Characteristics of Terrorism [unknown]

Karen Pittel, Dirk Rübbelke
Handbook on the Economics of Conflict   unpublished
Individual terrorist are frequently behaving seemingly absurd, e.g. by carrying out suicide operations, while activities of the terrorist organisations as a whole often seem to be conducted in a very effective way. These facts caused many researchers to regard the leaders representing the organisations like rational entities, while the followers are supposed to be just obeying and, hence, to be irrational. In this paper we offer a different approach which postulates rationality of all involved
more » ... gents. We demonstrate how these agents' behaviour could be modelled, while taking into account options of the terrorist leaders to influence their followers. From our model approaches to counter terrorism on both the leadership as well as the follower level can be derived.
doi:10.4337/9780857930347.00012 fatcat:pru2zfiomvdnvlvlqbwltwftta