For Immediate Release
August 7, 2012
Contacts: Lee Tune, 301 405 4679 or ltune@umd.edu
'Carrot' Works Better than 'Stick' Against Terror in Israel - UMD Study
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Israeli policies that reward Palestinian efforts to contain violence are more effective than violent crackdowns that punish terrorists
and civilians alike, concludes a new University of Maryland-led study analyzing 17 years' worth of data.
Published in the August issue of the American Sociological Review, the study is the
first to empirically evaluate the relative effectiveness of reward and punishment strategies as antidotes to terrorism.
"There aren't easy answers to combatting terrorism, but overall, our results unambiguously suggest that the carrot tends to be more effective than the
stick," says lead researcher, Laura Dugan, a University of Maryland criminologist and a
researcher with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the
University of Maryland. "Of course, there's something to be said for using both carrot and stick."
"Moving Beyond Deterrence: The Effectiveness of Raising the Expected Utility of
Abstaining from Terrorism in Israel," found that during the period 1987 to 2004, Israeli policies and actions that encouraged and rewarded abstention
from terrorist acts were more successful in reducing terrorism than policies focused on punishment.
"The beneficial effects have been most pronounced when Israel directed actions toward addressing the needs of Palestinian civilians," Dugan adds. "The
general consensus across the political spectrum is that when there is terrorism you have to fight back. But our study suggests there is value in addressing
the grievances, the people most affected by these grievances, and the constituencies of these terrorist organizations."
The researchers use the term "repression" for policies that attempt to punish terrorism, and "conciliatory" for those addressing Palestinian concerns and
needs.
"Our argument begins to challenge the very common view that to combat terrorism, you have to meet violence with violence," says study co-author Erica
Chenoweth, an assistant professor at the University of Denver and a START researcher.
Examples of Israel's conciliatory tactics rewarding abstention from terrorist acts include providing social services to civilian populations; encouraging
peace talks; withdrawing troops; releasing prisoners; and promoting cultural freedoms. Israel's repressive or punishment-centric policies include passage of
anti-terrorism laws, extension of prison sentences, assassination, deportation, and military retaliation.
To measure these qualities, the researchers took a unique approach they created their own specialized dataset coding all relevant policies during the
17-year period along a seven-point scale, ranging from "deadly violence" to full "conciliatory" policies. The result is the Government Actions in a Terrorist Environment-Israel (GATE-Israel) dataset. Then, using the
comprehensive Global Terrorism Database at the UMD-based National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and
Responses to Terrorism (START), the team was able to track the level of terrorist activity.
The period 1987 to 2004 covers dramatic shifts in the relations between Israelis and Palestinians, including the signing of the Oslo agreements
establishing relations with the Palestinian Authority, the outbreak of Palestinian resistance during the Second Intifada, escalating violence, and
construction of a wall to keep terrorists out.
In an average month between 1987 and 2004, Israel took approximately 18 punishment-based actions against Palestinian targets and fewer than eight
conciliatory actions. According to the study's authors, a violent crackdown on terrorism sometimes leads to more violence in return. Yet, when policymakers focus on improving the living conditions for Palestinian constituents, those same constituents were encouraged not to participate in terrorist organizations
and, consequently, terrorism rates fell.
"If the constituency of a terrorist organization no longer supports that organization, then the organization can't thrive," Dugan says. "Still, we do not
recommend that governments adopt purely conciliatory policies. Our hope is that this research provides alternatives to solely focusing policy efforts on
reducing the expected utility of bad behavior by also considering the value of raising the expected utility of good behavior."
FULL TEXT OF STUDY
A full copy of the Dugan-Chenoweth study is available online: http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Aug12ASRFeature.pdf
MEDIA CONTACTS
Laura Dugan
Lead Researcher
301-405-4070
ldugan@umd.edu
Lee Tune
UMD Communications
301-405-4679
ltune@umd.edu
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Information provided by the Office of University Communications
