Abstract
Why does terrorist violence escalate after a government concession? This study examines three theoretical explanations of why terrorist violence escalates after a government concession: the Spoiling, Factioning, and Concession Maximizing theories. The Spoiling Theory contends that terrorism escalates because a government concession poses an existential threat to a terrorist organization and terrorism escalates to spoil the implementation of a concession. The Factioning Theory contends that terrorism escalates because a government concession causes a terrorist organization to split with moderates accepting the concession and extremists remaining active and more prone to violence. The Concession Maximizing Theory contends that terrorism escalates because a government concession emboldens a terrorist organization to escalate in order to gain additional concessions. A special methodology, a Threshold Auto-Regressive (TAR) process, was developed to provide a data-determined process to identify periods of terrorist escalation. The TAR methodology provides a neutral method to identify periods of terrorist escalation in order to systematically compare the three theories. The methodology and theoretical models were applied to four case studies where terrorist violence escalated after a government concession. The analysis of the escalation of violence after a concession in the Algeria, El Salvador, Israel-Palestine, and Spain cases demonstrate that when terrorist violence escalates after a government concession, the intent is to spoil the implementation of a government concession. Thus, this study concludes that the Spoiling Theory provides the best theoretical understanding of why terrorist violence escalates after a government concession.