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How do terrorist groups control their members? Do the tools groups use to monitor their operatives and enforce discipline create security vulnerabilities that governments can exploit?The Terrorist's Dilemmais the first book to systematically examine the great variation in how terrorist groups are structured. Employing a broad range of agency theory, historical case studies, and terrorists' own internal documents, Jacob Shapiro provocatively discusses the core managerial challenges that terrorists face and illustrates how their political goals interact with the operational environment to push them to organize in particular ways. Shapiro provides a historically informed explanation for why some groups have little hierarchy, while others resemble miniature firms, complete with line charts and written disciplinary codes. Looking at groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, he highlights how consistent and widespread the terrorist's dilemma--balancing the desire to maintain control with the need for secrecy--has been since the 1880s. Through an analysis of more than a hundred terrorist autobiographies he shows how prevalent bureaucracy has been, and he utilizes a cache of internal documents from al-Qa'ida in Iraq to outline why this deadly group used so much paperwork to handle its people. Tracing the strategic interaction between terrorist leaders and their operatives, Shapiro closes with a series of comparative case studies, indicating that the differences in how groups in the same conflict approach their dilemmas are consistent with an agency theory perspective. The Terrorist's Dilemmademonstrates the management constraints inherent to terrorist groups and sheds light on specific organizational details that can be exploited to more efficiently combat terrorist activity.

At the 1918 general election, Sinn Féin overtook the Irish Parliamentary Party as the dominant political force within nationalist Ireland, a process that has its origins in the aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916. This article argues that to understand better this shift in public opinion, from an initially hostile reaction to the Dublin rebellion to a more advanced nationalist position,1 it is important to recognize the decisive role played by a political welfare organization, the Irish National Aid Association and Volunteer Dependents' Fund. The activities of the INAAVDF significantly shaped the popular memory of the Rising, but also provided a focus around which the republican movement could re-organize itself. In foregrounding the contribution of the INAAVDF to the radicalization of political life in Ireland between 1916 and 1918, the article argues that this understudied but important organization offers a useful way of charting popular responses to the Rising and its aftermath, as well as laying the foundations for a reinvigorated political and military campaign after 1917.

British volunteers fought on both sides of the First Carlist War (1833–1840), the dynastic struggle between the liberal factions that championed Isabella II and the reactionary forces that supported Don Carlos’s claim to the Spanish throne. Despite British intervention, the conflict did not arouse as much interest in Britain as the Peninsular War (1808–1814), but it served as the setting for several English literary works that reconstructed it from different perspectives. These fictional texts include George Ryder’s Los Arcos (1845), Frederick Hardman’s The Student of Salamanca (1845–1846), and Edward Augustus Milman’s The Wayside Cross; or, the Raid of Gomez (1847). This paper analyses these texts focusing on their representations of Spain and the First Carlist War and shows that they mostly ignore British intervention in the conflict and perpetuate the romantic image of Spain that had emerged in Britain during the Peninsular War.

Based on thousands of interviews over 35 years with the leaders and members of the Republican movement and the IRA itself, as well as the Irish, British and Americans involved in the Troubles, the focus of this study is on the workings of an organization involved in armed struggle.

Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity is a unique in-depth investigation into working-class Loyalism in Northern Ireland as represented by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Red Hand Commando (RHC) and their political allies. In an unorthodox account, Tony Novosel argues that these groups, seen as implacable enemies by Republicans and the left, did develop a political analysis of the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1970s which involved a compromise peace with all political parties and warring factions – something that historians and writers have largely ignored. Distinctive, deeply informed and provocative, Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity is the first study to focus not on the violent actions of the UVF/RHC but on their political vision and programme which, Novosel argues, included the potential for a viable peace based on compromise with all groups, including the Irish Republican Army.

The Irish Home Rule crisis has never been fully explored as a factor in the chain of events leading to the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, as archives reveal, Germany and Austria-Hungary believed that the Irish question could or would paralyse British foreign policy. Contacts between the Central Powers and advanced Irish nationalists had taken place several years before the onset of the hostilities. France and Russia had doubts whether their British ally could be relied upon. During the final phase of the July Crisis, events in Ireland seemed to indicate that the British government would not be able to intervene in a possible war on the continent.

In this article three pathways into armed activism are identified among those who joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1972. The accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that for those who were already involved in the Republican movement before 1969, a trajectory of mobilization emerged because of the long-standing counterhegemonic consciousness present in their homes, which in turn strongly influenced them as committed Republican militants. For those who joined after 1969 and had previously been involved in other political activities, mobilization was a result of a particular transformative event that triggered the belief that armed struggle was the only approach capable of bringing change in the new sociopolitical situation of the time. For the majority, that is, those who joined after 1969 at a very young age without any previous involvement in organized networks of activism, it began as a more abruptly acquired sense of obligation to defend their own community and retaliate against the Northern Ireland establishment, the Loyalists, and the British army. Overall, the accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that Republican volunteers were fighting first and foremost to reclaim dignity, build honor, and instill a sense of pride in themselves and their community through armed activism. In these terms, the choice of joining the PIRA was justified not as a mere reproduction of an ideological alignment to the traditional Republican aim of achieving Irish reunification but as part of a recognition struggle. At an analytic level, this article illustrates the utility of a multimechanisms interpretative framework. And it contributes to broadening the empirical basis by presenting and analyzing a series of 25 semistructured interviews with former PIRA volunteers.

In September 1914 John Redmond promised Britain that nationalist Ireland would fight Germany 'wherever the firing line extends'. Although the creation of an 'Irish Brigade' was blocked, Redmond encouraged nationalist enlistment in the 16th (Irish) Division. Separatists accused him and his colleagues of being 'recruiting sergeants' for the British army. This charge influenced how the Irish party was seen both during the war and after 1922. This article argues that, as with other core Redmondite themes, the nationalist party was in fact divided over Irish enlistment in Britain's army. It concludes that the majority of home rule MPs did not share Redmond's commitment to recruiting but instead shared the 'mental neutrality' which characterized much of nationalist Ireland during the early part of the war.

In May 1846, in the midst of the largest wave of immigration up to that point in its history, the United States went to war with Mexico. The nation's attention became focused on northern Mexico as General Zachary Taylor's army marched up the Rio Grande and fought Mexican forces in the major battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. Hundreds of the same immigrants then pouring in to the country volunteered to serve under Taylor. Catholic and Democratic Party newspapers and leaders friendly to the immigrants used their service to fight nativist prejudice on the home front, defending Catholics and immigrants as loyal citizens. This study examines the efforts of Catholic and Democratic leaders by focusing on three phenomena of the war in northern Mexico: the fall 1846 riot on the Rio Grande between the Irish Jasper Greens of Savannah and their fellow Georgia company the Kennesaw Rangers, the exploits of immigrant volunteers in battle and the use of those who died as martyrs, and the service of two Jesuits, Reverends John McElroy and Anthony Rey, as chaplains to Taylor's men. Newspapers and letter writers defended the Greens from charges of riot and drunkenness, praised their valiant soldiers and the heroic dead, exalted the compassion and courage of the two Jesuits, and used all three scenarios to fight nativist prejudice and counteract anti-Catholic propaganda. This understudied corner of the U.S.-Mexican War sheds light on the continuing process of assimilation and acculturation for antebellum immigrants and points out the importance of religious and ethnic identity in deciding who could be an American.