Surviving to Fail? Theorizing the Impacts of Child Recruitment on Terrorist Group Duration and Outcomes

The role of child soldiers in armed conflict has been the subject of decades of scholarly investigation. While research on children involved with terrorist groups is growing, there has been little to no systematic analysis or theorization of how the deliberate recruitment and inclusion of children can influence terrorist group duration. Situated between two literatures, this dissertation is focused on synthesizing the complex explanations of how and why terrorist groups endure. Building upon a framework of the internal and external dimensions of duration, this dissertation illustrates how child recruitment can affect these correlates at various levels, including organizational structure and technical and operational capacity. Using the recently published Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG) dataset, this dissertation combines both existing data and independent research to contribute new data on the evidence of child recruitment of children for the 760 groups captured in the EDTG, referred to as the children and terrorism (CaT) variables. In addition to providing a descriptive overview of the impact of child recruitment on group dimensions and outcomes, this dissertation also replicates existing models to embark on a preliminary exploration of their impacts on the quantity and lethality of attacks as well as group duration overall.