What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Root Causes of Terrorism (2007), By Alan B. Kreuger. Princeton University Press: Princeton, $ 24,95.
Alan B. Krueger, economy professor at the Princeton University and adviser to the US National Counterterrorism Center, studies the effects of poverty and lack of education on terrorism in What Makes a Terrorist. The author bases his book on three lectures he gave at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2006.
Krueger’s work comes out against the conventional wisdom regarding the link between poverty and illiteracy on the one hand and terrorism on the other. Passing judgment on a general belief which addresses unsatisfactory life conditions and lack of education as the main reasons of terrorism, Krueger attempts to show that that such a causality does not exist. Those connecting underdevelopment with terrorist acts have no systematic empirical evidence, according to the author. Even if poverty and illiteracy affect hate crimes, such consequences only occur indirectly and a very weak causality is the case. The author signifies enhancing civil liberties as the most effective way of dealing with the issue. As a response to poor conditions in Northern Ireland and relatively high level of civil liberties refuting the hypothesis, Krueger chooses to rename IRA’s (Irish Republican Army)struggle as guerilla warfare rather than terrorist activities of a small group.
Quite similar to perspectives analyzing political participation from an economic point of view, Krueger regards a certain level of knowledge and income as a threshold for caring deeply and fervently about an issue. The uneducated and impoverished masses are particularly unlikely to participate in political processes, through either legitimate or illegitimate means, according to the study. Krueger appeals to public opinion polls, biographical information of Hezbollah and the existing literature supporting his main hypothesis in his first chapter. Although the biographical comparison of the deceased Hezbollah militants to the general Lebanese population can be seen as a contribution to the existing literature, the dataset seems to suffer from serious flaws. That the author compares two datasets collected by different agencies, in different times, with different goals in mind and with a highly disproportionate sample amounts yield to significant deficiencies in Krueger’s work. It seems naïve to expect valid results from the comparison of Krueger’s own data set of 126 biographies with the dataset of Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs Housing survey of 120, 000 people, in this regard. Besides, the author leaves out the high correlations of age and region of residence with terrorist attacks although giving those two main criteria, as well. Unsurprisingly, the data yield Krueger’s most provocative results: terrorists are neither poor nor poorly educated (De Mesquita 2007: 1726). Terrorists are not the people who have nothing to live for. On the contrary, terrorists are those who believe in something so strongly that they are willing to die for it, according to Krueger. Yet, Krueger touches upon an important point by stating that terrorist organizations prefer educated candidates because they are more effective in carrying out difficult assignments (Ibid: 1726).
The writer shifts from individual characteristics to economic and political conditions in the following chapter and conducts his analysis on the country level in this regard. He lists a range of socio-economic indicators, i.e. GDP per capita, civil liberties, GDP growth, population, trade, literacy rate, religion, and investigates the characteristics of the societies of those who raise the greatest number of terrorists. The American professor uses the available State Department data from 1987 to 1997 as well as extending them from 1997 to 2003 for comparing countries. That terrorism studies lack high-quality data disaffects Krueger’s work, as well. Just like the first one, the second dataset suffers from serious drawbacks and it is not very possible to consider it as an important contribution to terrorism studies, either. Beside highly varying statistics from many different sources, the validity of Krueger’s work is further undermined due to omitting Columbia as well as Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip where terrorist incidents take place the most. In consistence with the findings of the prior chapter, Krueger concludes this section by asserting the greater probability that international terrorists come from moderate-income countries than the poor ones. The study acknowledges the indirect impact of favorable economic circumstances on civil liberties and political rights but does not open space for explaining how this takes place.
The author devotes his last chapter to the question of whether terrorism has substantial consequences on economic well-being, psychology of the population and political system of the country. By giving striking statistics Krueger substantiates his view that terrorism is more a constructed fear than a rational one and pays considerable attention to the role and responsibility of media in this context. Krueger argues that terrorism does not have “that” much impact on economy if only people do not overreact. Yet he neither gives persuading numbers nor analyzes representative studies to substantiate his argument. The last chapter also touches upon the vulnerability of democratic societies against terrorist attack since public opinion carries greater significance than it does in autocratic societies.
All things considered, Krueger maintains his assumption that terrorists are not simply lashing out because they are desperately poor but instead because they are more aware of what is going around them. According to many, the study provides a valuable contribution in terms of understanding the newly emerging international terrorist such as the “prosperous” homegrown of 7/7 (Freedman 2007: 189). Yet, the study does not address to significant differences among terrorists themselves even within the same organization. To illustrate, those laying the ideology of el-Quade do not have the same socio-economic background of those blowing up in Iraq. That an upper socio-economic background yields to many positive outcomes such as increase in social capital, a better integration to the society, a more effective political participation and the like also remain to be untouched. The weight that the study pays on systematic empirical data, however, can be seen as an important contribution in terms of showing what should be kept in mind in future researches. All in all, insisting on a narrow-minded postulation and excluding the compelling data thwarts the chance of making a substantial contribution to the field.
References:
De Mesquita, E.B. (2007), What Makes a Terrorist- Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, Science, Vol. 318 (5857), 1726-1727.
Freedman, L.D. (2007), What Makes a Terrorist- Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86 (6), 189-189.
Krueger, A.B. (2007), What Makes a Terrorist- Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Younglove, A. (2007), What Makes a Terrorist- Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, Library Journal, Vol. 132 (14), 149.
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