RT Article
T1 The Impact of Public Holidays on Insurgent Attacks: The Case of Thailand
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 36
IS 7
SP 903
OP 918
A1 Chinda, Chris
A2 Unal, Cigdem
A2 Marchment, Zoe
A2 Gill, Paul
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1902694236
AB This paper analyzes Malay-Muslim insurgents’ attacks in the three southern provinces of Thailand between the years of 2010–2021 and identifies the role of public holidays on the level of violence. The existing literature suggests terrorists consider holidays during attack planning. However, there is a lack of agreement on the effect direction. Some studies have found that holidays are a force for peace while others have found they can act as trigger for more violence. Applying environmental criminology to the timing of terrorist attacks, we argue that the type of the holiday matters. Therefore, we analyze public (secular), Islamic, and Buddhist holidays separately. We show that Islamic holidays witness increased violence while Buddhist and public holidays see reductions. We discuss that Islamic holidays increase the Malay-Muslim insurgents’ motivation to attack by assigning to those dates a higher symbolic value. On the other hand, on Buddhist and public holidays, insurgents may hesitate to attack to avoid the adverse effects of losing public support and triggering a backlash. The results demonstrate the necessity to analyze the temporal dynamics of terrorist attacks.
K1 Religion
K1 temporal analysis
K1 Southern Thailand
K1 Insurgency
K1 Terrorism
DO 10.1080/09546553.2023.2222810