Religion and Ideology as Determinants of Contentious Politics: Terrorism and Beyond

Abstract

This dissertation includes three independent studies that jointly consider the role of non-material factors, such as ideology and religion, in operational decisions of individuals and groups. It seeks to contribute to the vast scholarship on political contestation, which this dissertation conceptualizes broadly to include various forms of peaceful and violent political activism. The first two articles focus on terrorism as a violent form of political contestation. In the first study, I introduce a new dataset that includes over 25,000 observations and categorizes terrorist groups based on their ideology. I examine the impact of ideology on the terrorist groups’ tactic choices controlling for group age and the waves of terrorism, as theorized by Rapoport (2002). Using the same dataset, the second study examines the role of ideology on the terrorist groups’ target choice. Finally, the third study focuses on the role of religion and religiosity on various forms of peaceful political contestation. This dissertation finds evidence that tactic and target choices do vary by the ideology of the perpetrating group. It also finds that religions vary in their influence on the forms of political participation considered.