Groups that negotiate have longer average life-spans than others, and nearly always pursue (or have in the past pursued) causes related to control of territory. This is as might be expected, since many are connected in some way to the decolonization movement of the latter twentieth century.17 In our analysis, the mean among group life-spans that have negotiated over their fundamental aims was between 20 and 25 years, while the figure for terrorist groups overall was 5–9 years.18 There is a strong, statistically significant relationship between participation in negotiations and longer group
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