Clark McCauley - Terrorism Research and Public Policy

Is terrorism the work of crazies and misfits? Recent research has turned away from this idea and focuses instead on understanding how normal people-perhaps especially idealistic people can become capable of terrorist acts. This book includes several contributions to the new look in terrorism research, including a history of terrorism that reaches back two thousand years, an examination of the life-cycle of terrorist groups that have come and gone since World War II, and a new theory of the stages by which political protest becomes political violence and terrorism.

Is terrorism a research category or a political statement? Many in traditional academic disciplines believe that terrorism is a pejorative label that does not identify any coherent set of behaviors. From this point of view, terrorism research makes no more sense than the now-discredited studies of witchcraft. This book puts the critique into print for the first time, together with recent terrorism research that offers at least the beginnings of an answer to the critique.

How is terrorism research communicated to policy makers who have to deal with terrorist threats? Poorly and with considerable difficulty, according to the contributors to this book, and the reasons for the failures of communication are addressed both by those who would have closer relations with government and those who would keep government at a distance. Conferences and books about terrorism research have been numerous, but this book is unusual in giving explicit consideration to the problems of communicating and applying the results of such research.

Clark McCauley is Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. He has chaired Harry Guggenheim Foundation conferences on violence and his previously published research concentrates on the psychology of terrorist groups and individuals.

Edited By

First published 1991 in Great Britain by

FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED

2 Park Square, Milton Park,

Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and in the United States by

FRANK CASS

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New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

Copyright 1991 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Terrorism research and public policy.
1. Terrorism I. McCauley, Clark II. Series
322.42

ISBN 0-7146-3429-8

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Terrorism research and public policy / edited by Clark McCauley.
p. cm.
This group of studies first appears in a special issue terrorism and public policy in Terrorism and political violence, vol. 3, no. 1 T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-3429-8
1. TerrorismPsychological aspects. 2. TerroristsPsychology. 3. TerrorismGovernment policy. I. McCauley, Clark.
HV6431.T495 1991
36345dc2091-12424

CIP

This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on Terrorism Research and Public Policy in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Spring 1991) published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited.

Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint

but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Clark McCauley is a social psychologist whose research interests include stereotyping and group dynamics. He is Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010.

Everett L. Wheeler , an ancient historian specializing in Graeco-Roman military affairs and the history of military theory, is author of Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (1988) and translator with W. J. Renfore of Hans Delbrck, History of the Art of War , Vols. IIIV (19801985). He is currently Scholar in Residence at Duke University, Durham, NC 27706.

Joseba Zulaika teaches Anthropology in the Basque Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has written on fishermen, hunters and soldiers. His most recent ethnographic study is Basque Violence: Metaphor and Sacrament (1988). He is currently completing an essay on terrorism as ritual warfare.

Ehud Sprinzak teaches Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is presently a Visiting Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of Illegalism in Israel Society, The Ascendence of the Israeli Radical Right , and numerous other monographs and essays on political extremism, violence and terrorism.

Martha Crenshaw is Professor of Government at Wesley an University, Middletown, Connecticut 06457.

Ariel Merari is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, and Director of the Political Violence Research Project.

Gustavo Gorriti is a journalist and the author of Sendero: Historia de la guerra milenaria en el Peru (Lima, Peru: Apoyo ASA, 1990), the first of a three-volume series about the Shining Path insurrection. He lives in Lima, where hs is now investigating the impact of the Sendero war and the drug trade on indigenous Indian groups in Peru. An abbreviated English version of his three volumes will be published by Princeton University Press.

Raphael S. Ezekiel , Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Michigan, holds a Berkeley doctorate and has worked for some years under grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York in field-based studies of racist extremists. His in-depth interviews and field observations will be incorporated in a forthcoming book Hitlers Stepchildren . His previous book, Voices from the Corner , examined similar in-depth research among poor Blacks in Detroit.

Jerrold M. Post , MD is Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychology and International Affairs at The George Washington University. He founded and directed the US governments Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. Research interests include: the psychology of leadership and leader-follower relations, crisis decision-making, and the psychology of terrorism. The Captive King (co-authored by R. Robins), a study of the effects of illness and disability on leadership, will be published by Yale University Press.

Clark McCauley

There have been in recent years a number of conferences, national and international, to examine the problems governments face in dealing with terrorism. Such conferences usually bring together the relatively small number of those who study terrorist groups, who present their most recent studies of terrorist behavior and debate the implications of their research in relation to potential responses to terrorism. The seminar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 12 to 16 October 1987, was notably different in going beyond discussion of research to focus on the problems and prospects of putting research on terrorism to work in the formation of public policy. The seminar brought together an international group of investigators who, after three days of discussion, were joined by representatives of three US government agencies with operational responsibilities for combatting terrorism: Larry Ropka from the Defense Department, David Long from the State Department, and Richard Marquize from the FBI. The result was a very lively treatment of both research issues and the nature of the relation between terrorism researchers and policy-makers who might profit from their work.