Under what situations does assassination accomplish its direct political purpose? Inversely, when does it induce a backlash that strengthens the political power of the victim's side, usually through making the victim a martyr?
The latter is complicated if backlash was (indirectly) the political purpose (which is why we qualified the former as "direct"). Two examples: false flag operations, and the backlash creating a common enemy (the backlasher) that induces unity among the attackers (assassinators). The latter scenario was inspired by 9/11 (though that wasn't an assassination).
And sometimes an assassination has no political effect at all: the victim is quickly and smoothly replaced by someone politically similar, who continues business exactly as before. When does this happen?
We might be able to predict the effectiveness of assassination by looking at how much protection (bodyguards, etc.) a potential assassination victim surrounds himself or herself with. Society has already implicitly figured out who is precious.
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