Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T21:21:49.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Karen Rasler

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2007

Karen Rasler
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington

Extract

How many causal paths lead to suicide terrorism? Unfortunately, too many to produce precise predictions about when and where suicide terrorism is likely to occur. Nonetheless, Mia Bloom's, Diego Gambetta's, and Robert Pape's books do an excellent job of addressing this phenomenon with sophisticated theories and empirical findings. While Pape presents a coherent, single theoretical framework for explaining suicide terrorism, Bloom and the contributors in Gambetta's book focus on a range of loosely interconnected causal explanations across individual, organizational, and societal levels. These works also have a rich historical and comparative focus across time and cases. Even so, the fundamental question is how they advance our knowledge about suicide terrorism.Karen Rasler is professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Type
REVIEW SYMPOSIUM: UNDERSTANDING SUICIDE TERROR
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berman, Eli, and David D. Laitin. 2004. “Rational Martyrs: Evidence from Data on Suicide Attacks.” Paper presented at the Conference on Suicide Bombing, Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, September 2003.
Byman, Daniel. 2006. “Do Targeted Killings Work?” Foreign Affairs 85 (2): 95111.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Martha. 1990. “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice.” In Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, ed. Walter Reich. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 724.
Maoz, Zeev. 2004. “The Unlimited Use of the Limited Use of Force: Israel and Low-Intensity Warfare, 1949–2004.” Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March.
Oliver, Pamela E., and Daniel J. Myers. 2003. “The Coevolution of Social Movements.” Mobilization: An International Journal 8 (1): 126.Google Scholar
White, Robert W. 1989. “From Peaceful Protest to Guerrilla War: Micromobilization of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.” American Journal of Sociology 94 (6): 12771302.Google Scholar
Yom, Sean L., and Basel Saleh. 2004. “Palestinian Violence and the Second Intifada: Explaining Suicide Attacks.” Presented at the 19th Middle East History and Theory Conference, University of Chicago, Chicago.