How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

The central questions in determining whether repression will end terrorism are: how well mobilized is a group’s support; who is the audience—that is, what specific constituency are they trying to reach with their actions; how likely are they to further influence that constituency through violence; and how will a state’s actions affect their ability to do so? In other words, the key variables for whether repression ends terrorism are how mobilized the population is for a cause and how despised a regime makes itself in its response. It comes down to perception and identity, a social-political tug-of-war for support that the state or regime usually wins, but at great cost. Terrorism is not a threat to be analyzed using the kind of unitary actor theories that are the foundation of twentieth-century strategic thought in the West. States operate in a world where they benefit from a constituent population and the right to use force. Groups that use terrorism have neither;