Terrorists and Civilian Support: The Importance of Territory

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Is territory important for terrorist groups to get civilian support? The recent actions of the Islamic State (IS) urges immediate attention to this question.While most research holds that provision of public goods by terrorist groups is the primary cause for high levels of civilian support, I argue that, terrorist groups are more interested in resource extraction rather than resource provision. These groups include or exclude civilian support based on existing resources and future resource returns and territorial control plays a crucial role in this equation. To analyze this, I compare fifteen terrorist groups using qualitative comparative analysis and show how territory, political competition, ethnicity, target selection and organizational structure combine to explain conditions that lead terrorist groups to include or exclude civilian population for support. Based on the variance in support networks of terrorist groups, counter-terrorism policies should also differ. High civilian support indicates the need to use non-military methods to decrease the appeal of terrorist groups. However, terrorist groups with more diffused and multiple support structures need more collaborative and coercive measures to intercept all the possible links to the main group.