Terror in transition: leadership and succession in terrorist organizations

"Today's counterterrorism experts are engaged in a spirited debate about whether or not targeting the leader of a known terrorist group is an effective strategy, but in reality, not much is actually known about the organizational and strategic role leaders play in terrorist groups.

In this book, security studies experts Tricia Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault develop a set of criteria of the techniques that leaders of often decentralized terrorist groups have used to successfully survive and analyze how that criteria has been used in practice by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

These criteria--such as forging partnerships with other groups, articulating a strategic vision, and promoting a clear chain of command--draw from multidisciplinary models of leadership and thus expand the reach of political science and security studies' understanding of how these leaders operate.

Further, Bacon and Arsenault point out that by better understand