Browsing by Author "Klein, G. R."

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Open Access
Domestic diversion: Selective targeting of minority out-groups
(Sage Publications, 2019) Klein, G. R.; Tokdemir, Efe
Domestic political use of force is a strategy for political leaders to divert the public’s attention away from economic instability and rebuild political capital. But, diversionary incentives are not the only motivation; the targeted vulnerable minority’s capabilities are important. We analyze how the combination of diversionary incentive and out-group mobilization capabilities influences leaders’ decision-calculus. Embattled leaders make strategic decisions about both the target and the adequate severity of force to accomplish diversion without risking conflict escalation. We empirically test the resulting hypotheses using the Minorities at Risk dataset from 1998 to 2003 and find support for our expectations. Incentive alone does not determine domestic political use of force; the same incentive produces variance in the severity of force dependent on the targeted out-group’s mobilization capability. Governments match the severity of domestic force to political survival goals and the costs and risks of political use of force.
Open Access
Strategic Interaction of governments and terrorist groups in times of economic hardship
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-06-14) Tokdemir, Efe; Klein, G. R.
When governments’ ability to maintain power is threatened, they use any tool at their disposal to re-establish or boost their survival. In this paper, we theorize dyadic strategic choices and interactions between governments and domestic terrorist groups in times of economic turmoil. We contend that governments are more likely to increase their targeting of domestic terrorist groups, which provides legitimate opportunities to divert public attention from economic concerns and rally individuals around the flag. Meanwhile, observing such incentives, domestic terrorist groups make strategic decisions similar to those of interstate actors by either decreasing their attacks (strategic conflict avoidance) or increasing them (strategic conflict seeking) to add an inability to provide safety and security to the government’s existing struggles. We test these competing hypotheses by leveraging two recently released event datasets focusing on the Turkey-PKK conflict. Our findings contribute to the terrorism studies literature on decision-making and strategic choices, and broader scholarship about conflict processes by testing conflict dynamics at the domestic level.