systemic torture starts on an upward trajectory, and by the time a state experiences 100 attacks, systemic military torture is a near certainty. Conversely, by the time 100 attacks occur, the probability of no military torture is practically nonexistent. This finding has important implications for states that have historically experienced high levels of transnational terrorism. Such states are much more likely to engage in systemic military torture than states experiencing milder levels of transnational terrorism. (Figure 1 about here) To assess our second hypothesis, we add a multiplicative interaction term to our model specification, as shown in Table 5. This is the interaction of each country’s regime type with the number of transnational terrorist incidents for a given year. Following Brambor et al. (2005), we also include the requisite constituent terms in our model. (Figure 1 about here) Because coefficient results from an ordered probit model can be misleading, we plot the marginal effect of terrorism on military torture in Figure 2. The figure displays the marginal effect of an increase of twenty transnational terrorist attacks on systemic military torture at different levels of democracy. Consistent with our expectations, increased transnational terror has no significant effect on systemic military torture among the most autocratic countries. Only past a Polity score of around 12 does increased terrorism begin to have a significant effect on systemic military torture. As predicted, the strongest relationship between transnational terrorism and systemic military torture is found in the most highly democratic countries. Further, although the effects of all independent variables remain consistent, information criterion indicates that the model with the interaction term is preferred to the earlier model with no interaction term.
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Table 5. Terrorism and Military Torture (ITT Interactive Model), 1995 to 2005 Dependent Variable: Military (ITT) Torture Transnational Terrorism (ITERATE) -.043 (.036) Regime Type -.044 (.011)*** Transnational Terrorism*Regime Type .007 (.002)*** GDP Per Capita .000 (.000)* Population .000 (.000) Civil War .561 (.128)*** International War -.109 (.222) CAT Signatory .271 (.167)* Restricted Access .451 (.189)** Domestic Dissent .611(.110)*** Observations 1237 Wald χ2 145.01*** Pseudo R2 .112 cut 1 .795 (.208) cut 2 .805 (.206) cut 3 .972 (.207) cut 4 1.216 (.208) cut 5 1.540 (.210) Notes: * p ≤ .10 ** p ≤ .05 *** p ≤ .01. Ordered probit regression. Robust standard errors clustered on country reported in parentheses. All independent variables except Restricted Access lagged one period.