, the analysis is, to date, incomplete. A vast majority of the work on outbidding is derived from a narrow series of case studies based on the Palestinian National Movement, particularly the dynamics between Fatah and Hamas. Few large-n studies exist on various hypotheses related to outbidding. A second weakness in the outbidding research program is on the dynamics of terrorist groups and nonviolent political groups that may serve as compliments or competitors to the terrorist cause. This study attempts to address these gaps in the outbidding literature by using a cross-national/cross-regional research design on domestic, transnational, and combined events data analyze outbidding and the number of terrorist events, and casualty rates, while controlling for competitor terrorist groups and nonviolent political groups.
