Jihadism without borders: The rise of foreign fighters, affiliated
terrorists and lone wolves outside civil wars
Abstract
The globalization of jihad has taken various patterns ranging from the
lone involvement in deadly attacks at home, violence as an affiliated
terrorist or joining a foreign insurgency. Yet, the likelihood of
violent engagement and the patterns it takes considerably vary across
countries. This article aims to explain such cross-national variation.
We emphasize how the level of perpetrator’s agency over two decisions -
mobilization and target selection – is reflected in socio-economic
conditions and foreign military interventionism that differ across
countries. Consistently with our hypotheses, our analysis – focusing on
global jihadism in support of ISIS (2014-2016) - shows that differences
in the socio-economic conditions of Sunni Muslims explain the variation
in jihadist mobilization, while varying levels of anti-ISIS foreign
military interventionism explains variation in the selection of lone and
affiliated terrorists targets. We further generalize these findings for
non-ISIS jihadist domestic attacks (1992-2006).