Why concessions should not be made to terrorist kidnappers

This paper examines the dynamic implications of making concessions to terrorist kidnappers. We apply a Bayesian Poisson changepoint model to kidnapping incidents associated with three cohorts of countries that differ in their frequency of granting concessions. Depending on the cohort of countries during 2001–2013, terrorist negotiation successes encouraged 64% to 87% more kidnappings. Our findings also hold for 1978–2013, during which these negotiation successes encouraged 26% to 57% more kidnappings. Deterrent aspects of terrorist casualties are also quantified; the dominance of religious fundamentalist terrorists meant that such casualties generally did not curb kidnappings.