The developmental dynamics of terrorist organizations

TL;DR

This paper uncovers that terrorist organizations tend to produce attacks more frequently as they grow and gain experience, driven by positive feedback loops, while attack severity remains unaffected by size or experience.

Contribution

It provides a robust statistical analysis and a simulation model revealing the fundamental feedback mechanisms driving terrorist attack frequency and independence of severity.

Findings

Attack frequency accelerates with size and experience.

Attack severity is independent of organization size and experience.

The dynamics are consistent across different political ideologies and time periods.

Abstract

We identify robust statistical patterns in the frequency and severity of violent attacks by terrorist organizations as they grow and age. Using group-level static and dynamic analyses of terrorist events worldwide from 1968-2008 and a simulation model of organizational dynamics, we show that the production of violent events tends to accelerate with increasing size and experience. This coupling of frequency, experience and size arises from a fundamental positive feedback loop in which attacks lead to growth which leads to increased production of new attacks. In contrast, event severity is independent of both size and experience. Thus larger, more experienced organizations are more deadly because they attack more frequently, not because their attacks are more deadly, and large events are equally likely to come from large and small organizations. These results hold across political ideologies and time, suggesting that the frequency and severity of terrorism may be constrained by fundamental processes.