Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence: The Life Cycle of Birth, Growth, Transformation, and Demise

304 Pages·2008·4.192 MB·English

by  Dipak K. Gupta

Series: Political Violence
Series Editors: Paul Wilkinson and David C. Rapoport
This book series contains sober, thoughtful and authoritative academic accounts of
terrorism and political violence. Its aim is to produce a useful taxonomy of terror and
violence through comparative and historical analysis in both national and inter-
national spheres. Each book discusses origins, organizational dynamics and outcomes
of particular forms and expressions of political violence.
Aviation Terrorism and Security
Edited by Paul Wilkinson and Brian M. Jenkins
Counter-Terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom, 1922–2000
Laura K. Donohue
The Democratic Experience and Political Violence
Edited by David C. Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg
Inside Terrorist Organizations
Edited by David C. Rapoport
The Future of Terrorism
Edited by Max Taylor and John Horgan
The IRA, 1968–2000
An analysis of a secret army
J. Bowyer Bell
Millennial Violence
Past, present and future
Edited by Jeffrey Kaplan
Right-Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg
Terrorism Today
Christopher C. Harmon
Understanding Terrorism and
Political Violence
This book explains the life cycle of terrorist organizations from an innovative
theoretical perspective, combining economics with social psychology. It provides a
new approach to understanding human behavior in organized society, and then uses
this to analyze the forces shaping the life cycle of violent political movements.
Economic and rational-choice theorists assume that human beings are motivated
only by self-utility, yet terrorism is ultimately an altruistic act in the eyes of its partici-
pants. This book highlights the importance of the desire to belong to a group as a
motivating factor, and argues that all of us face an eternal trade-off between selfish-
ness and community concern. This hypothesis is explored through four key groups:
al-Qaeda, Hamas, the IRA in Northern Ireland, and the Naxalites in India. Through
this, the book analyzes the birth, growth, transformation, and demise of violent
political movements, and ends with an analysis of the conditions which determine the
outcome of the war against terrorism.
This book will be essential reading for advanced students of terrorism studies and
political science, and of great interest to students of social psychology and sociology.
Dipak K. Gupta is the Fred J. Hansen Professor of Peace Studies and the Distinguished
Professor in Political Science at San Diego State University, California. He is author
of seven books.
The Psychology of Terrorism
John Horgan
Research on Terrorism
Trends, achievements and failures
Edited by Andrew Silke
A War of Words
Political violence and public debate in Israel
Gerald Cromer
Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism
Globalization of martyrdom
Edited by Ami Pedahzur
Terrorism versus Democracy (Second Edition)
The liberal state response
Paul Wilkinson
Countering Terrorism and WMD
Creating a global counter-terrorism network
Edited by Peter Katona, Michael Intriligator and
John Sullivan
Mapping Terrorism Research
State of the art, gaps and future direction
Edited by Magnus Ranstorp
The Ideological War on Terror
World-wide strategies for counter-terrorism
Edited by Anne Aldis and Graeme P. Herd
The IRA and Armed Struggle
Rogelio Alonso
Homeland Security in the UK
Future preparedness for terrorist attack since 9/11
Paul Wilkinson
Terrorism Today (Second Edition)
Christopher C. Harmon
Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence
The life cycle of birth, growth, transformation,
and demise
Dipak K. Gupta

Understanding Terrorism and
Political Violence
The life cycle of birth, growth,
transformation, and demise
Dipak K. Gupta
First published 2008 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the US and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2008 Dipak K. Gupta
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gupta, Dipak K.
Understanding terrorism and political violence : the life cycle of birth,
growth, transformation, and demise / Dipak K. Gupta.
p. cm.—(Case series on political violence)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–415–77164–1 (hardback)—ISBN 978–0–415–77165–8
(hardback) 1. Terrorism—Social aspects. 2. Political violence—
Social aspects. I. Title.
HV6431.G856 2008
363.325—dc22
2007036617
ISBN 0-203-93027-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–77164–1 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–77165–X (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–93027–4 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77164–1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77165–8 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93027–4 (ebk)
To Andy, Anurupa, Sanjiv and Rajiv

Contents
List of figures x
List of tables xi
Foreword by Martha Crenshaw xii
Preface: “The years that try a man’s soul”: a personal
narrative xiv
Acknowledgments xx
1 Introduction 1
2 Theories of the origins of movements 11
3 Selfish altruist: modeling the mind of a terrorist 32
4 The dynamics of dissent: a theoretical perspective 64
5 Faith, nationalism, and class warfare: the birth
of a movement 102
6 Growth of a movement: accounting for rapid escalation
of violence 123
7 A marriage made in hell? Terrorism and organized crime 146
8 Demise of dissent: the endgame of terrorism 161
9 Terrorism’s trap: a winnable war? 181
Appendix A: trade-off between interests of the individual
and the collective: an expanded assumption of rationality 207
Appendix B: terrorism and organized crime: a formal model 211
Notes 215
Bibliography 242
Index 274