Reference no: EM133622607

Targeted killings have become a central component of counterterrorism strategy. In response to the unprecedented prevalence of this strategy around the world, numerous empirical studies have recently examined whether "decapitating" militant groups with targeted killings is strategically effective. This study builds on that research program by examining the impact of targeted killings on militant groups' tactical decision-making. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in the attack patterns of militant groups conditional on whether a government's targeted killing attempt succeeded against them operationally. In both the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Israel-West Bank-Gaza Strip theaters, targeted killings significantly alter the nature of militant group violence. When their leaderships are degraded with a successful strike, militant groups become far less discriminate in their target selection by redirecting their violence from military to civilian targets. We then analyze several potential causal mechanisms to account for these results and find the strongest evidence that targeted killings tend to promote indiscriminate organizational violence by empowering lower-level members with weaker civilian restraint.
Questions:

What is the theory of this paper? Identify the independent variable, the dependent variable, and the direction of the causal relationship.

Hurdles to causality:

Is there a credible causal mechanism that connects X to Y? What is it?

Can we rule out the possibility that Y causes X? How?

Is there covariation between X and Y? How do you know?

Have we controlled for all confounding variables (Z) that might make the relationship between X and Y spurious? What might some confounding variables be?