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But then Bloody Sunday happened and again this incredible sense of outrage ... And following along Bloody Sunday I decided that what I was doing ... was wanting to go home more and more. And as soon as I came home, I got into Sinn Fein, and it was a natural progression from there. Because my beliefs were fairly well formulated at the time. The British were killing our people, they were locking them up, and they were nothing more than Stormont.1
Introduction
What explains why and how terrorist groups decide to end their campaigns? The factors influencing the duration and outcomes of terrorist campaigns have only recently started to attract the attention of terrorism researchers. This article argues that government repression undermines terrorist groups in non-democratic regimes, but is counterproductive in democracies because it leads to a backlash against the government and more durable terrorist organizations. In democracies, harsh government responses harm the regime's legitimacy and thus reduce co-operation from local communities, increase recruitment and support for terrorist organizations, and erode popular support for the government. Conversely, authoritarian regimes are less constrained by legitimacy considerations in their counter-terrorism efforts, and their repressive measures can thus reduce the lifespan of terrorist groups in non-democratic regimes.
The British government's response to escalating terrorist violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, for example, was characterized by harsh repressive measures. Interventions included internment without trial, criminalization of terrorism suspects, coercive interrogation, curfews, extensive search operations and military deployment.2The adoption of repressive counter-terrorism policies increased Catholics' distrust in the government and resulted in a wave of recruitment for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).3When British counter-terrorism policy gradually shifted from suppression to accommodation in the 1980s, Catholics started to believe that reform in Northern Ireland was possible, which opened the door for peace negotiations.4A series of ceasefires negotiated with paramilitary forces culminated in the Good Friday Accords in 1998.
This example illustrates our claim that coercive responses to terrorism tend to be counterproductive in democracies. Our article contributes to terrorism research in several ways. First, our explanation of why the effects of repression on terrorist organizations differ between democratic and non-democratic regimes helps reconcile the...