Political Responses to Terrorism
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TEEMU SINKKONEN Political Responses to Terrorism Case study on the Madrid terrorist attack on March 11, 2004, and its aftermath ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tampere, for public discussion in the Auditorium Pinni B 1100 Kanslerinrinne 1, Tampere, on November 27th, 2009, at 12 o’clock. UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE ACADEMIC DISSERTATION University of Tampere Department of Political Science and International Relations Finland Distribution Tel. +358 3 3551 6055 Bookshop TAJU Fax +358 3 3551 7685 P.O. Box 617 [email protected] 33014 University of Tampere www.uta.fi/taju Finland http://granum.uta.fi Cover design by Juha Siro Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1462 Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis 896 ISBN 978-951-44-7871-0 (print) ISBN 978-951-44-7872-7 (pdf) ISSN-L 1455-1616 ISSN 1456-954X ISSN 1455-1616 http://acta.uta.fi Tampereen Yliopistopaino Oy – Juvenes Print Tampere 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Jukka Paastela for having trust in my ideas and encouraging me during all the years that this project has required. I am also thankful to Antonio Robles Egea, who several years ago helped me to get started with my research in Spanish political radicalism, to Timo Sinkkonen for helping me with the proofreading, and to Virginia Mattila for checking the English of this manuscript. I am grateful to the University of Tampere, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Emil Aaltonen Foundation, and the University of Tampere Foundation for financial support. 3 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation is a case study on the dynamics of different types of political responses to the Madrid terrorist attack on March 11, 2004. The Madrid attack was a mass casualty terrorist attack that was very likely perpetrated to influence the voting behaviour on the general elections on March 14. Effectively, it had an impact, since an electoral overturn took place. From the point of view of political science this was a surprising response. The dominant theory is that terrorist attacks are followed by a so-called rally-around-the-flag effect, which means that people tend support the ruling elites, not the political opposition like in Spain. The case itself is divided into three parts according to the most relevant types of political responses: 1) political crisis governance, meaning the way the Spanish government managed the crisis, and how it dealt with other political powers and public information. 2) political activism in the civic society, and 3) the voting behaviour in the General Elections. In order to analyse the dynamics of the political responses, the process that led to the overturn is traced from the attack to the elections using several types of open source information. The primary material in this dissertation consists of the press conferences of prominent politicians, public statements, testimonies in the March 11 Committee of Enquiry, blog writings of individual citizens, actions that took place on the street, text messages, electoral results, opinion polls, etc. The aim of this dissertation is to challenge the rally effect and to demonstrate that the dynamics of political responses depend on several factors, which are much more related to the general political context, than to terrorists and their possible aims. This is done by using the theoretical approach of appraisal theory on emotions. 5 6 INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..........................................................................................................3 ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................5 ABBREVIATIONS:.....................................................................................................................9 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................11 1.1. THE ATTACK AND ITS AFTERMATH ..........................................................................................11 1.2. STUDY SUBJECT ..................................................................................................................................14 1.3. STUDY DESIGN: AN EMBEDDED SINGLECASE STUDY .......................................................16 1.3.1. Research rationale and structure ...................................................................................................... 17 1.3.2. Background material................................................................................................................................ 19 1.3.3. Primary material ........................................................................................................................................ 23 1.3.4. Methods of analysing................................................................................................................................ 29 1.4. EARLIER STUDIES AND LITERATURE........................................................................................33 1.4.1. Literature on the March 11 attack and its aftermath .............................................................. 33 1.4.2. Literature on the effects of terrorism.............................................................................................. 36 2. DEFINING TERRORISM....................................................................................................39 2.1. POLITICAL ASPECTS..........................................................................................................................39 2.2. DEFINITIONS WITHIN TERRORISM RESEARCH....................................................................45 2.2.1. Logic of terrorism....................................................................................................................................... 47 2.2.2. Isolated acts of terrorism?..................................................................................................................... 49 2.2.3. Definitional shortcoming: emotional response .......................................................................... 51 2.2.4. Terrorism, war and peace...................................................................................................................... 53 2.3. DEFINITIONAL CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................55 3. APPRAISAL THEORY AND RESPONSE(S) TO TERRORISM .....................................58 3.1. APPRAISAL THEORY ON EMOTIONS..........................................................................................59 3.1.1. Theoretical background.......................................................................................................................... 59 3.1.2. Reasons for differential appraising................................................................................................... 62 3.2. APPRAISED PERSONAL RELEVANCE OF TERRORISM ........................................................65 3.2.1. Terrorist incidents and concern experienced about terrorism ......................................... 66 3.2.2. Direct and indirect relevance: categories of psychological victims................................. 72 3.2.3. Ego involvement and terrorism.......................................................................................................... 75 3.2.4. Ego involvement and victimization .................................................................................................. 79 3.3. IMPLICATIONS OF ACTS OF TERRORISM.................................................................................82 3.3.1. Causal attribution dimensions ............................................................................................................ 83 3.3.2. Properties of terrorist organisations............................................................................................... 86 3.3.3. Terrorism and imagination................................................................................................................... 89 3.3.4. Political implications................................................................................................................................ 91 3.4. COPING WITH TERRORISM: FROM INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE TO POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR...................................................................................................................................................94 3.4.1. Activism as an aggregate of individual appraisals.................................................................... 96 3.4.2. Public response formation dynamics .............................................................................................. 98 3.5. APPRAISAL PATTERN OF THE EFFECTS OF TERRORISM .............................................. 103 4. CRISIS GOVERNANCE.....................................................................................................107 4.1. SENSE MAKING ................................................................................................................................. 109 4.1.1. Who did it? – a look into the past.....................................................................................................110 4.1.2. Biased sense making, or political calculation?..........................................................................113 4.1.3. Critical sense making nodes ...............................................................................................................116