Democracy is one of the most consistent predictors of terrorism. Yet we know little about why there is an apparent relationship between terrorism and democracy. In this article, I argue that previous democratic breakdown is a significant predictor of terrorism. While democratic civil liberties increase the opportunity to carry out terrorist attacks, they do not explain why groups are motivated to use terrorism rather than legal means for implementing change. Democratic breakdown, however, creates grievances that motivate terrorism by excluding groups with full rights of participation from the political process. Such grievances, which persist over long periods of time, will lead to high levels of terrorism once the regime re-democratizes, since the motivation for political violence is combined with the opportunities provided by democratic civil liberties. Cross-national statistical evidence from 1970 to 2007 lends strong support for this argument. It further demonstrates that only democracies that have experienced democratic breakdown experience more terrorism than autocracies. Moreover, an extreme bounds analysis indicates that previous democratic breakdown is one of the most robust predictors of terrorism and the most robust among variables conceptually related to democracy.
AchenC (2005) Let’s put garbage-can regressions and garbage-can Probits where they belong. Conflict Management and Peace Science22(4): 327–339.
2.
AksoyDCarterDWrightJ (2012) Terrorism in dictatorships. Journal of Politics74(3): 810–826.
3.
ArendtH (1977) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin.
4.
BellM (2016) Examining explanations for nuclear proliferation. International Studies Quarterly60(3): 520–529.
5.
BenjaminD and 71 coauthors (2018) Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behavior2: 6–10.
6.
BloomM (2004) Palestinian suicide bombing: Public support, market share, and outbidding. Political Science Quarterly119(1): 61–88.
7.
BoixCMillerMRosatoS (2013) A complete dataset of political regimes, 1800–2007. Comparative Political Studies46(12): 1523–1554.
8.
Bueno de MesquitaBSmithASiversonRMorrowJ (2005) The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
9.
CedermanLWeidmanNGleditschK (2011) Horizontal inequalities and ethnonationalist civil war: A global comparison. American Political Science Review105(3): 478–495.
10.
ChenowethE (2010) Democratic competition and terrorist activity. Journal of Politics72(1): 16–30.
11.
ChenowethE (2012) Is terrorism still a democratic phenomenon?International Relations32(8): 85–100.
12.
ChenowethE (2013) Terrorism and democracy. Annual Review of Political Science16: 355–378.
13.
CingranelliDRichardsD (2010) The Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project. Human Rights Quarterly32: 401–424.
14.
CoserL (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Routledge.
15.
CrenshawM (1981) The causes of terrorism. Comparative Politics13(4): 379–399.
16.
DebsAGoemansH (2010) Regime type, the fate of leaders, and war. American Political Science Review104(3): 430–445.
17.
De la TorreCLemosA (2016) Populist polarization and the slow death of democracy in Ecuador. Democratization23(2): 221–241.
18.
DraguTPrzeworskiA (2019) Preventive repression: Two types of moral hazard. American Political Science Review113(1): 77–87.
19.
DreherAGassebnerMSiemersL (2010) Does democracy threaten human rights? Evidence from panel data. Journal of Law and Economics53(1): 65–93.
20.
EubankWWeinbergL (1994) Does democracy encourage terrorism?Terrorism and Political Violence6(4): 417–435.
21.
EubankWWeinbergL (2001) Terrorism and democracy: Perpetrators and victims. Terrorism and Political Violence13(1): 155–164.
22.
FindleyMYoungJ (2011) Terrorism, democracy, and credible commitments. International Studies Quarterly55(2): 357–378.
23.
FindleyMYoungJ (2012) Terrorism and civil war: A spatial and temporal approach to a conceptual problem. Perspectives on Politics10(2): 285–305.
24.
FritzscheP (1998) Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
25.
GaibulloevKPiazzaJSandlerT (2017) Regime types and terrorism. International Organization71(3): 491–522.
26.
GeddesBWrightJFrantzE (2014) Autocratic breakdown and regime transitions: A new data set. Perspectives on Politics12(2): 313–331.
27.
GerringJBondPBarndtWMorenoC (2005) Democracy and economic growth: A historical perspective. World Politics57(3): 323–364.
28.
GurrT (1970) Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
29.
HaberSMenaldoV (2011) Do natural resources fuel authoritarianism? A reappraisal of the resource curse. American Political Science Review105(1): 1–26.
30.
HegreHEllingsenTGatesSGleditschN (2001) Toward a democratic civil peace? Democracy, political change, and civil war, 1816–1992. American Political Science Review95(1): 33–48.
31.
HegreHSambanisN (2006) Sensitivity analysis of empirical results on civil war onset. Journal of Conflict Resolution50(4): 508–535.
32.
HilbeJ (2007) Negative Binomial Regression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
HlavacM (2016) ExtremeBounds: Extreme bounds analysis in R. Journal of Statistical Software72(9): 1–22.
34.
HoffmanB (2006) Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press.
35.
HooverKPerezS (2004) Truth and robustness in cross-country growth regressions. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics66(5): 765–798.
36.
HuddyL (2001) From social to political identity: A critical examination of social identity theory. Political Psychology22(1): 127–156.
37.
JenningsMStokerLBowersJ (2009) Politics across generations: Family transmission reexamined. Journal of Politics71(3): 782–799.
38.
JohnstonHLaranaEGusfieldJ (1994) New Social Movements: From Ideologies to Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
39.
KalyvasS (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40.
KyddAWalterB (2006) The strategies of terrorism. International Security31(1): 49–80.
41.
LaiB (2007) “Draining the swamp”: An empirical examination of the production of international terrorism, 1968–1998. Conflict Management and Peace Science24(4): 297–310.
42.
LaqueurW (1999) The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
43.
LeamerE (1985) Sensitivity analysis would help. American Economic Review75(3): 308–313.
44.
LenzGSahnA (2017) Achieving statistical significance with covariates and without transparency. Unpublished Manuscript.
45.
LiQ (2005) Does democracy promote or reduce transnational terrorist incidents?Journal of Conflict Resolution49(2): 278–297.
46.
MaedaK (2010) Two modes of democratic breakdown: A competing risks analysis of democratic durability. Journal of Politics72(4): 1129–1143.
47.
MainwaringSPérez-LiñánA (2013) Lessons from Latin America: Democratic breakdown and survival. Journal of Democracy24(2): 123–137.
48.
MansfieldESnyderJ (1995) Democratization and the danger of war. International Security20(1): 5–38.
49.
MansfieldESnyderJ (2002) Democratic transitions, institutional strength, and war. International Organization56(2): 297–337.
50.
McDoomO (2012) The psychology of threat in intergroup conflict: Emotions, rationality, and opportunity in the Rwandan Genocide. International Security37(2): 119–155.
51.
MollerH (1968) Youth as a force in the modern world. Comparative Studies in Society and History10(3): 237–260.
52.
NemethS (2014) The effect of competition on terrorist group operations. Journal of Conflict Resolution58(2): 336–362.
53.
OberschallA (2004) Explaining terrorism: The contributions of collective action theory. Sociological Theory22(1): 26–37.
54.
ØstbyG (2008) Polarization, horizontal inequalities, and violent civil conflict. Journal of Peace Research45(2): 143–162.
55.
PapeR (2003) The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. American Political Science Review97(3): 343–361.
56.
PetersenR (2002) Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
PiazzaJ (2011) Poverty, minority economic discrimination, and domestic terrorism. Journal of Peace Research48(3): 339–353.
58.
PiazzaJ (2017) Repression and terrorism: A cross-national empirical analysis of types of repression and domestic terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence29(1): 102–118.
59.
PiazzaJWalshJ (2010) Why respecting physical integrity rights reduces terrorism. Comparative Political Studies43(5): 551–577.
60.
PlumperTTraunmullerR (2018) The sensitivity of sensitivity analysis. Political Science Research and Methods (First View).
61.
PopperK (1963) The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol 1. The Spell of Plato. New York: Harper & Row.
62.
PrestonP (1986) The Triumph of Democracy in Spain. London: Routledge.
63.
PrzeworskiAAlvarezMCheibubJLimongiF (2000) Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950—1990. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
64.
Sala-i-MartinX (1997) I just ran two-million regressions. American Economic Review87(2): 178–183.
65.
Sanchez-CuencaIde la CalleL (2009) Domestic terrorism: The hidden side of political violence. Annual Review of Political Science12: 31–49.
66.
SandlerT (2014) The analytical study of terrorism: Taking stock. Journal of Peace Research51(2): 257–271.
67.
SchmidA (1992) Terrorism and democracy. Terrorism and Political Violence4(4): 14–25.
68.
SchumpeterJ (1942) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
69.
SlaterD (2003) Iron cage in an iron fist: Authoritarian institutions and the personalization of power in Malaysia. Comparative Politics36(1): 81–101.
70.
SmithA (1991) National Identity. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.
71.
SprinzakE (1991) The process of delegitimation: Towards a linkage theory of political terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence. 3(1): 50–68.
72.
TajfelHTurnerJ (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In: HatchMJSchultzM (eds), Organizational Identity: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 56–65.
73.
TarrowS (1994) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
74.
ThomsonH (2016) Rural grievances, landholding inequality, and civil conflict. International Studies Quarterly60(3): 511–519.
75.
TimmonsJ (2010) Does democracy reduce economic inequality?British Journal of Political Science40(4): 741–757.
76.
TschantretJ (2018) Repression, opportunity, and innovation: The evolution of terrorism in Xinjiang, China. Terrorism and Political Violence30(4): 569–588.
77.
VaronJ (2004) Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
78.
VreelandJ (2008) The effect of political regime on civil war: Unpacking anocracy. Journal of Conflict Resolution52(3): 401–425.
79.
WalshJPiazzaJ (2010) Why respective physical integrity rights reduces terrorism. Comparative Political Studies43(5): 551–577.
80.
WeeksJ (2012) Strongmen and straw men: Authoritarian regimes and the initiation of international conflict. American Political Science Review106(2): 326–347.
81.
WhiteH (1980) A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica48: 817–838.
82.
Whitten-WoodringJVan BelleD (2017) The correlates of media freedom: An introduction of the Global Media Freedom Dataset. Political Science Research and Methods5(1): 179–188.
83.
WilsonMPiazzaJ (2013) Autocracies and terrorism: Conditioning effects of authoritarian regime type on terrorist attacks. American Journal of Political Science57(4): 941–955.
84.
YoungJ (2009) State capacity, democracy, and the violation of physical integrity rights. Journal of Human Rights8(4): 283–300.
85.
YoungJDuganL (2011) Veto players and terror. Journal of Peace Research48(1): 19–33.
86.
YoungJFindleyM (2011) Promise and pitfalls of the terrorism research. International Studies Review13(3): 411–431.
87.
ZeileisA (2004) Econometric computing with HC and HAC covariance matrix estimators. Journal of Statistical Software11(10): 1–17.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
