Publication Date
2014
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
R. William Ayres (Committee Member), Pramod Kantha (Committee Member), Vaughn Shannon (Committee Chair)
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Abstract
What role does foreign support play when an insurgent group adopts terrorism? Utilizing both quantitative analysis and in-depth case studies, this thesis examines the effects of foreign support among other commonly cited explanations for an insurgency's adoption of terrorism. In addition to observing the effects of foreign support on the adoption of terrorism, the effects of government regime type, insurgent group goal type, insurgent group strength, and foreign benefactor type are analyzed. After executing a multiple logistic regression analysis of 109 intrastate conflicts occurring from 1972 to 2007 and conducting detailed case studies for the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Kurds in Iraq, this thesis concludes that specific types of foreign support from non-state actors not only make insurgent groups significantly stronger but also make them more likely to adopt terrorism thus calling into question the weapon of the weak argument.
Page Count
197
Department or Program
Department of Political Science
Year Degree Awarded
2014
Copyright
Copyright 2014, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
