Poverty, political freedom, and the roots of terrorism
By: Alberto Abadie.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10859; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10859.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Terrorism -- Economic aspects.; Terrorism -- Political aspects.; Poverty -- Political aspects.
Description: "This article provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of terrorism at the country level.  In contrast with the previous literature on this subject, which focuses on transnational terrorism only, I use a new measure of terrorism that encompasses both domestic and transnational terrorism.  In line with the results of some recent studies, this article shows that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account.  Political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes.  This result suggests that, as experienced recently in Iraq and previously in Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism.  Finally, the results suggest that geographic factors are important to sustain terrorist activities"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Also available in print.
Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/5/2005.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.