Terror’s True Nightmare? Reevaluatingthe Consequences of Terrorismon Democratic Governance

KRISTOPHER K. ROBISON

Department of Sociology, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb,Illinois, USA

Some scholars argue that terrorism has few adverse consequences for political andcivil liberties in democracies and that fears about a reversal of freedoms due to coun-terterror programs are unjustified. However, anecdotal evidence suggests thatdemocracies respond to terrorism in ways that curtail at least some of the rights thatdefine democratic governance. In an analysis of a large sample of the world’snations, this study finds that terrorism has deleterious effects on regimes’ respectfor civil and human rights but few consequences for overall political access. I con-clude that terrorism has measurable negative influences on particular aspects ofdemocracy.

Keywords civil rights, democracy, democratic governance, dissent, politicalrights, repression, terrorism

Introduction

Events since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have heightened fears in bothpublic and academic sectors about the growing specter of surveillance and usurpationof civil rights as governments around the world attempt to thwart terrorism. Manyscholars and journalists point to anecdotal evidence of a breakdown in civil rightsallegedly in the wake of the U.S. Patriot Act, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq,and other high profile instances related to states’ institutionalized attempts to stopterrorism.1 Some actively maintain that a ‘‘tradeoff’’2 between terrorism and demo-cratic rights is necessary at some level in order to successfully counter terrorism.

By contrast a recent study3 submits evidence that terrorism does not harm poli-tical or civil liberties. Weinberg and colleagues examine the ‘‘trade-off hypothesis’’that argues that democracies will reduce or retract civil or political rights in the wakeof terrorism. In other words, the hypothesis suggests it is both better and inevitablefor democracies to trade off some liberties for peace and security. In the long term,this trade-off will pay as terrorism wanes. Weinberg and authors present evidence

Kristopher K. Robison is an assistant professor in Sociology at Northern IllinoisUniversity in De Kalb, IL. His interests include the causes and consequences of civil and stateterrorism and the drivers of the global digital divide.

Address correspondence to Kristopher K. Robison, Department of Sociology, NorthernIllinois University, 820 Zulauf Hall, De Kalb, IL 60115, USA. E-mail: krob@niu.edu

Terrorism and Political Violence, 22:62–86, 2010Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09546550903409593

62

that disputes the trade-off is inevitable within democracies. Using some of the mostcomprehensive cross-national indicators on both terrorism and political and civilrights available, they find no statistically significant correlations between terrorismand democratic liberties in individualized cases of democratic nation-states, leadingthem to conclude that terrorism does not in fact pose a threat to freedoms. If it istrue that democracies do not engage in sweeping counterterror polices that trampledemocratic rights, then the concern some have about the war on terror is unfounded.

While their study was one of a few of its kind attempting to link (or delink) ter-rorism specifically to political outcomes (e.g., respect for political and civil rights), itsuffers from a series of limitations that make the association between terrorism andpolitical governance worthy of further evaluation. First, their quantitative case-studymethodology does not control for other theoretically salient predictors of politicaland civil rights that may mask the true relationship between terrorism and demo-cratic outcomes. Second, their sample size is limited to twenty-four democraticnations and does not include the full and diverse universe of nations for which datais available. This is unfortunate since pooled cross-section time-series methods areavailable to further evaluate a generalized relationship of terrorism and democraticgovernance across large samples of individual nations over time. In addition, they donot include as dependent variables more specific indicators of regimes’ institutiona-lization of abuse of human rights.

Moreover, there is considerable anecdotal and empirical evidence that sub-statepolitical violence of all levels of severity and type do in fact matter for states’ respectfor civil or human rights. In several notable cases, political violence clearly has haddeleterious consequences for democratic governance, thus pointing to a likely gener-alizable relationship between violence and political outcomes. Anecdotally, violentdissent has led governments to retract civil liberties, censorship, or the curtailmentof other freedoms.4 In more than a few nations, it has also facilitated the creationof emergency powers and emergency zones, where governments cede executive andeven judicial powers statute-by-statute over to the militaries, who in turn perpetratewidespread political imprisonment, torture, collective massacres, disappearances,and other forms of extrajudicial killings. Often the worst forms of abuses—wholesalemassacres—are committed against social groups who are physically and sociallydistant from armies and=or states (e.g., village indigenes).5 What prevails in thesecountries is an ongoing and organized=institutionalized legacy of violence on thepart of states.

While the most egregious forms of human rights abuses have occurred in lessthan democratic nations, modern democracies have not escaped criticism for meetingterrorist violence with semi-repressive policies such as warrantless searches and sei-zures, wiretapping, and even targeted assassinations.6

Even closer to home, the U.S. government has taken what is likely typical of theaverage response of even democratic states to terrorist violence. Institutionalizedpolicies following from 9=11 have allowed controversial extensions of governmentpower, including the increased ability to spy on citizen and foreigner alike, detainsuspects with greater ease while limiting their access to due process, and subpoenathe personal records of the accused with less judicial and legislative oversight.7 Com-bined with rumors of secret prisons, prisoner abuse scandals, warrantless searchesand the alleged renditioning of detainee torture to autocratic foreign nations, thesemeasures have stimulated rancorous debate in American society about the necessityof an ends-justifies-the-means approach to terrorism. Indeed, some critics of U.S.

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 63

anti-terrorism policy are quick to cite the controversy during the middle of the twen-tieth century over the FBI’s COINTELPRO program that was directed againstsocial movements and counter-movements.8

Similar concerns have arisen in other parts of the Western world, including theUnited Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Australia. While most of the West’scounterterrorism policies are far from equivalent to the forms of physical torture,executions, and disappearances that have occurred in other parts of the world, someworry that seemingly innocuous antiterrorism provisions can mutate into evensmall-scale acts of repression and the curtailment of broader freedoms.9 Yet theseaccounts are anecdotal at best, and do not provide us with the most complete por-trait of how terrorism stimulates political responses and change. The question iswhether or not these cases reflect a more general pattern that can be seen across timeand space.

Indeed, prior empirical research10 has established a generalizable and causalconnection between various forms of internal conflict or dissent and states’ tram-pling of freedoms. Not surprisingly, conflict intensity on average greatly increasesthe chances of state repression. Major internal conflict, in the most destructive senseof the term, directly leads to organized state retraction or abuse of rights. Poe andTate11 and Poe and authors12 find that both internal and external war positively raisethe chances for state repression. Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui13 find that civil warsreduce the chances nation-states will respect human rights, yet find no significantrelationship for external wars. Similarly, Letnes and Westveld14 find a positive rela-tionship between internal war and state repression of rights. Yet these studies revealrepressions linked to larger, mass-level conflict.

However, it also appears that lesser dissent=conflict than that of full-fledged civilwarfare is just as likely to lead to an institutionalization of state repression. Forexample, Davenport15 and Davenport and authors16 (2004) find that a combinationof types of violence (e.g., riots, strikes, protests, and guerilla warfare) as well as con-flict frequency increase the propensity for states to employ repression. Using a verydifferent approach on a handful of nations, Moore17 and Shellman18 in separatestudies find that state agents (e.g., police and soldiers) on average respondextra-judicially and violently to violent dissent. Numerous other studies have empiri-cally established states’ violent responses to low-level political violence. Weinbergand authors’ recent piece is but one of the first to specifically measure the impactof terrorism exclusively on state repression within democracies.

Yet how do we reconcile this anecdotal and empirical evidence with their origi-nal findings: that terrorism does not result in a trade-off between rights and security?In this study I make the argument that terrorism does in fact force a trade-offbetween certain kinds of rights—but not others. Weinberg and colleagues are there-fore partially correct: terrorism, for reasons discussed below, should have littleadverse consequence for political freedoms and the overall political edifice ofnation-states but nonetheless harm civil and human rights.

Theory

On the one hand, terrorism in many nations—especially the most consolidateddemocracies in the West—never resulted in the actual destruction of politicalaccess=participation (e.g., the disenfranchisement of certain segments of the popula-tion) or the shuttering of critical political institutions such as political parties even

64 K. K. Robison

while instances and patterns of political imprisonment, torture, and legislativere-working of civil rights have occurred. Democratic governance, in the sense ofworking participatory democracy, would seem to be relatively safe overall in thesenations. This is not only because of the entrenched legacy of these freedoms, but alsobecause there is no compelling reason to reduce or eliminate political participation oraccess in the fight against terrorism. The right to vote, petition government, formparties among other political rights generally do not further threaten regimes alreadyunder assault by terrorists. Thus, we might expect that Weinberg and company arenot entirely incorrect in their reasoning that terrorism has no deleterious effect, atleast for political freedoms. Formally stated, I would predict that:

Hypothesis 1: Terrorism will have no discernible empirical effects ondemocratic governance – political freedoms (access to the regime or politi-cal participation).

Yet on the other hand, the aforementioned anecdotal and empirical evidencestrongly suggests that political violence in all its forms culminates in state repressionof civil and human rights on average even if it does not mean the destruction ofregular political participation and access. If terrorism is like other types of politicalviolence, then it too will tempt or motivate states to institutionalize and routinizeviolent responses that lead to infringements of basic rights. In other words, statesregularize and normalize torture, political imprisonment, and selected killings of sus-pected agitators as newly adopted state functions that specifically target terrorists.

Yet the question remains as to why states would respond to threats in these waysthat by all objective standards are small and largely non-threatening to a regime’sexistence or even status. Terrorist movements in the Western world have for the mostpart been fairly small and never as obtrusive as major rural guerilla insurgencies asseen in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

One simple answer is that regimes may perceive the threat from terrorists asbeing greater than it actually is, especially if the nature of the threat is viewed as abroadly-based, anti-systemic threat that could mutate into a wider insurgency orrevolution.19 A key element then in regimes’ decisions to systematize repression isthe perception of reality, not merely reality itself. However, it seems unlikely thata state would misperceive the extent and reality of such a relatively small threat.Nevertheless, perhaps the perception of threat extends from ripple effects of terror-ism on publics.

Significantly, states are not the only entities of significance affected by terrorismnor are they the only ones that perceive or react to such threats. In fact, publicsrespond to terrorism in even more consequential ways, especially in the case ofdemocracies, given democratic regimes’ inclusion of, and dependence upon, citizens.Public reactions are crucial to understanding democratic state overreactions to terrorprecisely because terrorists often target the public and not the state directly. Publicswill overreact to the threat of terrorism in part because they are the very victims ofterrorism. In the minds of citizens (and members of paranoid regimes), terrorism isamorphous, anonymous and unpredictable and of uncertain potential. People underthreat have a tendency to amplify=exaggerate the probability of subsequent violencedirected toward themselves over less observable or more long-term risks because vio-lence is immediate, bloody, and emotionally impactful.20 Moreover, terrorism hasunintentionally communicated that civilians and civil society itself are their enemies

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 65

and must be destroyed; civilians do not see the strategic (and even understandable)political goals that terrorists are often striving for. Instead, civilians see only theblood and mayhem perpetrated against them by inhuman monsters.21 Additionally,this violence communicates to publics that the state is inept or impotent in providingsecurity—an intolerable situation that appears to be pointing to growing social dis-order. In the end, the unsettled atmosphere of fear and anxiety surrounding majorepisodes of terrorism threatens states’ legitimacy as the sole monopolist of violenceand guarantor of security (arguably a major function of democratic states). Unlessdemocratic states respond in observable and meaningful ways to the public menace,they will face a diminution of support and legitimacy. Given that in democracies thestate is ruled by the people, an attack on civilians is in essence an attack on the state,thus making state actors all the more sensitive to public reactions.

Civilians’ plaintive turn to their state governments and any concomitant reduc-tion in critical evaluation of regimes will pave the way for state aggression leading tocivil and human rights infringement in the subsequent campaign against terrorists.Specifically, publics will give the green light or at least temporarily turn a blindeye to state expansion of powers through counterterrorism mechanisms such as (1)broadened searches and seizures, arrests=detentions involving torture and politicalimprisonment, and other forms of retaliations against alleged conspirators (allattacks on human rights); and (2) a general infringement on rights of travel, speech,and assembly (all forms of civil rights abuses). The outcome of public and states’ pre-occupation with solving the problem of terrorist violence then is a circumscription offreedoms that are perceived to stand in the way of effective counterterrorism. Pre-sently two available empirical measures tap either general human rights (i.e., physicalrights) or civil rights (i.e., basic freedoms) and thus are useful for evaluating theadverse relationship between terrorism and these twin freedoms.

This reasoning in light of the anecdotal evidence of regimes’ responses to terror-ists and the availability of useful empirical suggests the following testable hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Terrorism will reduce levels on empirical measures of bothhuman and civil rights.

These two hypotheses are testable using conventional cross-national datasets ondemocracy=authoritarianism and political violence such as terrorism. Below Idescribe the research design and the operationalization of state respect for human,civil, and political rights, terrorism, and other theoretically significant variablesfor this study.

Research Design

To test these hypotheses, I apply a pooled time-series cross-section analysis to anannualized, unbalanced panel of data on the world’s nations (approximately 85 to131 nations) for the years 1976–2000. The advantage to using a pooled researchdesign is the combination of cross-section and time-series methodologies into a singleanalysis. Instead of severely limiting the degrees of freedom by relying on atime-series analysis of a single country or on a cross-section of nations for a singletime period and thus greatly reducing the number of theoretically necessary controls,pooled cross-section time-series designs allow for a maximum level of hypothesistesting on a wide range of important variables.

66 K. K. Robison

For the analysis, I split the sample into three separate datasets—one with thefull sample of all nations, a second including only democratic nations and the thirdcontaining exclusively non-democratic nations (I operationalize democratic andnon-democratic below). I first include the larger, complete sample of all nationsin each analysis to demonstrate that the findings are generalizable to the entiresample. The logic behind a three-sample strategy is to allow for a comparativeunderstanding of the effects that terrorism has on democratic nations versusnon-democratic states. In short, the point is to demonstrate that the trends (speci-fically, the negative relationship between terrorism and rights) in the data are notlimited to autocratic or semi-autocratic regimes but also apply to more democraticnation-states.

I operationalize the democratic sample as nations that have scored a numeric 1or higher on the political variable Polity22 for each year in the sample. POLITYdefines nations with a score of 1 to 10 as democratic, meaning that they have atthe minimum some protections afforded to political participation and civil rights.Furthermore, I limit the non-democratic sample to nations who score less than orequal to �1 on the same Polity measure—or nations that are defined asnon-democratic, meaning that they have little to no protections for liberties and par-ticipation. As such, these separate analyses are able to determine the effect of terror-ism on respect for rights within either democratic or non-democratic regimes. Whilethis is but only one database useful for determining whether a country is a democ-racy, the Polity methodology has gained widespread acceptance as an importantmeasure of democratic status and it is routinely updated for a large sample ofnations over time. As such, it is commonly used in cross-national research. Thus Iadhere to convention and use it as both a sample divisor and as a control variablefor several models as discussed below. A list of democratic, non-democratic, and fullsample nations appears in the endnotes.23 In both of the tables of findings, I analyzeeach model separately on the full samples, the sample of democratic nations, andfinally the sample of non-democratic nations.24

All independent variables are lagged one year as an appropriate test of causality.The lagged dependent variable is included in the right-hand side of the equation tomore effectively accommodate autocorrelation as well as to control for heritageeffects of nation-state political situations. Furthermore, I make use of ordered logitregression analysis given the rank ordinal nature of the dependent variables. I alsoemploy robust standard errors clustered by country to control for statistical depen-dence within observations.25

The following equation is based on the foregoing theoretical discussion andguides the rest of the paper. Y is the dependent variable, X is a vector of theoreticallyimportant covariates, and Z is a vector of control variables.

Y ¼ Logitðp1Þ ¼ logðp=1� p1Þaþ bxXit-1 þ bzZit-1 þ lit

Dependent Variables

I employ several political dependent variables in this study, including a measure ofoverall democratic governance and of important political rights. I also include twovariables for my measures of the abuse of civil rights and an indicator of humanrights infringement by the state.

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 67

For my evaluation of hypothesis 1, the relationship of terrorism to overall demo-

cratic governance and political freedoms, I include the standard Polity measure26 andthe political rights index from Freedom House. The Polity variable is commonly usedin cross-national research and is similar to the state repression of human rights indexin that it is an ordinal scale ranging from �10 (indicating most autocratic) toþ 10(for consolidated democracies); here I employ it as a conventional and broadmeasure of overall democratic governance.

The Freedom House political rights indicator ranges from 1 to 7 and with reversecoding indicates a low degree of political freedom to a high degree consistent withconsolidated democracies. Political freedom in Freedom House refers to the presenceof ‘‘free and fair elections’’ at the legislative and executive level, a high degree of poli-tical plurality and alternatives as well as political access, the relative absence of dom-inating interest groups, the protection of minority rights, direct rule by electedofficials, lack of corruption, accountability, and transparency.27

For an evaluation of hypothesis 1, I use two variables. First, I adhere to one con-ventional understanding of state’s abuse of human rights.28 In this view, human rightsviolations is a government’s systematic and violent violation of personal integrityrights of its citizens to intimidate persons into complying and cooperating with poli-cies issued by the regime. The major assumption behind any recognition of personalintegrity rights is that persons have the right to not be harmed physically by theirgovernment, or imprisoned because of their political, religious, or ideological viewsor non-violent activities. Examples of state infringement of these rights includestate-initiated killings and massacres, forced disappearances, evictions and illegiti-mate deportations, torture, and the incarceration of people for their ideological,political, and=or religious philosophies.29

While individual and isolated occurrences of abuse can be observed in manycontexts, the crucial element that makes it human rights infringement is the institu-tionalized, routinized, and widespread application of state-initiated violence to apopulace.30 Data for state human rights abuses are actually available as two rankordinal variables indicating degrees of severity in state abuse of human rights andare constructed from various content analyses of U.S. State Department reportson repression and, alternatively, from reports produced by Amnesty International.31

I combine two datasets on human rights abuses derived in this manner: the Poe andTate 1994 (1976–1993) and Gibney dataset (1980–2002) datasets to create a singledataset for the period 1976–2002.32 While other measures of state repression areavailable, this combined measure is better in terms of spatial and temporal coverage.By contrast, data from the Physical Integrity Rights Index33 only extends back to1981 because many of the component variables they have created (indicators for tor-ture and political imprisonment) are based on U.S. reports that Cingranelli considersmore objective than those prior to the early 1980s.34 The measure I derive from thesources above extends to 1976, a full five years (or more than 500 country-years) ear-lier. The human rights abuse measure I use ranges on a 5-point ordinal scale with 1indicating the relative absence of government abuses (i.e., extrajudicial killings, tor-ture, political imprisonment, and disappearances) and a high of 5 indicating abusesare applied throughout the population.35

I also include data on civil rights from Freedom House as a broader indicator ofcivil rights. The components that make up the civil rights index include questionsthat indicate the degree of freedom of expression and belief and faith, intellectualliberty and the non-politicization of educational systems, the permission of fair

68 K. K. Robison

and open discussion and the right to assembly. At present the Freedom House civilrights index is the most comprehensive indicator of civil rights at the nation-statelevel and when used in combination with the political rights index provides a morecomplete and nuanced portrait of the state of democracy within a country. The indexof civil rights is an ordinal scale indicator ranging from a score of 1 indicating lowlevel of civil rights freedoms to a high of 7; however, I reverse coded the variable towhere 7 indicates a low level of respect for civil rights (i.e., civil rights abuse) to main-tain consistency with the state repression indicator.

Main Independent Variables: Terrorism

In addition to several dependent variables, I also make use of three terrorism indi-cators to test the hypotheses of terrorism’s unique effects on democratic governanceand respect for civil and human rights. While all three operational definitions of ter-rorism and their respective data sources are summarized in Figure 1, there are severalcommon overlapping elements in the definitions that lead us to a single and usefulunderstanding of terrorism.

In this study, terrorism is defined as unconventional violence conducted by anautonomous, non-state affiliated civil actor against vulnerable targets that isintended to induce anxiety among various audiences, including the general public,in order to produce specific political or ideological goals. Acts of terrorism include

Figure 1. Definitions of terrorism from three sources.

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 69

bombings, suicide attacks, assassinations, hijackings, hostage-taking, small arms andchemical attacks, and other uses of coercive force.

The first terrorism variable (X1) in the analysis is the total number of terrorist

event counts by location of occurrence and is available from the International Attri-butes of Terrorism or ITERATE database.36 For the analysis I aggregated the eventdata at the country-year level creating a total yearly sum of terrorist attacks for eachnation in the sample.

As a further evaluation of the hypotheses, I also employ alternative measures ofterrorism from RAND=MIPT’s37 Terrorism Knowledgebase and the Global Terror-ism Database for two reasons. First, the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) includesboth domestic and international terrorism for an extended period of time (1972–1992=1994–1997)38 while ITERATE and RAND=MIPT predominantly includeinternational terrorism (although it is true that both do in fact include a smaller per-centage of domestic events). Domestic terrorism is where terrorists and victims sharethe same nationality and international terrorism is where they do not. Thus, theGTD potentially gives us a more complete portrait of all kinds of non-state terroristviolence and is hence a useful secondary test of the influences of pure homegrownterrorism and international insurgents. One major caveat is in order, however;GTD does not clearly distinguish between threats and actual violent events (as doesITERATE) and may also include criminal events that are not clearly terroristic innature given its broad and open-ended definition (and the original source of thedata: a private, non-scholastic institution).39 As there is the possibility of ‘‘numericalinflation’’40 with the GTD, I use the database and interpret its results with somecaution. In light of GTD’s problem, I use the RAND=MIPT data also as a generalcross-check for testing the robustness of the hypotheses. Most studies employingempirical work on terrorism use data from a single source; however, testing hypoth-eses using variables from multiple databases ensures a further degree of confidencein the findings.

Controls (Z):

Several theoretical controls are salient and critical for the investigation into therelationship between terrorism and political democracy.

Political development as a control variable. When evaluating the impact ofterrorism on civil and human rights indicators, I use the Polity measure as a controlfor political democracy given that states that grant greater political access and gen-eral freedoms for their citizens are less likely to repress and violate basic civil orhuman rights. Simply, prior political access should temper a regime’s use of coercionon terrorists.

Economic and state development variables. I use a measure for economic develop-

ment as GDP per capita from the World Bank to control for the influence of theforces of modernization on democracy.41 The relationship between democracy andeconomic development is well-established in the literature42 and thus is essential asa structural control when considering the influence of dynamic factors such as dis-sent and terrorism.

Furthermore, I use a control for state size (general government final consumptionexpenditure percentage of GDP) to tap the idea that a well-financed state affordsthe resources and reach to either repress or guarantee political access=coverage

70 K. K. Robison

across a nation’s territory as well as provide a certain degree of effective control overthe economy.

As a proxy for state militarization, I use the per capita number of militarypersonnel (soldiers) from the National Materials Capabilities database.43 The militarycapacity or strength of a nation-state likely predicts the degree to which a statehas the ability to regulate through force challenges to itself. Also, a stronger state(i.e., militarily) is undoubtedly more likely to experience a military coup or militaryintervention in democratic governance, thus increasing the chances of repressionthan those with weak militaries as several cases in Africa and Latin America havedemonstrated.44

Political process variables. In addition to terrorism and other ground-levelprocesses, general political activism affects the degree to which a state will retractor implement freedoms.45 In particular, protest movements may be met with force,cooptation, or assent (and expansion of rights or amelioration of grievances). At thevery least, protests generally have some outcome on the probability of subsequentdemocratization and=or regime change.

I use the best available measures of political dissent: anti-government demonstra-tions and general strikes.46 I create an additive numeric count of all instancesof peaceful activism (protests and strikes) by country year. The small values of thisvariable, however, cause the analyses to generate huge coefficients and thus I dividethe dissent variable by 1,000 to make the coefficients more readable. Furthermore Iuse a dummy variable indicative of major civil warfare prevalence from UppsalaUniversity’s Armed Conflicts database47 (defined as armed conflict that results inmore than 1,000 battle deaths annually).

Furthermore, current research on democratic governance also suggests that socialcapital as built through networks of grass-roots civil society organizations is of impor-tance for democracy for at least a couple of reasons.48 Civic associations are notusually state-organized=funded and yet afford a social and political space of individualcitizen involvement and cooperation with fellow citizens on activities and issues thatare salient to them. These organizations may effectively lobby government and thusin the aggregate create an environment where a state is more responsive to the public.Moreover, the organization and cooperation required of individual involvementin these organizations informs members of parliamentary procedural rules, politicalresponsibility, and other practices necessary for democratic governance. Also, aplethora of competing organizations for social volunteerism breeds a spirit of coopera-tion, ally-building, consensus, and peaceable competition—classic and crucial valuesof a democracy. In short, grassroots social organizations create a critical mass of socialand political participation that likely factor into the emergence of democracy.

As data on domestic social group organizations are often very limited acrossnation-states, one way to proxy for civil society is to count the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are registered as having offices=memberswithin a nation state from the Yearbook of International Organizations.49 Currentlythis is the best source of civil society organizations for cross-national research. Theexpectation for this analysis is that civil society as proxied by NGOs per capita willreduce human and civil rights abuses while at the same time boosting political free-doms and overall democratic governance. Thus entering it as a control for the ana-lysis is critical. In short, structural factors such as development and state size orstrength alone do not fully tap micro-level processes and dynamics that feed intoimportant political changes.

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 71

Controls for heterogeneity and omitted variable bias. Annual population data atthe nation-state level is an important control because population size affects thedegree to which a state can wield effective governance over its territory. More impor-tantly, larger nations are bound to produce more terrorism and thus failing to con-trol for size would seriously bias the estimators of the other independent and controlvariables.

Finally, I include spatial and temporal controls. I use a series of regional dummyvariables to control for the possibility that state terrorism is affected by idiosyncraticcultural variations that are confined to regional blocks of nations. I define Westernnations (North America and Western Europe) as the reference category. Moreover,this is a conservative test of missing variable bias—one approach in performing spa-tial fixed effects. I also employ the year variable in an attempt to accommodate forthe fact that terrorism appears to vary over time, notably evincing a strong declineafter 1993. And as with the regional dummy variables, the inclusion of the year vari-able helps to accommodate for omitted time-series variables that do not vary signifi-cantly across cases. Also, as part of a separate analysis, I ran multiplicativeinteractions of the terrorism variables with the year variable as a test of the cumula-tive effects of terrorism on state responses and discuss the results below.

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the variables used in the analyses.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics (sample based on model 1, Table 1)

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Polity 2388 2.047739 7.464384 �10 10Polity (t-1) 2388 1.931742 7.507513 �10 10Political Rights 2385 4.450734 2.148285 1 7Political Rights (t-1) 2384 4.426174 2.153081 1 7State Abuse of CivilRights

2385 3.653249 1.823854 1 7

State Abuse of CivilRights (t-1)

2384 3.672819 1.833479 1 7

State Abuse of HumanRights

2356 2.485144 1.145188 1 5

State Abuse of CivilHuman (t-1)

2267 2.478606 1.150562 1 5

Population (t-1) 2388 16.20444 1.48808 12.74534 20.95647Gdp=c (t-1) 2388 5.317293 7.789987 0.102531 38.50336Dissent (t-1) 2388 0.000897 0.002077 0 0.026Military Persons=c (t-1) 2388 0.005813 0.006759 0 0.059937State Size (t-1) 2388 20.0129 10.51532 3.060294 82.23844Civil war¼ 1 (t-1) 2388 0.046901 0.211472 0 1NGOs=pop (t-1) 2388 0.093737 0.117086 0 0.867486Iterate Terrorism (t-1) 2388 2.410804 6.408062 0 101GTD Terrorism (t-1) 2096 22.72567 64.20597 0 548Rand=MiptTerrorism (t-1)

2388 2.23995 5.580785 0 56

72 K. K. Robison

Findings and Interpretation

Table 2: The Effects of Terrorism on Democratic Governance and Political Rights

Table 2 presents the results for the effects of terrorism on both the general demo-cratic governance and political freedoms dependent variables in three major sections.First, models 1–6 present the findings for the full sample (all democratic andnon-democratic nations); second, models 7–12 present results for only thenon-democratic sample; and finally, models 13–18 exclusively present those fordemocratic nations. For the most part, the results suggest that terrorism (whateverthe data source) does not threaten both general democratic government and themore specific indicator of political participation=access (political rights).

For the complete sample (models 1–6), most of the terrorism indicators suggestno relationship with the political outcomes save for the RAND=MIPT terrorismindicator in model 6. This lone finding suggests that terrorism reduces political free-doms; however, it is not replicated by the models using the other two terrorism vari-ables (ITERATE and GTD in models 4 and 5) and thus I am hesitant to concludehere that terrorism adversely affects political freedoms. The findings for thenon-democratic and democratic samples as discussed below confirm my caution.

Focusing on models 7–9 (non-democratic nations) and models 13–15 (demo-cratic nations), terrorism is not a statistically significant predictor of general demo-cratic status (with Polity as a dependent variable) for nations in either samples, inconfirmation of Weinberg and authors. If there are influences of terrorism on speci-fic rights and other mechanisms of governance it is not apparent in the broad Polityindicator.

However, when I regress terrorism on the more precise measure of political free-doms (from Freedom House), I find mixed results across the two samples. For thenon-democratic sample, the political freedoms index is positively and significantlyinfluenced by two of the terrorism indicators (ITERATE and GTD) in models 10and 11, but not by the RAND terrorism indicator in model 12. Since the dependentvariables are rank ordinal indices, a technical interpretation of the results would saythat the odds of reaching the next level of political freedoms increase by an averageof .05 (model 10) for every single terrorist attack as indicated by the ITERATEterrorism indicator. Model 11 likewise demonstrates that terrorism increases theodds of a nation reaching the next level of civil rights abuse by .003 levels for everyone GTD terrorist attack. The anomalous findings in models 10 and 11 would seemto contradict Weinberg and authors’ research (and theory) as it suggests that terror-ism actually increases political participation and access—at least for nations that arenon-democratic.

While some argument could be constructed that maintains that terrorism is asuccessful tactic in compelling autocratic states to open the political process, severalreasons lead me to question its validity. First, the RAND terrorism indicator is notstatistically significant. The GTD and ITERATE terrorism findings could be, inother words, artifacts of the differences in measurement error between the sourcesof the terrorism variables. More significant is the fact that terrorism does not compelnon-democratic nations to become more generally democratic when looking at thePolity general democratic governance variable (see again models 7–9). Also, terror-ism does not move democratic regimes toward greater democracy for either the gen-eral measure (Polity) or the more specific political freedoms indicator (see models

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 73

Table 2. Ordered logit regression of political governance and political freedoms

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Full sample Non-democracies

Polity Polity Polity

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms Polity Polity

Polity 1.751��� 1.767��� 1.753��� 3.485��� 3.420���

[9.98] [9.22] [9.98] [11.74] [10.68]

Political

Freedoms (t-1)

2.763��� 2.776��� 2.767���

[17.66] [16.41] [17.75]

Civil Rights (t-1) 0.725��� 0.721��� 0.730���

[10.98] [10.77] [11.15]

Population

(log) (t-1)

0.137�� 0.134�� 0.140�� 0.002 0.001 0.015 0.064 0.109�

[2.43] [2.25] [2.44] [0.04] [0.02] [0.36] [1.06] [1.79]

GDP per capita

(t-1)

0.100��� 0.098��� 0.100��� 0.070��� 0.069��� 0.071��� �0.084��� �0.097���

[3.38] [3.22] [3.38] [3.32] [3.40] [3.25] [2.76] [2.92]

Dissent (t-1) �2.116 �10.302 �1.119 14.609 �1.86 18.685 2.858 15.478

[0.10] [0.52] [0.05] [0.63] [0.08] [0.80] [0.09] [0.46]

Soldiers per

capita (t-1)

�47.639��� �49.323��� �45.714��� �13.73 �12.643 �10.547 11.773 10.272

[4.30] [4.25] [3.82] [1.34] [1.15] [1.12] [0.93] [0.75]

State Size

GDP (t-1)

0.001 0.003 0.001 �0.007 �0.008� �0.007 �0.007 �0.007

[0.17] [0.46] [0.15] [1.57] [1.71] [1.59] [1.16] [1.03]

Civil War¼ 1

(t-1)

�0.07 �0.069 �0.06 0.086 0.173 0.138 0.005 0.095

[0.43] [0.36] [0.38] [0.50] [0.84] [0.81] [0.02] [0.37]

NGOs Per Capita

(t-1)

4.127�� 4.228�� 4.130�� 0.16 0.259 0.165 0.907 1.924

[2.47] [2.47] [2.47] [0.57] [0.80] [0.59] [0.54] [1.09]

Oceania Dummy 0.115 0.052 0.114 �0.766� �0.819� �0.812� 0.102 �0.173

[0.13] [0.06] [0.13] [1.80] [1.89] [1.94] [0.15] [0.23]

East Euro

Dummy

�0.118 �0.017 �0.13 �0.095 �0.054 �0.125 1.222�� 1.310��

[0.39] [0.06] [0.42] [0.43] [0.24] [0.54] [2.57] [2.40]

Latin Amer

Dummy

�0.633�� �0.625� �0.628�� �0.681��� �0.694��� �0.696��� 0.982�� 0.979��

[2.09] [1.91] [2.05] [2.87] [2.77] [2.95] [2.34] [2.03]

Africa Dummy �0.592� �0.610� �0.585� �0.731��� �0.797��� �0.761��� 0.770�� 0.842�

[1.94] [1.82] [1.88] [2.93] [3.15] [3.09] [2.18] [1.82]

Asia Dummy �0.893��� �0.843��� �0.900��� �0.708��� �0.722��� �0.767��� 0.890�� 0.856�

[3.06] [2.65] [3.06] [3.07] [3.08] [3.29] [2.33] [1.89]

Year 0.007 0.009 0.007 �0.002 �0.001 �0.003 0.040��� 0.039���

[0.90] [1.00] [0.90] [0.36] [0.14] [0.43] [2.96] [3.03]

Iterate Terrorism

(t-1)

�0.006 0.001 0.03

[0.74] [0.09] [1.08]

GTD Terrorism

(t-1)

0.0001 0.0001 0.001

[0.27] [0.09] [0.37]

Rand=Mipt

Terrorism (t-1)

�0.01 �0.019�

[0.96] [1.78]

Observations 2388 2096 2389 2656 2321 2656 994 921

Number of

Countries

117 117 117 131 131 131 76 76

Pseudo R2 0.56 0.56 0.56 0.64 0.65 0.64 0.62 0.61

Robust z statistics in brackets.�significant at 10%; ��significant at 5%; ���significant at 1%.

74 K. K. Robison

indicators on terrorism and theoretically important covariates

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Democracies

Polity

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms Polity Polity Polity

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms

Political

freedoms

3.483��� 5.022��� 4.950��� 5.021���

[11.72] [13.76] [12.51] [13.78]

3.322��� 3.279��� 3.322��� 3.037��� 3.013��� 3.042���

[13.07] [12.47] [13.07] [12.55] [12.18] [12.59]

0.715��� 0.659��� 0.707��� 0.802��� 0.806��� 0.807���

[7.20] [6.47] [7.13] [6.85] [6.48] [6.91]

0.062 0.084 0.125 0.088 0.132 0.134 0.141 �0.024 �0.04 �0.003

[0.98] [1.05] [1.54] [1.08] [1.37] [1.27] [1.49] [0.30] [0.42] [0.04]

�0.082��� �0.003 0.007 0.002 0.094��� 0.083��� 0.095��� 0.082�� 0.081��� 0.081��

[2.68] [0.10] [0.26] [0.07] [3.23] [2.88] [3.24] [2.40] [2.72] [2.36]

4.05 9.002 15.055 12.538 �17.142 �13.847 �15.792 �18.655 �28.708 �18.446

[0.11] [0.14] [0.22] [0.18] [0.52] [0.42] [0.48] [0.94] [1.48] [0.93]

9.725 26.179�� 20.641� 22.927� �45.026��� �51.188��� �39.069��� �17.741 �20.047 �11.601

[0.76] [2.05] [1.74] [1.84] [3.09] [3.34] [2.58] [1.29] [1.35] [0.81]

�0.007 �0.01 �0.01 �0.01 0.003 0.008 0.002 �0.022�� �0.023�� �0.022��

[1.17] [1.51] [1.61] [1.53] [0.30] [0.71] [0.22] [2.56] [2.54] [2.54]

0.042 0.335 0.262 0.39 �0.034 0.028 �0.001 �0.401 �0.295 �0.356

[0.14] [1.24] [0.87] [1.41] [0.08] [0.06] [0.00] [1.30] [0.84] [1.17]

0.874 1.235 1.75 1.245 4.953��� 4.845��� 4.955��� 0.097 0.164 0.12

[0.52] [0.69] [0.96] [0.69] [2.85] [2.59] [2.84] [0.27] [0.36] [0.34]

0.083 �3.042��� �3.082��� �3.086��� �0.197 �0.46 �0.227 �0.752 �0.899 �0.794

[0.12] [5.11] [5.39] [5.24] [0.30] [0.68] [0.34] [1.34] [1.58] [1.42]

1.168�� �0.014 �0.234 �0.124 0.567 0.821�� 0.485 0.263 0.437 0.216

[2.47] [0.04] [0.78] [0.37] [1.58] [1.99] [1.34] [0.71] [1.10] [0.59]

0.925�� �0.126 �0.323 �0.234 �0.374 �0.479 �0.404 �0.534 �0.597 �0.547

[2.21] [0.31] [0.86] [0.60] [0.86] [1.05] [0.93] [1.40] [1.55] [1.44]

0.705�� �0.164 �0.317 �0.276 �0.741 �0.907� �0.783� �0.356 �0.497 �0.401

[1.97] [0.45] [0.98] [0.79] [1.55] [1.71] [1.64] [0.84] [1.19] [0.95]

0.843�� 0.022 �0.223 �0.092 �0.565 �0.724 �0.621 �0.741� �0.881�� �0.812�

[2.21] [0.05] [0.59] [0.23] [1.36] [1.47] [1.51] [1.71] [2.14] [1.87]

0.039��� �0.029�� �0.033��� �0.030�� �0.013 �0.019 �0.013 �0.007 �0.005 �0.008

[2.97] [2.38] [2.62] [2.47] [1.08] [1.32] [1.14] [0.61] [0.40] [0.72]

0.050� �0.009 0.001

[1.91] [1.33] [0.09]

0.003� 0.0004 0.0001

[1.85] [0.55] [0.05]

0.029 0.04 �0.021 �0.018

[0.70] [0.95] [1.57] [1.63]

995 990 918 990 1334 1124 1334 1567 1315 1567

76 76 76 76 86 85 86 107 105 107

0.62 0.54 0.53 0.53 0.81 0.8 0.81 0.66 0.66 0.66

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 75

13–18). More indirectly, neither civil war nor non-violent dissent (in all of the modelsof Table 2) has any consistent and substantive effect on governance or political free-doms, leading me to conclude that ground-level political processes that result in vio-lence or activism do not have notable repercussions for democratic institutions.Rights guaranteeing political participation and access, in short, are not as likely tochange in the face of multiple kinds of conflict. It is for these reasons that I am hesi-tant to reject the hypothesis linking no substantive effect of terrorism on democraticgovernance. Instead, the evidence presented here as a whole argues that terrorismposes no real threat to political freedoms. On the other hand, the same cannot besaid for civil and human rights.

Table 3

Table 3 presents evidence of the effects of the three terrorism measures on civil andhuman rights abuses. In the full sample (models 1–6), the results demonstrate thatterrorism positively and significantly predicts civil and human (i.e., physical integ-rity) rights abuses. The full sample results tell us then that states on average are likelyto repress both civil and human rights in the wake of terrorist campaigns. The find-ings for the democratic and non-democratic samples, however, are mixed.

Models 7–9 clearly indicate that terrorism does not encourage non-democraticstates to infringe upon civil rights—a surprising finding given the repressive natureof authoritarian societies. The same is not true of democratic states (models13–15) that experience reductions in civil rights as a result of terrorism. The failureof terrorism to generate abuse of civil rights by a non-democratic regime is likelybecause non-democracies simply exhibit less respect for civil rights whether thereis terrorism or not. To put it differently, terrorism has little perceptible effect onthe abuse of civil rights when there are few civil rights to begin with. Clearly, thisreality is evident in countries such as China and North Korea, both of whom havelong histories of civil rights infringements and little to no terrorism or internal vio-lent dissent. Yet this is not the case with democratic regimes.

As models 13–15 demonstrate, all three terrorism indicators appear to increasecivil rights abuse within democratic societies net of the controls. Democracies, then,are susceptible to overreactions against terrorism probably because regimes aredependent upon citizen participation and influence who are sensitive (and vulner-able) to terrorism. While a few terrorist attacks do not directly threaten the survivalof a regime—especially when the state is autocratic—they do nonetheless challengethe legitimacy of a democratic state by attacking its function as a responsive protec-tor of its citizenry. In the interests of security for the public and thus to its legitimacy,a democratic regime will likely rescind freedoms such as freedoms of assembly andcommunication=press even if only temporarily. Since citizens are commonly victi-mized by terrorism, often this is done with the complete acquiescence or assent ofthe general public. Put differently, a plethora of specific, legally established rightsmake it more likely that a state will rescind a few of them in the wake of securityrisks. In essence, democratic citizens are apparently willing to make a trade-offbetween liberty and security.

Incredibly, this trade-off extends even to security measures that institutionalizestate abuse of human rights—a counterterrorism process that goes beyond meresearches and seizures, banning of certain media outlets, or the circumscribing of

76 K. K. Robison

various group assemblies and moves toward more aggressive institutionalizedviolence in the form of torture and political imprisonment. Models 16–18 presentevidence that even democratic regimes are likely to engage in sweeping state terroragainst terrorists; all three terrorism indicators positively and significantly predictstate abuse of human rights net of non-violent dissent, civil war, level of democrati-zation, and other factors. This finding is surprising given the protections and guar-antees democracies claim to afford to their citizens. Nevertheless, it appears thatdemocratic citizens are content to turn a blind eye to states’ organized repressionof both civil and human rights so long as it results in greater protections.

Less surprising is the fact that non-democratic states (models 10–12) are just aslikely to clamp down on human rights when faced with terrorism. Non-democratic,authoritarian states are infamous for their use of torture, political imprisonment,and disappearances, especially in the wake of violent dissent from the masses.Apparently, there is no limit to the amount of institutionalized cruelty that thesestates can mete out when provoked by civil violence.

The overall story that emerges from the findings in both tables is that states andcitizens do in fact make a trade-off between certain kinds of rights and security, evenif others are left intact. However, logic would suggest that states respond not merelyto the latest and most recent incidents of terrorism, but to longer campaigns of terrorthat have accumulated over the years. Terrorist groups that prove their mettlerepeatedly over the years are clearly more threatening than one-hit wonders. Thus,one simple terror attack would be less likely to stoke the rage of states such that theyinstitutionalize repression. Instead, it is more likely that a longer crescendo of terror-ist violence will. In a separate analysis (not presented here),50 I performed both a ser-ies of interactions of the terrorism variables with time (i.e., the year variable) andanother analysis with repeated lags of the terrorism variables. Both of these analyticstrategies serve as tests of the cumulative effects of terrorism on the dependent vari-ables. However, the results are mixed and contradictory for the interaction models,leading me to conclude that the source of the data on terrorism matters and secondlythat the episodic and cyclical nature of terrorism51 may confound any interpretationof a linear multiplicative effect reflective of cumulative processes. Also, whenemploying repeated lags of the terrorism indicators (lags for up to five years prior)the results consistently show that it is terror in an immediately preceding year thatbetter explains states’ responses. Briefly, it is the relative immediacy of terrorismas measured by total counts one year prior (and not two, three, or more years prior)that prompt states to respond with institutionalized repression on average. A year issimply a long time—if a terrorism campaign does not wind down within a fewmonths, states will respond to avoid the appearance of doing nothing. This appearsparticularly true of democratic nations.

Yet this is not the only story to emerge from the findings and a few are worthcommenting on here. Interestingly, terrorism is merely one form of conflict to failto adversely affect democratic governance and political freedoms. Civil war andnon-violent dissent have no deleterious or beneficial effect on citizens’ access to theirgovernment, whether democratic or not (all models in Table 2). While dissent islikely less to be perceived as so grave a threat as to warrant the removal of politicalrights, the insignificant finding for civil war is surprising given the obvious relation-ship of war to state failure. Nonetheless, civil war appears to increase the chances astate will engage in abuse of human rights whether democratic or not (for mostterrorism models in Table 3). It stands to reason that if small-scale actions of

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 77

Table 3. Ordered logit regression of civil and human rights abuse indicators on

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Full sample Non-Democracies

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of Civil

Rights (t-1)

3.656���

[27.94]

3.556���

[26.15]

3.657���

[27.96]

3.490���

[23.03]

3.498���

[23.25]

Abuse of

Political

Rights (t-1)

0.210���

[3.62]

0.205���

[3.32]

0.213���

[3.65]

0.338���

[3.11]

0.267��

[2.46]

Abuse of

Human

Rights (t-1)

2.016���

[15.90]

1.993���

[15.51]

2.008���

[15.89]

Polity �0.041���

[3.35]

�0.044���

[3.55]

�0.045���

[3.68]

Population

(log) (t-1)

0.021

[0.45]

0.028

[0.55]

0.016

[0.35]

0.206���

[2.90]

0.195���

[2.49]

0.194���

[2.71]

�0.068

[0.63]

�0.073

[0.66]

GDP per

capita (t-1)

�0.079���

[4.11]

�0.083���

[4.11]

�0.079���

[4.10]

�0.079���

[2.86]

�0.074���

[2.58]

�0.079���

[2.92]

0.005

[0.15]

�0.002

[0.06]

Dissent (t-1) �15.237

[0.69]

�15.331

[0.63]

�16.266

[0.74]

14.301

[0.51]

8.987

[0.31]

13.254

[0.48]

�65.786

[0.86]

�74.145

[0.99]

Soldiers per

capita (t-1)

35.622���

[3.55]

36.928���

[3.56]

32.138���

[2.98]

37.841���

[2.59]

32.060��

[2.26]

30.508��

[2.30]

5.916

[0.43]

8.249

[0.58]

State Size

GDP (t-1)

�0.003

[0.62]

�0.004

[0.76]

�0.003

[0.59]

0.009�

[1.76]

0.008

[1.59]

0.009�

[1.82]

�0.004

[0.64]

�0.005

[0.74]

Civil

War¼ 1 (t-1)

0.205

[1.03]

0.014

[0.05]

0.198

[1.00]

1.010���

[4.75]

0.494�

[1.94]

0.994���

[4.62]

0.271

[0.52]

0.231

[0.35]

NGOs Per

Capita (t-1)

�0.649��

[2.04]

�0.646

[1.62]

�0.659��

[2.07]

�1.794�

[1.85]

�1.745

[1.41]

�1.922�

[1.87]

�2.281

[1.18]

�2.262

[1.08]

Oceania

Dummy

0.103

[0.24]

0.064

[0.15]

0.085

[0.20]

�0.249

[0.42]

�0.287

[0.44]

�0.29

[0.50]

�0.676

[1.13]

�0.571

[0.93]

East Euro

Dummy

0.035

[0.11]

0.05

[0.16]

0.033

[0.11]

�0.03

[0.09]

�0.137

[0.41]

�0.04

[0.13]

�1.655���

[3.07]

�1.662���

[3.18]

Latin Amer

Dummy

0.541��

[2.02]

0.570��

[2.17]

0.521�

[1.95]

1.009���

[3.38]

0.968���

[3.19]

0.953���

[3.30]

�0.936�

[1.85]

�0.940�

[1.91]

Africa Dummy 0.780���

[2.90]

0.761���

[2.83]

0.753���

[2.81]

0.374

[1.18]

0.351

[1.08]

0.294

[0.96]

�0.427

[1.01]

�0.469

[1.16]

Asia Dummy 0.830���

[2.93]

0.788���

[2.83]

0.825���

[2.94]

0.497�

[1.92]

0.414

[1.51]

0.477�

[1.90]

�0.358

[0.81]

�0.412

[0.97]

Year 0.003

[0.36]

�0.005

[0.56]

0.002

[0.32]

0.032���

[4.08]

0.024���

[2.79]

0.033���

[4.10]

�0.024��

[2.06]

�0.035��

[2.35]

Iterate

Terrorism

(t-1)

0.017���

[2.69]

0.030���

[2.94]

0.009

[0.24]

GTD

Terrorism

(t-1)

0.002��

[2.10]

0.004���

[4.57]

0.002

[0.11]

Rand=Mipt

Terrorism

(t-1)

0.022��

[2.13]

0.039���

[4.36]

Observations 2656 2321 2656 2294 2002 2294 990 918

Number of

Countries

131 131 131 117 117 117 76 76

Pseudo R2 0.68 0.67 0.68 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.52 0.51

Robust z statistics in brackets.�significant at 10%; ��significant at 5%; ���significant at 1%.

78 K. K. Robison

terrorism and theoretically important covariates

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Democracies

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

civil

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

Abuse of

human

rights

3.492���

[23.02]

4.126���

[21.24]

3.898���

[18.02]

4.132���

[21.31]

0.336���

[3.11]

0.246�

[1.94]

0.316��

[2.53]

0.258��

[2.07]

1.839���

[12.11]

1.859���

[12.53]

1.849���

[12.16]

2.191���

[11.27]

2.163���

[10.10]

2.177���

[11.27]

0.001

[0.03]

�0.004

[0.09]

�0.002

[0.06]

�0.140���

[3.34]

�0.205���

[4.04]

�0.150���

[3.54]

�0.063

[0.59]

0.034

[0.43]

0.042

[0.48]

0.034

[0.44]

0.091

[1.03]

0.103

[1.00]

0.072

[0.81]

0.358��

[2.51]

0.385��

[2.24]

0.354��

[2.48]

0.007

[0.23]

�0.05

[1.39]

�0.038

[0.85]

�0.044

[1.23]

�0.084���

[3.96]

�0.087���

[4.15]

�0.083���

[4.02]

�0.059�

[1.71]

�0.049

[1.40]

�0.058�

[1.72]

�61.236

[0.77]

�43.206

[1.12]

�36.022

[1.11]

�37.129

[0.94]

11.722

[0.38]

9.055

[0.30]

11.461

[0.36]

23.186

[0.73]

9.654

[0.31]

23.714

[0.75]

5.966

[0.44]

15.194

[0.96]

9.809

[0.57]

9.208

[0.56]

36.284���

[2.58]

39.683���

[2.70]

25.889�

[1.75]

36.831�

[1.80]

26.985

[1.22]

24.972

[1.21]

�0.004

[0.64]

0.006

[0.94]

0.007

[0.99]

0.006

[0.87]

�0.001

[0.13]

�0.004

[0.35]

�0.001

[0.13]

0.030���

[3.25]

0.029���

[2.86]

0.030���

[3.34]

0.316

[0.58]

0.908���

[2.76]

0.579

[1.60]

0.964���

[2.74]

0.334

[1.10]

0.023

[0.07]

0.316

[1.05]

1.064���

[3.55]

0.35

[1.05]

1.043���

[3.51]

�2.283

[1.20]

�7.550���

[3.34]

�7.612���

[3.43]

�7.469���

[3.37]

�0.528

[1.61]

�0.533

[1.18]

�0.560�

[1.85]

�0.096

[0.09]

0.535

[0.38]

�0.082

[0.07]

�0.672

[1.13]

�2.432���

[3.18]

�2.358���

[3.12]

�2.527���

[3.34]

0.516

[1.01]

0.502

[0.95]

0.506

[1.00]

�0.122

[0.18]

�0.078

[0.10]

�0.159

[0.24]

�1.688���

[3.25]

�1.320��

[2.46]

�1.483���

[2.69]

�1.484���

[2.78]

0.145

[0.29]

0.153

[0.31]

0.184

[0.38]

0.191

[0.52]

0.129

[0.27]

0.229

[0.62]

�0.946�

[1.90]

1.070��

[2.03]

0.807

[1.44]

0.863

[1.60]

0.810��

[2.51]

0.920���

[2.98]

0.789��

[2.46]

0.959��

[2.48]

1.009��

[2.32]

0.920��

[2.45]

�0.445

[1.10]

�0.374

[0.75]

�0.547

[1.05]

�0.555

[1.10]

1.087���

[2.91]

1.116���

[2.91]

1.083���

[2.94]

0.489

[1.14]

0.688

[1.44]

0.443

[1.07]

�0.4

[0.95]

0.184

[0.36]

0.009

[0.02]

0.017

[0.03]

1.152���

[3.30]

1.184���

[3.42]

1.183���

[3.54]

0.303

[0.95]

0.108

[0.30]

0.29

[0.92]

�0.024��

[2.08]

0.049���

[2.96]

0.036�

[1.93]

0.047���

[2.82]

0.025�

[1.94]

0.026�

[1.82]

0.025��

[1.99]

0.030��

[2.37]

0.022�

[1.72]

0.029��

[2.39]

0.083���

[3.04]

0.022���

[2.79]

0.026��

[2.57]

0.005��

[2.33]

0.003��

[2.56]

0.005���

[3.55]

�0.007

[0.17]

0.072���

[2.78]

0.038���

[3.17]

0.036���

[3.66]

990 918 846 918 1567 1315 1567 1290 1080 1290

76 76 76 76 107 105 107 87 86 87

0.52 0.31 0.3 0.31 0.71 0.7 0.71 0.49 0.5 0.49

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 79

violence (such as most terrorist attacks) influence the chances for state abuse, then soshould large-scale episodes of violence. Interestingly, though, civil war is just aslikely to encourage increases in civil and political rights as it is decreases—a testi-mony to the diversity in goals and outcomes of various rebel groups.

Additionally, other important socio-political actors (soldiers and NGOs) whocontribute variously to political outcomes have varying effects across thenon-democratic and democratic samples. Within non-democratic societies, greaterstate militarization appears to promote political rights (table 2, models 10–12), pos-sibly because militaries serve as competitors with civilian autocrats and other emer-ging elites who also demand access to the reins of power. However, militarizationseems to reduce overall democratic governance within democracies although thereis no corresponding negative (or positive) effect for political freedoms. A simpleinterpretation might be that militaries demand a greater say in politics when statesare autocratic, but once a state begins to democratize, militaries are reluctant toshare power with greater segments of the population. This is further confirmed bythe results in Table 3, which show that militarization promotes state abuse of civilrights within democracies (but not non-democracies). Yet the expansion of demo-cratic rights to a population sets limits for how rapacious a state’s military can be.Essentially, militarization does not appear to have a consistent effect on abuse ofhuman rights in the same sample.

Militaries in advanced democracies (and economies) tend to be highly professio-nalized and uninvolved in civilian affairs, unlike militaries in nascent democraciesand economies in Latin America and Africa. Thus in democracies, militaries arenot typically wielded as tools of repression in the form of human rights abuses.Instead, civilian intelligence agencies take on this role. It is interesting that limitingthe sample to democratic nations brings state size as a percentage of GDP into sta-tistical significance for both political freedoms (models 16–18, Table 2) and humanrights abuses (models 16–18, Table 3), meaning that an increase in state size withindemocracies increases the chances that states will reduce political freedoms andengage in torture and political imprisonment, presumably in the wake of violence.These findings would mean that larger and more democratic states do not employthe military as instruments of terror when facing violent threats, but instead use civi-lian police and intelligence agencies as a means of pursuing terrorists. A large andwell-funded state, in other words, is able to repress through other channels andmethods than through the military.

Regardless, militarization adversely influences civil and political rights expan-sion within democracies. This would challenge the notion then that democratic mili-taries are professional and uninvolved in civilian or governmental affairs. Combinedwith the observation that terrorism does not undermine political freedoms, onemight conclude that democratic citizens have more to fear from their state than theydo from terrorists in general, regardless of the presence of dissent and violence. Yetother actors within society have important roles to play in promoting democracythat help to mitigate states’ aggressive response to civilians in contexts of violence.

Like militarization, the growth of civil society, here proxied by NGOs per capita,has conflicting effects on the political outcome variables. Not surprisingly, NGOsappear to promote general democratic governance within democracies (models13–15, Table 2), but not so for more specific political freedoms. That they haveno effect on democracy for authoritarian states is a testimony to the intransigent nat-ure of many of these regimes. However, NGOs appear active in reducing a state’s

80 K. K. Robison

abuse of human rights in non-democracies (models 10–11, Table 3) since they serve amonitoring function and an outlet for international reporting, thus providing ameasure of transparency to rigidly closed regimes. For democratic states, NGOsdo not appear to reduce civil or human rights abuses as democracies, possiblybecause democracies have greater respect of these rights to begin with due to themore open nature of these regimes. Nonetheless, it seems that NGOs are effectiveat promoting democratic rights in specific contexts and thus further research wouldbe necessary to tease out the complicated relationship between actors within civilsociety and more specific components of democratization.

Regardless, all actors within the socio-political landscape of nation states areinfluenced by important structural factors that likewise affect the chances of politicalchanges toward or away from democracy. On the one hand, confirmation of devel-opment’s relationship to continued democratization within democracies (models13–18, Table 2) and its role in reducing abuse of civil=human rights (models13–18, Table 3) in spite of violence would seem to suggest the important role thestate can play in consolidating democracy when it guarantees economic growth thatfeeds the development of NGOs and other democratic actors in civil space. On theother hand, the finding that development reduces overall democratic governancein non-democratic nations (models 7–9, Table 2) would suggest that a rapaciousauthoritarian regime hoards its wealth as a means of bolstering its own gripon power. Yet in spite of the influence of general wealth and non-violent socialactors in these contexts, terrorism still poses a challenge to certain aspects ofdemocratization.

Conclusion

In summation, the evidence presented here is that while terrorism does not pose anoverall threat to democratic governance or political freedoms in particular, terrordoes threaten the application of specific kinds of liberties and leads even democraciesdown the dark alley of state repression. The anecdotal evidence to this relationshipeven in democratic states is seemingly enormous. This would argue that the fears ofsome about civil rights trade-offs in the war of terrorism are indeed well-founded.

The extent to which this is forever inevitable, however, is another question. Onthe one hand, democracies seem doomed to repeating history. Democracies uninten-tionally enable terrorism through freedoms afforded to citizens and political acti-vists, thus leading democracies to sow the seeds of their own destruction.52 Asdemocracy is spreading globally, logic would suggest that so will terrorism, subse-quently resulting in a reduction of democratic diffusion and consolidation in newlyemerging democratic nations. Clearly this has been the experience of a few SouthAmerican states. On the other hand, some states are able to handle terrorism withouttremendous failures of democracy as in the cases of France and the UK. Impor-tantly, many recently-democratized states have only become more democratic overthe long haul in spite of their troubles with terrorism=violence. Thus, an upwardtrend in the expansion of political and civil rights seems inevitable. Of course, thisdoes not preclude future terrorist campaigns that involve ever more catastrophicmeans of destruction and the subsequent desperation states and publics feel indealing with them.

Some limitations of this study are worth considering as a guide for furtherresearch. Unfortunately, there is limited incident data on direct state actions taken

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 81

by state agents against terrorists.53 The data used here on rights merely capture thegeneral systematization and legalization of abuses and not actual counts of abuse bythe state. While plenty of data exist on non-state originated terrorism, we do nothave comparable state terrorism databases that would help to expand ourunderstanding of the tit-for-tat relationship between state and civil violence. Unfor-tunately, the panel indicators of rights and democracy used here are some of themost comprehensive and inclusive ones currently available. More generally, allcross-national research is beset with the problem of lack of data on specific indivi-dual decisions that factor into violence, whether at the state or substate level. Never-theless, I have attempted to include where possible actual political events (e.g.,protest events rather than rely solely on structural factors such as developmentand previous democratization) that proxy for decisions at the ground level.

In spite of these limitations, the present study considered within the overall con-text of other numerous studies linking civil violence to aggressive state outcomes—even in democracies—should inform better policies aimed at curbing the emergenceof terrorism in the first place and not to post hoc polices that cause grievances (orgive cause to those who claim grievances). By retracting certain rights, democraciesmay be in grave danger of contributing to those factors that give rise to terrorism inthe first place.

Notes

1. For example see: James A. Dempsey, ‘‘Civil Liberties in a Time of Crisis,’’ HumanRights Magazine (Winter 2002): 1–5; Richard B. Schmitt, ‘‘New Rules Would give FBI MoreFreedom in U.S. Operations,’’ Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2008, 15; Human RightsWatch, ‘‘Terrorism Suspects Sent Back to Countries That Torture,’’ available at: (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/15/eu8432.htm), retrieved August 15, 2008; M. ShamsulHaque, ‘‘Government Responses to Terrorism: Critical Views of Their Impact on People andPublic Administration,’’ Public Administration Review 62, no. 5 (2002): 98–108; John Mueller,‘‘Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration,’’ InternationalStudies Perspectives 6 (2005): 208–234.

2. For a discussion of the ‘‘trade-offs’’ between liberty and violence see: Haque (see note1 above) and Leonard B. Weinberg, William L. Eubank, and Elizabeth A. Francis, ‘‘The Costof Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Govern-ance,’’ Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 257–270.

3. Ibid.4. Jennifer Holmes, Terrorism and Democratic Stability (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction

Publishers, 2006). Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds., The State as Terrorist: TheDynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984).Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights,Terrorism and Counter-terrorism, Fact Sheet No. 32. Amnesty International, In the Name ofCounter-Terrorism: Human Rights Abuses Worldwide, available at: (http://iilj.org/courses/documents/HRW10CountrySurveyofConcernsaboutHumanRightsandCTCMeasures.pdf),retrieved April 4, 2009.

5. Brenda Uekert, Rivers of Blood: A Comparative Study of Government Massacres(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996).

6. Jonathan White, Terrorism and Homeland Security (New York: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005).

7. M. Shamsul Haque, ‘‘Government Responses to Terrorism: Critical Views of theirImpacts on People and Public Administration,’’ Public Administration Review 62 (2002):170–180; Susan Herman, ‘‘The USA Patriot Act and the U.S. Department of Justice: LosingOur Balances,’’ Jurist (2001): 5–6.

8. Daniel Cunningham, ‘‘Understanding State Responses to Left- versus Right-WingThreats, ’’ Social Science History 27, no. 3 (2003): 327–370.

82 K. K. Robison

9. Amnesty International, In the Name of Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights AbusesWorldwide, available at: (http://iilj.org/courses/documents/HRW10CountrySurveyofCon-cernsaboutHumanRightsandCTCMeasures.pdf), retrieved April 4, 2009.

10. For instance see: Stephen M. Shellman, ‘‘Leaders’ Motivations and Actions: Explain-ing Government-Dissident Conflict-Cooperation Processes,’’ Conflict Management and PeaceScience 23 (2006): 73–90; Sabine C. Carey, ‘‘Domestic Threat and Repression: An Analysis ofState Response to Different Forms of Dissent,’’ in Sabine C. Carey and Steven C. Poe, eds.,Understanding Human Rights Violations (England: Ashgate, 2004): 202–221; Mark I. Lich-bach, Christian Davenport, and David A. Armstrong, ‘‘Democracy and the Violation ofHuman Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976–1996,’’ American Journal of Political Science48 (2004): 538–554; Scott Sigmund Gartner and Patrick M. Regan, ‘‘Threat and Repression:The Non-Linear Relationship Between Government and Opposition Violence,’’ The Journal ofPeace Research 33, no. 3 (1996): 273–288; Karen Rasler, ‘‘Concessions, Repression and Poli-tical Protest: A Model of Escalation in the Iranian Revolution,’’ American Sociological Review61 (1996): 132–152; Ronald A. Francisco, ‘‘Coercion and Protest: An Empirical Test in TwoDemocratic States,’’ American Journal of Political Science 40 (1996): 1179–1204; Will H.Moore, ‘‘Repression and Dissent: Substitution, Context and Timing,’’ American Journal ofPolitical Science 45, no. 3 (1998): 851–873; Mark I. Lichbach, ‘‘An Evaluation of ‘DoesEconomic Inequality Breed Political Conflict?’ Studies,’’ American Political Science Review41, no. 4 (1989): 431–470; Alfatooni and Allen, ‘‘Government Sanction and Collective PoliticalProtest in Periphery and Semi Periphery States: A time series Analysis,’’ Journal of Politicaland Military Sociology 19 (1991): 29–45; Ted Gurr, ‘‘The Political Origins of Sate Violenceand Terror: A Theoretical Analysis,’’ in George A. Lopez and Michael Stohl, eds., GovernmentViolence and Repression: An Agenda for Research (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986): 23–40.

11. Steven Poe and C. Neal Tate, ‘‘Repression of Human Rights To Personal Integrity InThe 1980s: A Global Analysis,’’ American Political Science Review 88, no. 4 (1994): 853–872.

12. Steven Poe, C. Neal Tate, and Linder C. Keith, ‘‘Repression Of Human Rights ToPersonal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering The Years1976–1993,’’ International Studies Quarterly 43 (1999): 291–313.

13. Emile Hafner-Burton and Kiyo Tsutsui, ‘‘Human Rights Practices in a GlobalizingWorld: The Paradox of Empty Promises,’’ American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 5 (2005):1373–1411.

14. Bjorn Letnes and Anton Westveld, ‘‘Transnational Corporations and Human Rights:On the Importance of Assets and Institutions’’ (Prepared for delivery at Annual Meeting of theAmerican Political Science Association, Chicago, 2004).

15. Christian Davenport, ‘‘Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression:An Inquiry into Why States Apply Negative Sanctions,’’ American Journal of Political Science39, no. 3 (1995): 683–713.

16. Christian Davenport, David A. Armstrong, and Mark I. Lichbach, ‘‘Conflict Escala-tion and the Origins of Civil War’’ (2004), available at: (http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/davenport/research.htm), retrieved May 18, 2007.

17. Will H. Moore, ‘‘Repression and Dissent: Substitution, Context and Timing,’’American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 3 (1998): 851–873; Will H. Moore, ‘‘The Repres-sion of Dissent: A Substitution Model of Government Coercion,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolu-tion 44, no. 1 (2000): 107–127.

18. Stephen Shellman, ‘‘Leaders & Their Motivations: Explaining Government-DissidentConflict-Cooperation Processes,’’ Conflict Management & Peace Science 23, no. 1 (2006):73–90.

19. Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds., Government Violence and Repression: AnAgenda For Research (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986).

20. Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2005).

21. For in-depth discussions on how people respond to the threats of terrorists see: MaxAbrahms, ‘‘Why Terrorism Does Not Work,’’ International Security 31, no. 2 (2006): 42–78.Susanna Hoffman, ‘‘The Psycho-Social Symbolism of Terrorism And Its Uses,’’ Unpublishedmanuscript (2003). Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle(Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 83

22. Polity IV Project. Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1897–2007,available at: (http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm), retrieved September 22, 2008.

23. Nations in the full sample with the ITERATE terrorism variable. The time periodnations appear within the sample are in parentheses. The number of years a nation appearsas a democratic nation (see operationalization) are indicated after the parentheses by a hyphenfollowed by a number; nations not scored as democracies receive a ’’-0’’ to indicate no years asdemocracies: Albania (1992–2000)-8; Algeria (1968–2000)-0; Angola (1986–1997)-5; Antiguaand Barbuda (1982–2000)-8; Argentina (1976–2000)-18; Australia (1976–2000)-25; Austria(1976–2000)-25; Bahamas (1997–1997)-1; Bahrain (1997–1997)-0; Bangladesh (1976–2000)-10; Barbados (1976–2000)-23; Belgium (1976–2000)-25; Bolivia (1976–2000)-19;Botswana (1976–2000)-24; Brazil (1976–2000)-16; Belize (1982–2000)-18; Bulgaria (1992–2000)-9; Burundi (1976–2000)-3; Cambodia (1994–2000)-6; Cameroon (1976–2000)-0; Canada(1976–2000)-25; Cape Verde (1992–2000)-9; Central African Republic (1976–1995)-3; SriLanka (1976–2000)-25; Chad (1976–2000)-8; Chile (1976–2000)-12; China (1976–2000)-0;Colombia (1976–2000)-25; Comoros (1981–1988); Congo Brazzaville (1976–2000)-4; Zaire(1976–1998)-6; Costa Rica (1976–2000)-25; Cyprus (1976–1997)-22; Benin (1976–2000)-10;Denmark (1976–2000)-25; Dominica (1979–1997)-13; Dominican Rep (1976–2000)-23;Ecuador (1976–2000)-21; El Salvador (1976–2000)-22; Equatorial Guinea (1995–2000); Fiji(1976–2000)-22; Finland (1976–2000)-25; France (1976–2000)-25; Djibouti (1997–1997)-0;Gambia The (1976–2000)-13; Ghana (1976–2000)-9; Greece (1976–2000)-25; Grenada(1995–2000)-6; Guatemala (1976–2000)-16; Guinea (1989–2000)-0; Guyana (1976–2000)-10;Haiti (1976–1999)-6; Honduras (1976–2000)-21; Hungary (1976–2000)-12; Iceland (1976–2000)-25; India (1976–2000)-25; Indonesia (1976–2000)-2; Iran (1976–2000)-7; Ireland(1976–2000)-25; Israel (1976–2000)-25; Italy (1976–2000)-25; Ivory Coast (1976–2000)-2;Jamaica (1976–2000)-25; Japan (1976–2000)-25; Jordan (1976–2000)-0; Kenya (1976–2000)-0; South Korea (1976–2000)-14; Laos (1997–1997)-0; Lebanon (1991–2000)-10; Lesotho(1976–2000)-8; Luxembourg (1976–2000)-25; Madagascar (1976–1999)-9; Malawi (1976–2000)-7; Malaysia (1976–2000)-25; Mali (1976–2000)-10; Malta (1995–1999)-5; Mauritania(1976–2000)-0; Mauritius and deps (1981–2000)-20; Mexico (1976–2000)-7; Mongolia (1997–1997)-1; Morocco (1976–2000)-0; Mozambique (1981–2000)-7; Oman (1997–1997)-0; Namibia(1991–2000)-10; Nepal (1976–2000)-11; Netherlands (1976–2000)-25; New Zealand (1976–2000)-25; Nicaragua (1976–2000)-12; Niger (1976–2000)-7; Nigeria (1976–2000)-9; Norway(1976–2000)-25; Pakistan (1976–2000)-12; Panama (1976–2000)-12; Papua New Guinea(1978–2000)-23; Paraguay (1976–2000)-12; Peru (1976–2000)-22; Philippines (1976–2000)-15;Poland (1991–2000)-10; Portugal (1976–2000)-25; Guinea-Bissau (1977–2000)-6; Romania(1988–2000)-12; Rwanda (1976–2000)-1; St. Kitts and Nevis (1985–1988)-4; Sao Tomeand Principe (1995–2000)-5; Saudi Arabia (1997–1997)-0; Senegal (1976–2000)-1;Seychelles (1977–2000)-16; Sierra Leone (1976–1999)-3; Singapore (1976–2000)-0; SouthAfrica (1976–2000)-25; Zimbabwe (1980–2000)-7; Spain (1976–2000)-25; Sudan (1997–1997)-0; Swaziland (1997–2000)-0; Sweden (1976–2000)-25; Switzerland (1976–2000)-25; Syria(1976–2000)-0; Thailand (1976–2000)-23; Togo (1976–2000)-2; Trinidad & Tobago (1976–2000)-21; Tunisia (1976–2000)-0; Turkey (1976–2000)-22; Uganda (1983–2000)-3; Egypt(1976–2000)-0; UK (1976–2000)-25; Tanzania Uni Rep (1989–2000)-1; USA (1976–2000)-25;Burkina Faso (1976–1995)-3; Uruguay (1976–2000)-16; Venezuela (1976–2000)-25; Zambia(1976–2000)-9.

24. An anonymous reviewer suggested that in lieu of a complex three-sample strategy thatI use seemingly unrelated regression in an effort to tease out the effects of terrorism separatelyon democratic=non-democratic nations through a system of correlated equations. Unfortu-nately, this method is inappropriate for this analysis because the equations involve differentsamples, thus introducing missing values when one democratic equation is run simultaneousto a non-democratic equation. The resulting missing data invalidates the use of this techniquefor this purpose.

25. ologit (STATA 9).26. Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime

Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2007. Center for Global Policy, School of Public Policy,George Mason University and Center for Systemic Peace (2004).

27. Freedom House, available at: (http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=35&year=2006), retrieved June 3, 2007.

84 K. K. Robison

28. M. Gibney, L. Cornett, & R. Wood, Political Terror Scale 1976–2006, available at:(http://www.politicalterrorscale.org/).

29. Steven Poe and C. Neal Tate, ‘‘Repression of Human Rights To Personal Integrity InThe 1980s: A Global Analysis,’’ American Political Science Review 88, no. 4 (1994): 853–872;Steven Poe, C. Neal Tate, and Linder C. Keith, ‘‘Repression Of Human Rights To PersonalIntegrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering The Years 1976–1993,’’ Interna-tional Studies Quarterly 43 (1999): 291–313.

30. Ted Gurr, ‘‘State Terrorism,’’ in Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds., Govern-ment Violence and Repression: An Agenda For Research (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1986).

31. Poe et al. (see note 12 above).32. The Poe and Tate (1993=1999)=Gibney and authors (2008) data are available at:

http://www.psci.unt.edu/ihrsc/ and www.politicalterrorscale.org33. David L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards, The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI)

Human Rights Dataset (2004), available at: (http://www.humanrightsdata.org), retrievedJuly 9, 2008.

34. David Cingranelli. March 2009. Personal Communication.35. Rankings descript for state repression index: ‘‘Level 1: Countries under a secure rule

of law, people are not imprisoned for their view, and torture is rare or exceptional. Politicalmurders are extremely rare. Level 2: There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolentpolitical activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional.Political murder is rare. Level 3: There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent historyof such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common.Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted. Level 4: The prac-tices of level 3 are expanded to larger numbers. Murders, disappearances, and torture are acommon part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interestthemselves in politics or ideas. Level 5: The terrors of level 4 have been expanded to the wholepopulation. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness withwhich they pursue personal or ideological goals.’’ Quoted in Poe et al. (see note 12 above).

36. Edward Mickolus, International Attributes of Terrorism Database (ITERATE) (2004).Electronic Database.

37. Unfortunately, the Terrorism Knowledge Base from RAND=MIPT is no longer freelyavailable to the public and instead is accessible only as a subscription service from RAND.

38. 1993 is missing from the Global Terrorism Database. See website for details: (http://www.start.umd.edu/data/gtd/).

39. See (http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/faq/) for information about the absence of a setdefinition and the coding rules used for GTD.

40. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I note this problemwith the GTD.

41. World Bank, World Development Indicators CD-ROM (2004).42. See S. P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century

(Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) and S. M. Lipset, ‘‘Some SocialRequisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,’’ American Poli-tical Science Review 53 (1959): 69–105.

43. National Materials Capabilities Database (2006), available at: (http://www.correlatesofwar.org/COW2%20Data/Capabilities/nmc3–02.htm), retrieved March 6, 2007.

44. See research on coup d’etats: Edward Luttwak, Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook(Harvard University Press, 1968). Robert W. Jackman, ‘‘The Predictability of Coups d’etat: AModel with African Data,’’ American Political Science Review 72 (1979): 1262–1275. C. J.Jenkins and A. Kposowa, ‘‘The political origins of African military coups: Ethnic competition,military centrality and the struggle over the post-colonial state,’’ International Studies Quar-terly 36 (1992): 271–291. A. Belkin and E. Schofer, ‘‘Toward a Structural Understanding ofCoup Risk,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 47, no. 5 (2003): 594–620.

45. See Rasler (note 10 above) and Francisco (note 10 above).46. Arthur Banks, Cross-National Times Series Databanks (2000), available at: (http://

www.databanksinternational.com), retrieved October 15, 2008.47. Nils Petter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg &

Havard Strand, ‘‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset,’’ Journal of Peace Research

Consequences of Terrorism on Democratic Governance 85

39, no. 5 (2002): 615–637. In this database, civil wars are defined as a war that reaches at least1,000 annual battle deaths.

48. See for example: Pamela Paxton, ‘‘Social Capital and Democracy: An InterdependentRelationship,’’ American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 254–277.

49. Yearbook of International Organizations, Union of International Associations (2000).50. Contact author for detailed tables.51. David. C. Rapoport, ‘‘The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11,’’

Antropoetics 8, no. 1 (Spring=Summer 2002): 1–5.52. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (New York: New York University

Press, 1986); Weinberg and Eubank, ‘‘Terrorism and Democracy: What Recent EventsDisclose,’’ Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no. 1 (1998): 108–118. Quan Li and DrewSchaub, ‘‘Economic Globalization and Transnational Terrorist Incidents: A PooledTime-Series Cross-Sectional Analysis,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (2004): 230–258;Brian Lai, ‘‘Explaining Terrorism Using the Framework of Opportunity and Willingness:An Empirical Examination of International Terrorism,’’ Political Science Workshop Series(University of Iowa, Spring 2004).

53. See Kansas Event Data System research methodology (http://web.ku.edu/keds/) forpublications using samples of nation-states with data on state-based violent actions againstdomestic groups. Also, see the TWEED or terrorism in Western Europe database (http://www.uib.no/people/sspje/tweed.htm) as an example of police and other state agents’ use offorce against terrorists.

86 K. K. Robison