Stern Publishes Journal Paper on ISIS and Organizational Survival
Jessica Stern, Research Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent journal paper on how the Islamic State (ISIS) has survived several organizational changes since its’ inception while expanding upon the ideas put forth by the group’s founder.
Stern’s paper, entitled “ISIL and the Goal of Organizational Survival,” was published in the October, 2016 compendium by the National Defense University Press. The compendium is titled “Beyond Convergence: World Without Order.”
From the text of the paper:
The Islamic State, or ISIL, has emerged as a manifestation of two trends: the convergence between transnational terrorist and criminal organizations, and the erosion of the post-Westphalian world order. The conventional wisdom has long held that criminal organizations are driven by the venal pursuit of wealth, while terrorist organizations are driven exclusively by ideological motives, and would presumably be repelled by the materialism of ordinary criminals.1 ISIL, however, from its inception, has represented a merging of criminal activity for profit and terrorism. ISIL was founded as al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 by an infamous Jordanian thug known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. Since its creation, the organization has changed names several times, but it has retained and expanded upon many of the innovations put in place by its founder, who used his experience as a gangster to create an unusually wealthy, vicious, and crude criminal/terrorist organization that also claims to be a state.
You can read the entire paper here.
Stern’s main focus is on perpetrators of violence and the possible connections between trauma and terror. She has written on terrorist groups across religions and ideologies, among them neo-Nazis, Islamists, anarchists, and white supremacists. She has also written about counter-radicalization programs for both neo-Nazi and Islamist terrorists. Learn more about her here.