IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v50y2006i6p878-898.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Terrorists versus the Government

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Siqueira

    (School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas)

  • Todd Sandler

    (School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas)

Abstract

This article focuses on the strategic interaction between a terrorist group and a government as both vie for grassroots support. When terrorists and the government act contemporaneously, the equilibrium outcome depends on the effectiveness of the government’s countermeasures and the ability of the government to curb popular support of the terrorists through public spending. In two alternative scenarios, the authors establish that leadership may improve both adversaries’ well-being while reducing terrorism. The leader changes in the two cases, with the weaker player going first to the advantage of both players. State sponsorship and franchising of terrorists augment violence as both adversaries expend more effort. Sponsors can offset some strategic limits to violence that competition for supporters offers.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Siqueira & Todd Sandler, 2006. "Terrorists versus the Government," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(6), pages 878-898, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:50:y:2006:i:6:p:878-898
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002706293469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002706293469
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002706293469?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamilton, Jonathan H. & Slutsky, Steven M., 1990. "Endogenous timing in duopoly games: Stackelberg or cournot equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 29-46, March.
    2. Lapan, Harvey E & Sandler, Todd, 1988. "To Bargain or Not to Bargain: That Is the Question," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 16-21, May.
    3. Jean-Paul Azam, 2002. "Looting and Conflict between Ethnoregional Groups," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 46(1), pages 131-153, February.
    4. Peter Hilsenrath, 2005. "Health Policy As Counter-Terrorism: Health Services And The Palestinians," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(5), pages 365-374.
    5. Kydd, Andrew & Walter, Barbara F., 2002. "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 263-296, April.
    6. B. Curtis Eaton, 2004. "The elementary economics of social dilemmas," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 37(4), pages 805-829, November.
    7. Bruno S. Frey, 2004. "Dealing with Terrorism – Stick or Carrot?," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3435.
    8. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, I: Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 1-26.
    9. Richard Kirk, 1983. "Political terrorism and the size of government: A positive institutional analysis of violent political activity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 41-52, January.
    10. B. Peter Rosendorff & Todd Sandler, 2004. "Too Much of a Good Thing?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(5), pages 657-671, October.
    11. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, II: Applications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 27-41.
    12. Enders, Walter & Sandler, Todd, 1993. "The Effectiveness of Antiterrorism Policies: A Vector-Autoregression-Intervention Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 829-844, December.
    13. Eli Berman, 2003. "Hamas, Taliban and the Jewish Underground: An Economist's View of Radical Religious Militias," NBER Working Papers 10004, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jun Zhuang & Vicki M. Bier, 2007. "Balancing Terrorism and Natural Disasters---Defensive Strategy with Endogenous Attacker Effort," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(5), pages 976-991, October.
    2. Shortland, Anja & Vothknecht, Marc, 2011. "Combating “maritime terrorism” off the coast of Somalia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(S1), pages 133-151.
    3. Jan Schnellenbach, 2006. "Appeasing nihilists? Some economic thoughts on reducing terrorist activity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 301-313, December.
    4. Attila Tasnádi, 2016. "Endogenous timing of moves in Bertrand–Edgeworth triopolies," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 317-334, December.
    5. Karen Pittel & Dirk Rübbelke, 2011. "Characteristics of Terrorism," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Huck, Steffen & Knoblauch, Vicki & Muller, Wieland, 2003. "On the profitability of collusion in location games," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 499-510, November.
    7. García Díaz, Antón & Kujal, Praveen, 1998. "List princing and pure strategy outcomes in a bertrand edgeworth duopoly," UC3M Working papers. Economics 6089, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    8. Bruno S Frey & Margit Osterloh, 2018. "Strategies to Deal with Terrorism," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 64(4), pages 698-711.
    9. Scott M. Gilpatric & Youping Li, 2021. "Endogenous Price Leadership and Product Positioning," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 58(2), pages 287-302, March.
    10. Heywood, John S. & Li, Dongyang & Ye, Guangliang, 2023. "Private provision of price excludable public goods by rivals," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 291-307.
    11. Suresh Ramakrishnan & Shamaila Butt & Melati Ahmad Anuar, 2017. "The Impact of Macroeconomic, Oil Prices and Socio-economic Factors on Exchange Rate in Pakistan: An Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Approach," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 489-499.
    12. Thierry Lafay, 2011. "A Competitive Duopoly where Information Spillovers can be Mutually Advantageous," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 77(1), pages 79-100.
    13. Peralta, Susana & Wauthy, Xavier & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2006. "Should countries control international profit shifting?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 24-37, January.
    14. Bonatti, Alessandro & Hörner, Johannes, 2017. "Learning to disagree in a game of experimentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 234-269.
    15. Dionne, G. & Doherty, N., 1991. "Adverse Selection In Insurance Markets: A Selective Survey," Cahiers de recherche 9105, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    16. Abderrahmane Ziad, 2003. "Nash Equilibria in Pure Strategies," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 311-317, July.
    17. Sylvain Baumann, 2019. "Intelligence Service for a Better Information: Application to a Terrorist Threat," Post-Print hal-02949075, HAL.
    18. Allison, Blake A. & Bagh, Adib & Lepore, Jason J., 2018. "Sufficient conditions for weak reciprocal upper semi-continuity in mixed extensions of games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 99-107.
    19. Fleckinger, Pierre & Lafay, Thierry, 2010. "Product flexibility and price competition in Hotelling's duopoly," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 61-68, July.
    20. Blázquez de Paz, Mario, 2018. "Electricity auctions in the presence of transmission constraints and transmission costs," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 605-627.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:50:y:2006:i:6:p:878-898. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.