How Terrorist Organizations Survive: Cooperation and Competition in Terrorist Group Networks

Why do some terrorist groups last much longer than others? This dissertation is among a small but growing number of studies to apply social networks analysis to the study of terrorism, and addresses an outcome of interest that is important but under analyzed. Terrorist group survival is puzzling because it is not explained by the conditions that encourage terrorism generally. Much of the literature has focused on terrorist attacks as an outcome of interest, ignoring the group context in which most incidents occur. Organizational and social network research suggests that group dynamics have important effects on outcomes, but connections between these studies and terrorism are underdeveloped. The dissertation presents an organizational-network model of terrorist group survival. Organizational aspects are the base of the model, but network attributes are a greater innovation, as this research offers the first explanation of terrorist group longevity to incorporate network attributes. The argument suggests the importance of direct ties between terrorist groups – cooperative and adversarial. It also argues for a role of interorganizational relations more broadly, in terms of indirect competition and eigenvector centrality. Finally, I incorporate the state into the explanation, emphasizing how state attributes condition intergroup relations. Hypotheses are evaluated on a newly-extended global dataset of terrorist group networks 1987-2005. Case studies of terrorist groups in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Pakistan illustrate how causal mechanisms often function as argued