Citation

Ryckman KC, Ryckman M. J. Glob. Secur. Stud. 2017; 2(1): 55-73.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, International Studies Association, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/jogss/ogw026

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Transnational terrorism is a complex, multinational phenomenon, and the transnational terrorism literature has increasingly turned to a dyadic research design in order to better capture these complexities. However, existing dyadic data tend to be proprietary or limited in scope, resulting in barriers for replication and generating new research. Toward that end, we develop a method to generate a dyadic transnational dataset using the publicly available Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The method is based on the premise that terror groups have a domestic agenda that is tied to a "home" state, which can be discerned based on the group's patterns of attack. Dyads can then be constructed, where one side is the terror group's home state and the other side is the target state, defined both by location of attack and the nationality of victims. To illustrate the utility of the data, the "logic of home" is applied to the question of transnational target selection. We replicate existing findings that examine the effect of troop deployments on the likelihood of transnational terrorist attacks, finding that troop deployments increase the likelihood of attacks against nationals of the deploying country. We further explore the effect of third-party support to the government side of a civil war, and find that intervention increases both the likelihood of attacks against nationals of the third-party intervener as well as attacks on the home soil of the intervening state.

Language: en