Introducing the new CPOST dataset on suicide attacks
Author | Alexandra C Chinchilla,Alejandro Albanez Rivas,Robert A Pape |
Published date | 01 July 2021 |
Date | 01 July 2021 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343320978260 |
Introducing the new CPOST dataset
on suicide attacks
Robert A Pape
Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), University of Chicago
Alejandro Albanez Rivas
Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), University of Chicago
Alexandra C Chinchilla
Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), University of Chicago
Abstract
The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats presents the updated and expanded Database on Suicide
Attacks (DSAT), which now links to Uppsala Conflict Data Program data on armed conflicts and includes a new
dataset measuring the alliance and rivalry relationships among militant groups with connections to suicide attack
groups. We assess global trends in suicide attacks over four decades, and demonstrate the value of the expanded
DSAT with special attention to the growing diffusion of suicide attacks in armed conflicts and the large role of
networks established by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State through 2019 in this diffusion. Overall, the expanded DSAT
demonstrates the advantages of integration across datasets of political violence for expanding research on important
outcomes, generating new knowledge about the spread of particularly deadly forms of political violence, and raising
important new questions about the efficacy of current policies to curb their spread.
Keywords
armed conflict, civil war, militant ties, suicide attacks, terrorism
Introduction
Reliable data on suicide attacks is crucial for important
debates in the field of political violence. For example,
what drives people to lay down their lives voluntarily for
the sake of militant groups or their causes? How and why
do extreme acts of self-sacrifice diffuse across instances of
armed conflict in general? Is militant violence involving
extreme self-sacrifice more likely than other acts of vio-
lence to compel concessions by target governments,
achieve tactical successes in battle, or increase the long-
evity of militant groups? Suicide attacks are among the
clearest forms of extreme self-sacrifice. Unsurprisingly,
leading journals of political violence have published a
consistent stream of new research about the causes, con-
duct, and consequences of suicide attacks for the past
20 years (e.g. Pape, 2003; Bloom, 2004; Horowitz, 2010;
Acosta, 2016; Choi & Piazza, 2017; Warner, Chapin &
Matfess, 2019; Morris, 2020).
Suicide attacks are a particularly deadly form of non-
state actor violence. The average suicide attack from
2000 to 2018 resulted in 10.1 deaths, in comparison
to 2.0 deaths per non-suicide attack.
1
As such, they have
their own theoretical properties – such as extraordinary
signaling effects on target and other audiences (Pape,
2003; Tosini, 2018) and are often studied in a compara-
tive context.
Corresponding author:
rpape@uchicago.edu
1
Comparison of DSAT data on suicide attacks to the Global
Terrorism Database (GTD) data on conventional terrorist attacks.
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(4) 826–838
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320978260
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