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Governing Ideas | Number 6

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A Governance Studies Event

What Makes a Terrorist?

Terrorism

Event Summary

Who becomes a terrorist and – more importantly – why? Answering these questions is a key to defeating terrorism. Poverty and lack of education have been the conventional scapegoats. And while they may have some impact, in his new book What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, economist Alan Krueger demonstrates that there is little empirical evidence supporting this claim. Instead, his analysis shows that political oppression and a lack of civil liberties are the principal culprits.

Governing Ideas

Event Information

When

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Where

Root Room
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Map

Event Materials


Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

Email: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On the anniversary of September 11th, Krueger joined Daniel Benjamin, Brookings senior fellow and former National Security Council director for counterterrorism, and Philip Gordon, Brookings senior fellow in foreign policy, to discuss the real roots of terrorism. The discussion was part of the "Governing Ideas" series, moderated by Brookings senior fellow William A. Galston. The series, hosted by Brookings's Governance Studies program, is intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values and religion.

Transcript

ALAN KRUEGER: I am often asked why an economist works on this topic, why did I choose to work on the economics of terrorism, and I have two answers to that question. The first is a little bit flippant, the second less so, but I think they both have some merit. The first is that economics and labor economics in particular which is my field have provided a lot of insight into occupational choice. Some people choose to become lawyers and doctors, some people choose to become terrorists, maybe economics can help to explain that choice. Sometimes people choose to become doctors and then become terrorists.

The second reason is I had done some work in the mid-1990s on economics and hate crimes. Together with a former graduate student from Princeton we studied the occurrence of hate crimes in Germany primarily against Turks. What we found to our surprise was that economic conditions played very little role. We looked at unemployment in an area, wage growth, other measures of economic conditions, and I have to say I was surprised when we first did this work that we found little connection. Then when I dug more into the literature, I discovered that most of the literature on hate crimes finds very little connection.

Participants

Commentators

Daniel Benjamin

Director, Center on the United States and Europe

Philip H. Gordon

Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy

Featured Speaker

Alan Krueger

Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Princeton University

Moderator

William A. Galston

Senior Fellow, Governance Studies


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