The al-Qaeda Franchise

"The al-Qaeda Franchise is an excellent study of one of the most important issues in terrorism today: the disposition of and threat posed by Al Qaeda's many allies in the greater Middle East. Employing informed theory, careful research methods, and detailed empirics, Mendelsohn explains why and how Al Qaeda picks allies as well as the tensions and opportunities for counterterrorism that result." -Daniel Byman, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution "An extremely illuminating discussion of an important, neglected subject-the cooperative and organizational expansions of terrorist groups. The focus is on Al-Qaeda, showing how its expansion and decline are intimately related. All students of terrorism will find this intriguing, unique analysis very valuable." -David C. Rapoport, Founding Editor, Terrorism and Political Violence "The al-Qaeda Franchise is an authoritative contribution to our understanding of both organizational trajectories and decision-making in transnational terrorism." -Martha Crenshaw, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University "The al-Qaeda Franchise offers a superb exploration of the causes, nature, and consequences of the expansion strategy of one of the principal terrorist threats of modern times. Combining deep subject matter expertise with high standards of social scientific inquiry, Mendelsohn's thorough and timely study offers new insights that will be sure to garner the attention of policymakers, academics, and general readers concerned with the evolutionary processes of transnational terrorist actors." -Assaf Moghadam, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC)

Barak Mendelsohn is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Haverford College, a research fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). He specializes in radical Islamist organizations, with an emphasis on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. His research interests also cover Middle East security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, and questions of international order.