UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Assessing The Global War On Terror: Measuring The Impact Of US Foreign Terrorist Organization Designation On Salafi Jihadist Group Behavior(2023) Sturm, Amy Buenning; Gallagher, Nancy; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study evaluates the impact of foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation, a core US counterterrorism tool that unlocks legal, financial, and administrative penalties for terrorist groups, against Salafi jihadist terrorist organizations. Using publicly available data from 2001 to 2018, this research takes a quantitative and qualitative mixed methods approach to evaluate if FTO designation of Salafi jihadist terrorist groups alters their behavior by reducing terrorist membership or changing their attack patterns and lethality. The quantitative portion examines the impact of designation across three primary dependent variable behavior categories: group and membership size; attacks and lethality; and targeting. The qualitative portion looks at the range of possible best to worst case behavior outcomes for groups after designation and seeks to determine which, if any, designation-associated activities drove a reduction in violence. In this study FTO designation did not advance US policy objectives of reducing terrorist group and membership size, decreasing the number and lethality of attacks, or hardening targets against Salafi jihadist attack. Post-designation Salafi jihadist areas of operations experienced overall growth in the number of groups and membership. FTO designation reverses some pre-designation trends in rising attack frequency and lethality, but the results are not statistically significant. Moreover, designation does not significantly impact group targets or attack type. The qualitative case studies use US government reported data on designation-associated activities alongside captured media to explain variance in group outcomes post-designation. The case studies reveal that a terrorist group’s international versus national presence prior to designation better explains variation in outcomes than designation-associated activities. Groups able to flex across national boundaries were seemingly more resilient to CT pressure. The most international group was the most unaffected by designation, while the most nationally focused group was the most impacted. While FTO designation was not causally linked to the desired Salafi jihadist behavioral outcomes, the directional shift in some groups attack frequency and lethality shortly following designation suggest designation’s impact warrants further study, including gathering improved official data and yearly metrics on designation-associated effects. As the US reduces its CT footprint, FTO designation and associated metrics can help guide future operations to target Salafi jihadist groups more efficiently, informing future US government CT efforts.Item Remaining Vigilant Against Domestic Terrorism: Making Meaning of Counterterrorism in a National Awareness Campaign(2011) Campbell, Thomas G.; Liu, Brooke F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to understand how publics make meaning of terrorism and counterterrorism and the counterterrorism messages from the Department of Homeland Security's See Something, Say Something counterterrorism campaign, and if that meaning impacted their intention to act on these messages. Using the Situational Theory of Publics as the primary theoretical framework, this exploratory study took a qualitative approach; conducting in-depth interviews with both college students from a large Mid-Atlantic State University (young adult publics), and Department of Defense employees (government publics). Findings reveal that participants became more involved with the campaign messages as the problem began to impact them directly. Additionally, young adult public participants are not actively seeking out counterterrorism information, while it is a part of the day-to-day routine for government public participants. The study shows that understanding how publics are impacted by terrorism, will affect how they view and process counterterrorism messages.Item Alternatives to punishment: Counterterrorism strategies in Algeria(2009) Lesniewicz, Amber Lee Stoesser; LaFree, Gary D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rational choice theory has been one of the key theories used to explain the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies (Dugan, LaFree & Piquero, 2005; Enders & Sandler, 1993; 2003; Frey, 2004; LaFree, Dugan & Korte, 2009). These investigations have examined policies focused on increasing the costs of committing political violence, such as criminalization, increased police presence, and government strikes. However, few investigations have looked at policies that increase the benefits of not committing political violence such as negotiations and amnesties. In this study, I investigate the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies that seek to increase the benefits of not committing terrorism. I use Algeria as a case study and examine three counterterrorism policies between 1994 and 2004. One of the policies is a traditionally deterrent policy that increases the consequences of committing terrorism while the two other policies represent alternatively deterrent policies that increase the benefits of not committing terrorism. To analyze these policies, I use ARIMA modeling (N=120 months) and the Global Terrorism Database to determine whether each policy led to a significant change in overall attacks and the proportion of fatal attacks. While researchers have found mixed results when studying the effectives of traditional deterrence counterterrorist measures (Dugan, LaFree & Piquero; Enders & Sandler, 1993; Enders, Sandler & Cauley, 1990; LaFree, Dugan & Korte, 2009), I found that the Civil Concord Act, an amnesty program, as well as the Rome Platform, a negotiation policy, were related to a significant reduction in terrorism in Algeria.