‘Look like the innocent flower,but be the serpent under’t’: mimicking behaviour of growth-oriented terrorist organizations |
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Authors: | Ulrich Hendel |
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Institution: | IHS Global GmbH, Frankfurt, Germany. |
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Abstract: | This paper examines the interaction between a growth-oriented terrorist organization and an uninformed government based on a two-period signalling game. Combining the signalling game and organizational growth approaches of previous contributions, this paper shows that, if a terrorist group follows a growth strategy, it has an incentive to appear weaker than it is by mimicking the behaviour of a smaller organization. Depending on its beliefs about the extent of the terrorist threat, it can be optimal for a government to spend more on second-period counter-terrorism measures if it is not attacked in the first period than if it were attacked. |
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Keywords: | Terrorism Counter-terrorism Game theory Signalling game |
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