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Who Wants to Talk to Terrorists?

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Abstract

Interviewing terrorists or former terrorists has become an increasingly popular research method in terrorism studies. What terrorists say can shed light on motivations, decision-making processes and operational details that without first-hand testimony could only be inferred. In this chapter, a selection of these studies is reviewed alongside a consideration of global trends in terrorism and developments in terrorism research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The RAF emerged from the student movements of the late 1960s. The group was active in Germany until at least 1992 and was only formally dissolved in 1998. According to Melzer (2009, p. 55), ‘The number of active members in the RAF during the 1970s remained small; they lived underground and operated in individual cells responsible for separate political actions. The RAF bombed US military facilities, kidnapped and assassinated influential businessmen and state representatives, robbed banks and worked with the militant wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’. A popular history of the RAF can be found in Aust (2008).

  2. 2.

    All data sourced from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) unless otherwise noted.

  3. 3.

    The first course on terrorism to be offered at an American university was developed by David Rapoport in 1970 (Rapoport 2001). Rapoport also founded one of the major journals in the field, Terrorism and Political Violence, in 1989. The journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism had been established much earlier, in 1977.

  4. 4.

    According to Delli Carpini and Williams (1987, p. 47), not one month passed between 1969 and 1980 without the major news networks devoting at least one story to the topic of international terrorism. Also see Crelinsten (1997).

  5. 5.

    According to Wilkinson (1997, p. 52), the Munich Olympics action was broadcast to a worldwide audience of more than half a billion people.

  6. 6.

    This matter has only been explored recently. See Pohl (2015, 2017). In older studies, if media attention were considered the primary payoff to terrorism, then it was implied that terrorists would select the single action designed to maximise it. However, terrorist groups do not always choose in this way and often engage in a variety of different actions. Pohl (2015, 2017) explains how such choices are consistent with a desire to maximise media attention.

  7. 7.

    The number of articles published in ‘terrorism studies’ increased from essentially 0 to around 100 per year during the 1970s. This level was maintained for much of the next 20 years before another exponential increase during the early 2000s took the number of articles per year to more than 400 (Miller and Mills 2009, p. 416).

  8. 8.

    According to Kurtulus (2011, p. 477), the ‘new terrorism’ refers to a qualitative change that took place in the nature of terrorism some time during the 1990s. The term was used, for example, by Laqueur (1998, 1999) in the late 1990s, though he had earlier used the label ‘post-modern terrorism’ in the same sense (Laqueur 1996). Also see Duyvesteyn (2004).

  9. 9.

    Rationality in economics has many different meanings but ultimately means only that action is purposeful. It does not mean that calculation always underlies choice (rather than emotion) and it does not imply that calculation is always perfect. What the orthodox model of decision-making under risk and uncertainty, the expected utility theory, does do is provide a clear benchmark for optimal choice. If the objective of an agent is to inflict harm, who could argue that the optimal, most damaging, action or combinations is not worth knowing?

  10. 10.

    Pathways to radicalisation are also studied by Horgan (2008).

  11. 11.

    People who interview criminal suspects are given special training at detecting deceit. Traditionally, this training focused on visible cues. More recently, training has focused on techniques designed to elicit cues to deception. Vrij et al. (2013) discuss these techniques and their specific application to terrorist suspects.

  12. 12.

    Ann Hansen was a member of the Canadian anarchist guerrilla group called Direct Action. The group is known for its 1982 bombing of Litton Industries, an arms component manufacturer in Toronto. Hansen served eight years in prison. Her memoir was published in 2001 (Hansen 2001).

  13. 13.

    It is also possible, for example, that the risk aversion coefficients are very high in the early stages of a terrorist group’s life cycle. As the group accumulates resources, its risk aversion starts to decline. This decreasing risk aversion is not so much a function of successes as a function of maturity and resource acquisition. This is analogous to households that initially operate at subsistence and gradually accumulate wealth (see Ogaki and Zhang 2001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Peter J. Phillips

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  1. Hong Kong Shue Yan University, North Point, Hong Kong

    Fu-Lai Tony Yu

  2. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Diana S. Kwan

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Phillips, P.J. (2019). Who Wants to Talk to Terrorists?. In: Yu, FL.T., Kwan, D.S. (eds) Contemporary Issues in International Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6462-4_5

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