Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

@article{Ashworth2008DesignIA,
  title={Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism},
  author={Scott Ashworth and Joshua D. Clinton and Adam Meirowitz and Kristopher W Ramsay},
  journal={American Political Science Review},
  year={2008},
  volume={102},
  pages={269 - 273}
}
In “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Robert Pape (2003) presents an analysis of his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial occupation and religious extremism affect the decision of terrorist groups to use suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions because he “samples on the dependent variable.”—The data only contain cases in which suicide terror is used. We construct bounds (Manski, 1995) on the… Expand
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69 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
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Methods Citations
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Results Citations
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69 Citations

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The logic of suicide terrorism: does regime type affect the choice of targets?
ABSTRACT Pape [2005. Dying to win: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. New York: Random House] famously argued that suicide terrorism is specifically designed to coerce democracies. However,… Expand
Methodological Issues in Studying Suicide Terrorism
TLDR
Authors who study suicide terrorism and other forms of terrorism should be much more cautious about their "findings", claims, and policy recommendations which are potentially based on invalid inferences. Expand
Methods and Findings in the Study of Suicide Terrorism
  • R. Pape
  • Psychology
  • American Political Science Review
  • 2008
Scott Ashworth, Joshua Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher Ramsay (2008) allege that I have committed the sin of sampling on the dependent variable by considering only the universe of suicide… Expand
Name Your Price: Economic Compensation and Suicide Terrorism
Suicide terrorism remains a difficult action to rationally explain. Scholars often rely on ideological or religious motivations to explain these seemingly irrational actions. While it seems clear… Expand
Methodological Issues in Studying Suicide Terrorism
Research on suicide terrorism is often plagued by methodological problems such as selection bias and selection effects, use of anecdotal evidence that can be contradicted with competing anecdotal… Expand
Causes & Explanations of Suicide Terrorism: A Systematic Review
The frequency of suicide terrorist attacks has increased dramatically since the year 2000, creating a renewed interest in this area of study, as well as an increase in the importance of understanding… Expand
Governing the suicide bomber: reading terrorism studies as governmentality
This article engages with the suicide bomber as he or she appears in the terrorism studies literature. In contrast to sensationalised narratives of the suicide bomber as pathological or fanatical,… Expand
Promise and Pitfalls of Terrorism Research
Using a database of recent articles published in prominent political science journals, we show the rapid increase in terrorism research. Given this increased awareness and attention, we identify… Expand
The Rise and Spread of Suicide Bombing
This article reviews the existing literature, mostly from political science, on suicide bombing. A prominent weapon in the toolkit of violent nonstate actors for a generation, suicide bombing… Expand
Why do Terrorists Claim Credit?
Terrorism is commonly considered a coercive political strategy employed to manipulate a broader audience, enraptured by the horror of the terrorist’s dramatic acts of violence. However, if generating… Expand
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References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 18 REFERENCES
Methods and Findings in the Study of Suicide Terrorism
  • R. Pape
  • Psychology
  • American Political Science Review
  • 2008
Scott Ashworth, Joshua Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher Ramsay (2008) allege that I have committed the sin of sampling on the dependent variable by considering only the universe of suicide… Expand
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
  • R. Pape
  • Sociology
  • American Political Science Review
  • 2003
Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but the most common explanations do not help us understand why. Religious fanaticism does not explain why the world leader in suicide terrorism is the… Expand
Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Robert Pape thoroughly examines the misperceptions about and motivations behind suicide terrorism in his book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. He uses empirical data and a… Expand
Does Democracy Matter?
This article conducts quantitative tests on the relationship between regime type and suicide terrorism for 1980 to 2003. We present the recently popularized argument that democracies are more likely… Expand
Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror
AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsChapter 1. Introduction: The Historical Antecedents of TerrorChapter 2. Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share and OutbiddingChapter 3. Ethnic Conflict,… Expand
Explaining Rare Events in International Relations
TLDR
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It is shown that more efficient sampling designs exist for making valid inferences, such as sampling all available events and a tiny fraction of nonevents, which enables scholars to save as much as 99% of their (nonfixed) data collection costs or to collect much more meaningful explanatory variables. Expand
How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics
This article demonstrates how the selection of cases for study on the basis of outcomes on the dependent variable biases conclusions. It first lays out the logic of explanation and shows how it is… Expand
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While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have… Expand
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