Stayin' Alive: a Mixed-Methods Study of the Inconsistent Effects Of
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MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Katherine Wynn Mitakides Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Director (Dr. John Rothgeb) Reader (Dr. Venelin Ganev) Reader (Dr. Warren Mason) Graduate School Representative (Dr. Sheldon Anderson) ABSTRACT STAYIN’ ALIVE: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY OF THE INCONSISTENT EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP DECAPITATION ON TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS by Katherine Wynn Mitakides The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study is to provide policymakers with a more- complete understanding of the varying effectiveness of leadership decapitation as a counterterrorism technique. To this end, my central research question asks, “why do certain terrorist groups endure despite experiencing leadership decapitation?”. Drawing on previous studies of terrorism and theories of organizational behavior, I suggest that a high degree of bureaucratization and the provision of social services reduce the destabilizing effects of leadership decapitation by decreasing a group’s functional dependence on any single individual to secure the resources necessary to survive. The first phase of this study is a qualitative exploration of two existing explanations of organizational endurance, bureaucracy and incentive- based organizational maintenance, that should, prima facie, explain leadership decapitation’s varying outcomes. I use a deviant case study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and most important politically-violent groups in history, to illustrate existing explanations’ weaknesses and to find evidence linking my proposed characteristics to the outcome of survival. Based on my qualitative findings, I generate a set of hypotheses about the relationship between select organization-level factors and the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. I then test these hypotheses on a unique dataset of 138 terrorist organizations using both descriptive and binary logistic regression statistical analyses to determine their applicability to a wider class of cases. The quantitative results indicate that my hypotheses are partially supported by the data: While providing social services is by far the strongest predictor of an organization’s likelihood of surviving leadership decapitation, the relationship between bureaucracy and survival was found to be non-significant. After discussing the implications of these findings, I present a preliminary set of counterterrorism strategies that target terrorist organizations’ means of organizational maintenance rather than their leaders, and then conclude with suggestions for future research. STAYIN’ ALIVE: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY OF THE INCONSISTENT EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP DECAPITATION ON TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science by Katherine Wynn Mitakides Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2017 Dissertation Advisor: Dr. John Rothgeb © Katherine Wynn Mitakides 2017 Table of Contents Chapter One .................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Previous Research on Leadership Decapitation .......................................................................... 3 Research Question and Argument ............................................................................................... 5 Research Design .......................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter Outline ........................................................................................................................... 7 Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................................. 10 Terrorism “Studies”................................................................................................................... 10 Approaches: Structural, Psychological, or Rational Choice ..................................................... 11 Structural Theories ................................................................................................................ 11 Psychological Theories .......................................................................................................... 12 Rational Choice Theories ...................................................................................................... 14 How Terrorism Ends ................................................................................................................. 17 Common Themes ................................................................................................................... 20 Leadership Decapitation ............................................................................................................ 23 Organizational Endurance—The Missing Piece ....................................................................... 27 Existing Explanations of Organizational Endurance ................................................................ 28 Weber’s Theories of Authority and Bureaucracy .................................................................. 31 Incentives and Incentive Theory ............................................................................................ 37 Terrorist Organizations and Social Services ......................................................................... 38 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 38 Chapter Three: Methodologies ..................................................................................................... 40 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 40 vii Objectives .................................................................................................................................. 40 Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 41 Mixed-Methods Research ...................................................................................................... 41 Specific Advantages of the Sequential Exploratory Model ................................................... 42 An Organizational Approach ................................................................................................. 43 Phase One: Qualitative Analysis ........................................................................................... 45 Phase Two: Quantitative Analysis ............................................................................................ 49 Dataset, Population, and Sample ........................................................................................... 49 Instrumentation ...................................................................................................................... 53 Statistical Tests ...................................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 4: A Case Study of the Society of Muslim Brothers (Egypt) .......................................... 57 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 57 A Note About the Muslim Brotherhood and Terrorism ........................................................ 57 Organizational Attributes of Interest ......................................................................................... 58 The Society of Muslim Brothers, 1928-1979 ............................................................................ 60 Background ............................................................................................................................ 61 The Founding of the Brotherhood ......................................................................................... 62 The First Dissolution and Death (1944-1948) ....................................................................... 64 Restoration and Succession ................................................................................................... 70 The Brotherhood under Nasir (1952-1956) ........................................................................... 73 The Great Mihna .................................................................................................................... 81 Reorganization: 1957-1973 ................................................................................................... 84 Organizational Structure ........................................................................................................... 90 Bureaucratic Development .................................................................................................... 95 The Role of Social Services ...................................................................................................... 97 viii Types of Social Services .......................................................................................................