Terrorism, Wealth, and Delegation

Abstract

I develop a model in which a terrorist organization delegates tasks to recruits. The organization wants to assign sensitive tasks to the most reliable recruits but cannot perfectly identify commitment to the cause. In equilibrium, the organization interprets the desirability of a recruit’s opportunities in the civilian sector as a credible signal. When the recruit has attractive options available, the organization infers his commitment and gives him a sensitive task; when it is low, the organization conservatively assigns him a non-sensitive task. I then extend the model to allow for a third-party to endogenously improve economic conditions among the civilian population. Despite raising the opportunity cost of terrorism, such subsidies can increase violence because they help the organization identify committed types. ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh. (williamspaniel@gmail.com, http://williamspaniel.com). I thank Mia Bloom, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Martha Crenshaw, Mark Fey, Ben Graham, Connor Huff, Bethany Lacina, Alex Lee, Melia Pfannenstiel, Jack Paine, Branislav Slantchev, Andy Summer, and the participants of the 2016 FMIR conference for their comments. Compared to other types of political violence producers, terrorists have considerable autonomy over day-to-day operations (Shapiro and Siegel 2007; Shapiro 2013). For individuals selected to commit attacks, frequent communication with other agents risks exposing the operation or the network. Although operatives may receive orders from their commanders, they have substantial control over how to carry out those tasks. Lazy or sloppy execution can break an organization’s back. Similarly, terrorist organizations must fear defection. Whereas rebel groups can persist after losing a few comrades, a single defector can force the entire terrorist organization to restructure, change drop points, alter existing attack plans, and remain in stasis until the leaked information ceases to be useful. Consequently, in searching for the ideal recruit, organizations need to find individuals who will not defect at the first bribe offered. Generalizing, because terrorist organizations face monitoring issues (Chai 1993, 103), they have great incentive to separate reliable recruits from security risks. This is no simple task. Organizations may want to delegate tasks to ideologically extreme individuals. However, ideology is an inherently internal attribute, forcing organizations to instead select on observable characteristics. Consider forgone economic opportunities, for example. Only the most radical individuals would sacrifice a wealthy lifestyle to join a terrorist cause. In contrast, giving up a life of poverty sends little useful information to the organization. Scholars have noted that groups pay poverty wages (Bahney et al 2013), perhaps to discourage less motivated individuals from joining, but the literature has yet to fully address the ramifications of such a signaling mechanism. To better understand the relationship between wealth and terrorism, I develop a model in which organizations delegate sensitive and non-sensitive tasks to recruits, while a third-party attempts to pacify citizens with economic aid. If individuals join the organization, they generally prefer sensitive tasks. In contrast, although the organization believes that commitment to the cause is not critical for non-sensitive tasks, it suffers if a recruit assigned a sensitive task exerts lackluster effort. Thus, the game In 2013, Said Ali al-Shihri, a deputy leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, stopped using standard security measures for phone calls. Correspondingly, American intelligence began tracking him. A drone strike killed him later that year, creating further vulnerability in the organization’s bureaucratic structure. Berman (2009, 14) argues that the devastating consequences of defection restrict the number of functioning terrorist groups to around 40 despite the relatively low economic barriers of entry.