TERRORISM AND DEMOCRATIC-STATES - SOFT TARGETS OR ACCESSIBLE SYSTEMS

This study evaluates the relationship between democracy and the decisi on calculus of terrorist organizations. Starting with a simple formali zation of the budget constraint for terrorist organizations, this proj ect evaluates two schools of thought regarding the role of democracy. The first school, labeled the strategic school, argues that democratic regimes decrease the price of violence and therefore encourage terror ism. The second school, labeled the political access school, argues th at democratic regimes decrease the price of non-violent political expr ession and thereby decrease the probability of terrorism. These compet ing explanations are evaluated against the ITERATE cross-national time series data for the years 1968 to 1986, using a negative binomial reg ression event count model. The results show that established democraci es are less likely to experience terrorism than non-democracies, but t hat newly formed democracies are more likely to experience terrorism t han other types of states.