to interact in a controlled way, coalescing the community’s opinion into a model of which theories are most credible.
As a case study, the methodology was used to study the preferences of terrorist organizations when recruiting suicide bombers. The work integrates and ranks the elements of theories of suicide bomber selection for individual terrorist organizations over a defined time period and in a defined geographical location. Two instantiations of the methodology are currently being implemented in parallel using different sources of data to study Hamas suicide bomber recruitment from 2001 through the present day.
Initial analysis of 55 suicide bomber biographies has suggested that the three most important factors of selection are religious influences, individual frustrations and personal economic motivations. In contrast, attempts to dismantle the terrorist social network, or externally influencing Palestinian society to be less praiseful of suicide attackers were considered less critical.
In many policy-decisions, policy makers must either explicitly or implicitly subscribe to an explanation of what is the cause of the phenomena around which the decision is being made. In most circumstances there are many possible explanations, and policy-makers rely on topic experts to identify the salient ones and to recommend possible policy options.
Unfortunately, in some policy areas, such as responding to suicide terrorism, the underlying causes are complex and poorly understood, with a wide array of conflicting theories, each supported by experts. We propose a quantitative methodology for integrating and ranking the elements of theories of suicide bomber selection for individual terrorist organizations over defined time periods and in defined geographical locations. Two instantiations of the methodology are currently being implemented using different sources of data to study Hamas suicide bomber recruitment from 2001 through the present day.
