Does democratic progress deter terrorist incidents?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101951Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Transitions from a low level of democracy to a middle one increase terror attacks.

  • Terrorism is peaked when a country is at the very middle level of democracy.

  • Once peaked, terrorism may not be deterred by incremental democratization.

  • Speedy progresses of a mid-range democracy to the highest level reduce terrorism.

  • More terror attacks with a lower level of income and a larger population.

Abstract

This paper examines the democracy-terrorism linkage that can be distinguished at different stages of democracy. We first attempt to identify the level of democracy where terrorism is peaked, and then investigate if there is a significant reduction of terror incidents as a country advances to higher levels of democracy from the peaked level of terrorism.

Using data from 124 countries covering the period 1984–2017, the study finds that the terrorism-increasing effect of democratization is peaked when a country is at the very middle level of democracy. Furthermore, there is evidence that terrorism may not be deterred as a country incrementally progresses to higher levels of democracy from the peak unless the country reaches the very highest level of democracy.

The study also presents evidence that terror attacks become more prevalent with a lower level of economic development, a larger population, or an increase in instability of governance. However, economic growth, urbanization, and globalization are not significantly related to terrorism.

Introduction

In the post-9/11 era, many countries that are directly and indirectly affected by terrorist acts executed the global war on terror as a major focus in policymaking. Along with this development, research on terrorism has become extensive. While many of these studies greatly help understand the important role of democracy or lack of it as a contributor to terrorism, the focus has limitations as discussed below. In the present paper, we argue that the effect of democracy on terrorism is conditional on the level of democracy and examine the democracy-terrorism linkage at different stages of democracy.

The democratic wave of uprising during the Arab Spring that was accompanied by an explosion of terrorism led one to question if terrorism becomes more prevalent with democratization. The answer does not seem to be clear-cut. We observe that countries in the West with high levels of democracy experience terrorism infrequently while countries elsewhere with growing democracy face more terror attacks. The seemingly non-monotonic link leads to our research questions: at what level of democracy is terrorism peaked? And, when a country moves from one level of democracy to another, what is the effect on terrorism? Is terrorism significantly deterred or fostered with further democratic advances from the peaked level? Addressing these questions requires various stages of democracy to be differentiated. However, previous studies on terrorism made little attempt to consider different levels of democracy. As a result, the effect of democratic progress on terrorism could not be distinguished at different stages of democracy. This paper expands the existing literature on the democracy-terrorism linkage by classifying various levels of democracies to explore the above-mentioned questions.

Using data from 124 countries for the years of 1984–2017, this study finds that, as a country advances from a low level of democracy to an intermediate one, terror incidents increase, and the terrorism-increasing effect is peaked when a country is at the midmost level of democracy. Evidence also suggests that terrorism is in general not significantly deterred by incremental progress of democracy from the peak unless the country makes a speedy transition to the very highest level of democracy.

With regard to socio-economic factors, the result shows that a lower level of economic development or a larger population significantly breeds more terrorism while no significant relation is found between economic growth and terrorism. Moreover, there is no evidence that globalization or urbanization promotes terror incidences. Internal stability is also vital in deterring terrorism.

The rest of the paper includes a review of the existing studies on the causes of terrorism in Section 2, followed by the model, data, and methodology employed in the study in Section 3. The estimation results are reported in Section 4, and Section 5 presents the conclusion.

Section snippets

Literature survey

There is abundant literature that studies the root causes of terrorism. Since the driving forces of terrorism are multifaceted, a wide range of determinants of terrorism has been included in various empirical studies. On the whole, the discussion on the causes of terrorism is centered on two categories: socio-economic and politico-institutional factors.1

The model, methodology, and data

As shown in the previous section, whether the linkage between democracy and terrorism is positive or negative is not agreed in the literature. If the first (or, the second) approach is correct, the most free and liberal regimes are the least (or, the most) vulnerable to terrorism. However, in the real world, partial democracies often experience terrorism at higher rates than advanced democracies and autocratic regimes.10 Therefore, democracy

Terrorism and democracy

As discussed earlier, the relationship between democracy and terror incidents may be non-monotonic and/or non-linear. In existing studies such as Abadie (2006) and Freytag et al. (2011), the non-linearity is found when the squared terms of democracy variables are included. Since the present study is based on the curvilinear relationship between democracy and terrorism, we first examine if there is an inverted U-shaped link between the two, as postulated in Hypothesis 1. If Hypothesis 1 holds,

Conclusion

In this paper, we have examined the democracy-terrorism linkage that can be distinguished at different stages of democracy. The democracy-terrorism link is not monotonic as we often observe less terrorism associated with high levels of democracy in the West, in contrast to more frequent terror attacks in countries of making democratic progress. The seemingly non-monotonic link leads to our research questions: at what level of democracy is terrorism peaked? And, when a country moves from one

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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