Explaining Successful Terrorist Attacks

We argue that research on terrorism can benefit from existing theoretical explanations of more ordinary crime. Likewise, applying criminological theories to a unique form of violence can serve as a test of criminology’s generalizability. We aim to contribute to the understanding of political violence by developing and testing a situational model of attack success grounded in routine activity theory (RAT). Using a dataset of failed and successful terrorist plots, we use offender, target, and guardian variables to explain plot success. After fitting three logistic regression models, one for each dimension of RAT, and a fourth that considers all factors simultaneously, we find that all components of RAT significantly influence the likelihood of successful attacks. However, we find the best predictive accuracy and model fit when we examine all three RAT components together. This application is unusual in criminology in that we were both able to apply a very broad test of RAT and to offer this test for a type of criminal behavior that is not commonly studied by criminologists. We conclude by considering the implications of the results for theory, policy and future research.