Are our current counter-terrorist policies out of place? I argue that the increasing accounts of lone wolf terrorists indicate yes.

Senior fall at Swat, I took an introductory class to Political Science. My professor Emily Paddon Rhoads did a stunning job of teaching the class. I kind of got buried in reading, but our final assignment was the following:

Diagnose and propose a solution to a contemporary international relations problem confronting policy makers. Your overarching task is to uncover what caused the problem, and then develop a remedy that addresses at least some of those causes. Sample problems include but are not limited to subjects discussed in class, in the readings, as well as other current events related to international relations. Be realistic and judicious in selecting your specific problem—imagine that policymakers will be given a copy of your essay. The essay must do the following:

1. Provide an assessment of the technical/factual nature of the problem (What is the problem? How dangerous/significant is the problem and for whom/what? What are the causes of the problem?),
2. Consider the relevant historical factors (What are the origins of the problem and for how long has it been developing? What solutions have been attempted? Has your proposed solution been tried? If so, what is different now than when the proposed solution was first attempted?),
3. Assess the political nature of the problem (What are the interests and policies of the most influential actors that are or might be concerned with the problem and your solution?),
4. Propose a realistic and concrete solution to the problem or at least some part of the problem.

** All of the above must be done in a theoretically-informed way. This is absolutely crucial. Many of the theories studied in this course describe and can be used to explain problems. Many of the theories we have considered describe and explain causes and sources of states’ interests and policies. Many of the theories describe and can be used to explain solutions and/or to provide deductive support for solutions. In other words, you cannot successfully complete these four tasks without making several theoretically-informed arguments. In terms of theory, you are not limited to the main paradigmatic approaches (i.e., realism, liberalism). Much of what we have read on civil war, humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, etc. is also theoretical.

I thought I did an alright job of the final paper, and I wrote a bit of an R script to do some of the graphics. I downloaded data from the Global Terrorism Database. The dataset is rather exhaustive, so feel free to download the dataset and get started. I didn’t do as much actual quantitative analysis and hypothesis testing as I wish I would have gotten around to, but the graphs were nice and I thought I wrote decently.

You can find the paper here. If you don’t like reading (…), then you can just snag the code here. Feel free to give it a read and let me know what you think in the comments below!