2008/05/01 by Scott Ashworth, Joshua D. Clinton, Adam Meirowitz +1 · 70 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · Mathematics · #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Political Conflict and Governance #Religion and Society Interactions #Terrorism #Construct (python library) #Inference #Affect (linguistics) #Statistical inference #Criminology #Psychology #Political science #Social psychology #Sociology #Computer science #Mathematics #Law #Statistics #Artificial intelligence #Communication
paper · doi:10.1017/s0003055408080167
published in American Political Science Review 102(2), 269-273 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2008/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/30
In “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Robert Pape (2003) presents an analysis of his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial occupation and religious extremism affect the decision of terrorist groups to use suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions because he “samples on the dependent variable.”—The data only contain cases in which suicide terror is used. We construct bounds (Manski, 1995) on the quantities relevant to Pape's hypotheses and show exactly how little can be learned about the relevant statistical associations from the data produced by Pape's research design.