Beyond Ransom and Political Concessions? Explaining Changes in Insurgents’ Kidnapping Involvement Versus Event-frequency

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027231166347
• Author: Lu Liu,Manuel Eisner
• Date: 01 January 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2024, Vol. 68(1) 30–52

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027231166347

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Beyond Ransom and Political

Concessions? Explaining

Changes in Insurgents’

Kidnapping Involvement

Versus Event-frequency

Lu Liu

1

and Manuel Eisner

2

Abstract

Kidnapping is a common tactic used by insurgent groups. However, why insurgents

commit kidnappings remains insuff‌iciently understood. Based on 1,386 group-year

observations of 140 insurgents between 1998 and 2012, we analyze conditions driving

the within-group temporal changes in their involvement (1 vs 0) versus event-

frequency in kidnappings. We f‌ind that changes in specif‌ic quasi-state activities

(i.e., extraction and provision of public services), which may rely on kidnappings for

coercive enforcement and social control, predict kidnapping “involvement”only.

Meanwhile, general resource and capacity conditions (i.e., territory-control, criminal

networks and combat-lethality) inf‌luence changes in both kidnapping involvement and

event-frequency.

Keywords

kidnapping, crime involvement, insurgency, rebel governance, political violence

1

Fudan University Law School, Shanghai, China

2

Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK and Jacobs Center for Productive Youth

Development, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Lu Liu, Fudan University Law School, 2005 Songhu Road, Shanghai 200438, China

Email: lu_liu@fudan.edu.cn

Introduction

Kidnapping is one of the most common tactics employed by violent insurgent groups.

Notable groups that developed a notoriety for kidnappings include the Islamic State in

Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whose video-taped beheadings of foreign hostages shocked the

international community; the Boko Haram for their abduction of Christian school-girls

in masse; the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) for using kidnappings to recruit child

soldiers (Dunn 2004;Kaplan 2009); the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

(FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia; and the Abu Sayyaf in

the southwestern part of the Philippines for generating ransom income and enforcing

racketeering schemes (Gilbert 2020;O’Brien 2012;Otis 2014;Pauwels 2016).

Kidnapping yields ransom income, political concession, publicity, and intimidation,

among other strategically appealing effects to violent political actors. Yet, notable

insurgents differ signif‌icantly in how frequently they engage in kidnappings. Even avid

kidnapping groups show episodes of particularly high numbers of kidnappings

committed in particular years. Between 1970 and 2018, the Global Terrorism Database

(GTD) documented 12,138 kidnapping events committed in the context of political

violence, involving a total of 92,982 hostages (START 2021). The true magnitude of

kidnappings in violent political campaigns can only be greater as kidnappings tend to

be underreported, especially in areas experiencing armed conf‌licts (Forest 2012a;

Gilbert 2020).

With the massive increase of literature on political violence and terrorism witnessed

in recent decades, much research has been conducted on kidnappings by violent

political actors. This body of research has focused on the experience of victimization in

kidnapping events (Jameson 2010;Tade et al. 2020), event-outcomes and the fate of

hostages (Oyewole 2016;Phillips 2015;Yun and Roth 2008), the appropriate nego-

tiation strategies (Dolnik and Fitzegerald 2011;Foy 2015;Obamamoye 2018;

Shortland and Keatinge 2017), and the effect of no-concession policy (Brandt and

Sandler 2009;Brandt et al. 2016). These studies have signif‌icantly advanced our

understanding of the event-dynamics of kidnappings, the consequences and immediate

policy implications for government authorities. But much remains unknown as to what

makes violent political actors engage in kidnappings in the f‌irst place.

Existing literature on kidnappings has mostly attributed motivations of kidnappings

to either ransom income or political concessions (Akpan 2010;Briggs 2001;Ibrahim

and Mukhtar 2017;O’Brien 2012;Turner 1998;Tzanelli 2006). This f‌inancial-political

approach to understanding the motivations behind kidnappings ref‌lects the practical

challenge often faced by authorities and families with the torment of hostage nego-

tiation. Yet, it fails to explain the vast number of kidnappings not followed by any

negotiation demands. Despite the notoriety of some high-prof‌ile kidnappings involving

foreign hostages, and understandably, the extensive debates on the no-concession

policy (Brandt et al. 2016;Shortland and Keatinge 2017), evidence shows that the vast

majority of kidnappings are committed locally against local residents (Forest 2012a).

Moreover, among the 12,138 kidnappings recorded by the GTD between 1970 and

Liu and Eisner 31