Democracy and Terrorism: A Complex Relationship

Democracy, as a system of government, is widely lauded by political scientists for its ‘pacific effects.’ Experts have produced some good evidence that democratic regimes rarely go to war with one another and have also observed that democracies are much less susceptible to civil wars and internal armed conflicts than nondemocratic regimes. These pacific effects are typically explained as the product of norms and decision-making procedures within democracies that reinforce the peaceful and orderly resolution of disputes. But is it also true that democratic rule reduces terrorism and terrorist activity? The answer to this question is complex, conditional and nuanced – a reflection of the supporting evidence. While key qualities of democracies do make them more likely to experience terrorism than authoritarian regimes, some characteristic features of democratic governance have also been found to reduce terrorism.

This disparate conclusion – that democracy might be a panacea for the scourges of inter- and intra-state war but not for terrorism – is likely due to the fact that terrorism is a distinct manifestation of political violence. To start with, terrorism is much lower in intensity than inter- or intra-state war. It is a tactic used by political actors or individuals characterized by conventional weakness and, often, political marginality. As opposed to conventional military force, terrorism typically involves the use of violence or the threat of violence, often against civilians, in order to influence a wider audience and to prompt a much stronger opponent to offer concessions. It is therefore most frequently deployed in situations where the opponent – usually a state – is much stronger and has ample capacity, such as through a free media, to project influence.

Democracy and terrorism: The evidence

According to the Global Terrorism Database, regimes of all types in the post-Cold War period (1991-2012) experienced an average of about 18 terrorist attacks (both domestic and transnational) per year. Democratic regimes, however, experienced 62% more terrorism than did nondemocratic regimes – 21.3 attacks per year as opposed to 13.2 attacks for nondemocracies. This pattern holds regardless of the region of the world the countries are located in, the type of terrorist threat they face, and other factors such as population size and level of economic development.

What accounts for this disparity? Answers to this question are best understood in terms of 1) the structural factors that make a country an attractive setting for terrorist attacks and 2) the factors that impel individuals and groups to engage in terrorism in the first place. We might expect democracies to produce fewer aggrieved individuals and groups than authoritarian regimes, because, in comparison to authoritarian systems, democracies are more responsive to public demands and tend to provide more avenues for the peaceful and orderly redress of grievances. The reality, however, is that democracies are both more attractive and more vulnerable to terrorism than nondemocracies. Democracies afford political dissidents the right to engage in autonomous political behavior. While this maximizes opportunities for peaceful legal and political activism, it also facilitates illegal and violent activities, terrorism included. Democratic institutions preserve the rights of the accused and place restrictions on the police and authorities to a far greater degree than do nondemocratic regimes. This, of course, complicates counterterrorism in the areas of surveillance, interrogation and prosecution of terrorists and their supporters. Even more importantly, democracies encourage a free media that will report on terrorist atrocities, giving terrorists the opportunity to influence a much wider audience than would be the case in countries where the media is controlled by the government.

These commonly-cited features make democracies especially vulnerable to terrorism and less well equipped to engage in counterterrorism. Scholars of terrorism, however, have also identified less obvious factors endemic to democracies that may actually encourage terrorism. For example, democracies tend to be wealthier and better developed than authoritarian regimes, rendering them more “target rich” for terrorist groups. Democracies are also more likely to be prominent countries on the world stage and symbols of the political status quo, making them more likely to be opposed by terrorists, who are quintessential anti-status-quo actors. Cross-national empirical research on transnational terrorism conducted by Burcu Savun and Brian Phillips suggests that because democracies are more likely to pursue active, interventionist foreign policies than nondemocratic states, they are more likely to become embroiled in foreign controversies that earn the ire of terrorists. Another interesting study by Erica Chenoweth finds empirical evidence that, by tolerating a larger volume and a wider range of political activities – such as forming political organizations, lobbying, protesting, etc. – democracies have more competitive political environments, which perversely increases returns to terrorist attacks by political actors interested in “doing something drastic” to gain attention.

In contrast, although nondemocracies might produce more angry and aggrieved citizens that, lacking a nonviolent means to meaningfully participate in politics, might be prompted to support terrorist and extremist movements, authoritarian regimes can more easily repress political dissent and manage and control the activities of their citizens. Most importantly, authoritarian regimes muzzle and control the media, reducing the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy. One might expect that, in nondemocratic regimes, the combination of heightened political frustrations and state-controlled media would lead to higher rates of transnational terrorism. A case in point here would be the 1969 kidnapping of U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Charles Burke Elbrick by the leftist Revolutionary Movement 8th October (MR-8). The MR-8 militants hoped that, by kidnapping a prominent foreign figure, they could bypass the Brazilian military government’s regime of media censorship to communicate their political grievances to the wider Brazilian public. However, the empirical evidence does not support this as a cross-national trend in the data. In the 1991-2012 period, democracies experienced higher rates of transnational terrorism than nondemocracies (around 23.6% more) and saw their citizens commit more acts of transnational terrorism against other countries (25.9% more) than citizens of authoritarian regimes.

Complicating factors

Can we therefore conclude that democracies are uniquely vulnerable to terrorism and that nondemocracies have an advantage in counterterrorism? The answer to this question is particularly salient in the context of the U.S. War on Terror, as the promotion of democracy and pro-democratic reforms has been an integral part of the foreign and counterterrorism policy of the Bush and Obama administrations. As it turns out, there are some important qualifications to the democracy-terrorism relationship that complicate this conclusion.

First, regime-type alone is insufficient to explain patterns of global terrorism. Empirical research first conducted by Joe Eyerman found that it was “young” democracies – regimes that had more recently transitioned to democratic rule and had correspondingly young and untested democratic institutions – that experienced higher rates of terrorism. Eyerman found that more mature democracies experienced a very low level of terrorism, relative to both younger democratic and authoritarian regimes, and (my own) more recent research supports this finding. Once democratic regimes survive for about 50 years, they tend to experience about as much terrorism as nondemocratic regimes, suggesting that institutional maturity within democracies is important in reducing terrorism.

Second, the specific policies and behaviors of governments matter. Democratic regimes, for instance, have at times resorted to policies of selective and episodic repression, particularly during periods of security challenges such as those experienced by Britain during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s or, according to human rights activists, by the United States after the 9/11 attacks. Indeed (as my current research explores), the type of repression employed by a government may affect its likelihood of experiencing domestic terrorist attacks. Some types of repression – namely restrictions on the free movement of citizens, association, free speech or press freedom – are not statistically associated with higher rates of domestic terrorism. However, other types of repression, such as restrictions on electoral participation, repression of labor rights, religious repression, human rights violations and discrimination against ethnic minority groups’ political and economic rights, are statistically significant predictors of increased domestic terrorism. Each of these types of restrictions increases terrorist attacks in the affected country by between one-quarter and one-half the normal (baseline) rate.

These findings produce no confidence in democracy’s pacific effects on terrorism. They do, however, suggest a relatively complex relationship between democracy and terrorism.