IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v51y2007i2p329-348.html

Does Democracy Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Sara Jackson Wade

    (Department of Political Science Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia)

  • Dan Reiter

    (Department of Political Science Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia)

Abstract

This article conducts quantitative tests on the relationship between regime type and suicide terrorism for 1980 to 2003. We present the recently popularized argument that democracies are more likely to experience suicide terrorism and a new hypothesis that mixed regimes are especially likely to experience suicide terrorism. We offer several improvements in research design, including using more controls, the nation-year as the unit of analysis, and more appropriate statistical techniques. Using both Freedom House and Polity data, we find that in general, regime type is uncorrelated with suicide terrorism. We do find that there is a statistically significant interaction between regime type and the number of religiously distinct minorities at risk (MARs) with suicide terrorism, but the statistical significance of this finding is limited, and its substantive impact is marginal. We also find that national size, Islam, national experience with suicide terrorism, and global experience with suicide terrorism affect the likelihood of suicide terrorism.

Suggested Citation

  • Sara Jackson Wade & Dan Reiter, 2007. "Does Democracy Matter?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(2), pages 329-348, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:51:y:2007:i:2:p:329-348
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002706298137
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002706298137
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002706298137?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey Pickering, 1999. "The structural shape of force: Interstate intervention in the zones of peace and turmoil, 1946--1996," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 363-391, September.
    2. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Explaining Rare Events in International Relations," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(3), pages 693-715, July.
    3. Pape, Robert A., 2003. "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(3), pages 343-361, August.
    4. Eli Berman & David Laitin, 2005. "Hard Targets: Theory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks," NBER Working Papers 11740, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric D. Gould & Esteban F. Klor, 2010. "Does Terrorism Work?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1459-1510.
    2. Tim Krieger & Daniel Meierrieks, 2011. "What causes terrorism?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 3-27, April.
    3. James A. Piazza, 2013. "Regime Age and Terrorism: Are New Democracies Prone to Terrorism?," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 246-263, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amir Sabri & Günther G. Schulze, 2021. "Are suicide terrorists different from ‘regular militants’?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(1), pages 155-181, July.
    2. Friedrich Schneider & Tilman Brück & Daniel Meierrieks, 2010. "The Economics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: A Survey (Part II)," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1050, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. David A. Jaeger & M. Daniele Paserman, 2006. "Israel, the Palestinian Factions, and the Cycle of Violence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 45-49, May.
    4. Skarbek, David, 2011. "Governance and Prison Gangs," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 702-716, November.
    5. Eric D. Gould & Esteban F. Klor, 2010. "Does Terrorism Work?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1459-1510.
    6. Berman, Eli & Laitin, David D., 2008. "Religion, terrorism and public goods: Testing the club model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1942-1967, October.
    7. Sumitra Sri Bhashyam & Gilberto Montibeller, 2016. "In the Opponent's Shoes: Increasing the Behavioral Validity of Attackers’ Judgments in Counterterrorism Models," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(4), pages 666-680, April.
    8. Kjell Hausken & Sheheryar Banuri & Dipak Gupta & Klaus Abbink, 2015. "Al Qaeda at the bar: coordinating ideologues and mercenaries in terrorist organizations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 57-73, July.
    9. Becker, Gary S. & Rubinstein, Yona, 2011. "Fear and the response to terrorism: an economic analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121740, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2013. "Linkages between inflation, economic growth and terrorism in Pakistan," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 496-506.
    11. Kjell Hausken & Dipak K. Gupta, 2016. "Determining the ideological orientation of terrorist organisations: the effects of government repression and organised crime," International Journal of Public Policy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 12(1/2), pages 71-97.
    12. Meierrieks, Daniel & Renner, Laura, 2021. "Islamist terrorism and the role of women," Discussion Paper Series 2021-02, University of Freiburg, Wilfried Guth Endowed Chair for Constitutional Political Economy and Competition Policy.
    13. Jomon A. Paul & Aniruddha Bagchi, 2019. "Civil Liberties and Terrorism in Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(2), pages 623-651, April.
    14. Joachim Wagner, 2005. "Der Noth gehorchend, nicht dem eignen Trieb Nascent Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurs in Germany Evidence from the Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (REM)," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    15. Philip B. K. Potter, 2007. "Does Experience Matter?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(3), pages 351-378, June.
    16. Pearce Edwards, 2021. "The politics of nonviolent mobilization: Campaigns, competition, and social movement resources," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 58(5), pages 945-961, September.
    17. Radha Iyengar, 2010. "The Impact of Asymmetric Information Among Competing Insurgent Groups: Estimating an 'Emboldenment' Effect," CEP Discussion Papers dp1018, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    18. Zhang, Han, 2021. "How Using Machine Learning Classification as a Variable in Regression Leads to Attenuation Bias and What to Do About It," SocArXiv 453jk, Center for Open Science.
    19. Abel Brodeur, 2018. "The Effect of Terrorism on Employment and Consumer Sentiment: Evidence from Successful and Failed Terror Attacks," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 246-282, October.
    20. Hu, Jingxin & Yuan, Lihua & Liu, Bin & Li, Tao, 2025. "Government fiscal stress and firms’ choice of affiliates," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:51:y:2007:i:2:p:329-348. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.