Thesis Final Draft

PROFESSORS JOSEPHSON, CLEVEN, AND HOLTHOEFER
The Weakest of Links:
Domestic Terrorism in
Weak States
A Comparison of Weak Regimes
Patrick Craven
12/16/2015

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Terrorism became sensationalized with the destruction of the twin towers on September
11, 2001. With the United States’ declaration of a war on terror, many research articles began to
emerge searching for an explanation to the cause of terrorism. Many of these articles look at the
causes of transnational terror incidents rather than domestic terror attacks. The causes of these
incidents, however, seem to be many and finding a more significant cause than another is
difficult. This essay looks at various causes for terrorism and combines them with state fragility
in order to determine whether or not the common trends for terrorist incidents occur in weaker
nations in the world.
In order to analyze the commonality of domestic terror incidents, I look at these weak
states that seem to be frequent victims of violent acts. This paper looks at the most fragile states
in order to determine whether or not different regime types are more responsible for domestic
terror incidents in the weakest of systems. This topic is interesting because there are a number of
different schools of thought on domestic terror incidents that emerged since 2001 and the
beginning of the War on Terror. Some schools of thought challenge the idea that democratization
of unstable regimes is the best choice while others believe it to be the best solution. Other
schools of thought ignore regime type and focus on poverty and social unrest. Still other schools
of thought believe terrorism to be of a socio-geographic origin that is largely determined by
geographic location, population trends, and representation issues.

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This topic is also interesting because it looks more closely at domestic terrorism than
transnational terrorism. Much of the literature that has emerged recently has focused on the
causes of transnational terrorism without looking at the more local violence of domestic
terrorism because transnational terrorism has more severe implications. With the study of
domestic terrorism, however, it is possible to reveal some of the underlying causes of
transnational terror as well. This is because some scholars believe that transnational terror events
are more likely to occur because the perpetrator comes from a location with domestic terrorism
(Ender et al., 2011). With that in mind, domestic terrorism becomes an even more interesting
subject to explore.
In this paper, I use both statistical analysis and case studies to show that weak
democracies are more likely to experience domestic terrorism than weak autocracies. While
studies have been done previously on the levels of domestic terrorism in different types of
regimes, this study seeks to compare regimes solely at the lower end of state fragility in order to
see if these states are more affected than others in regards to this kind of domestic violence. This
study also seeks to look at consistently weak democracies instead of those in a period of
transition.
Literature Review:
Of the schools of thought regarding the cause of domestic terrorism, scholars argue that
conditions provided by democratic systems contribute to an increased number of attacks. Some
scholars argue that democracy creates a breeding ground for domestic terrorism because it allows
for political freedoms such as freedom of movement and gathering that do not exist in other

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types of states. In his research, Joe Eyerman finds that democracies as a whole do not experience
more terrorist incidents than other states, but weak democracies specifically are more susceptible
to terrorist incidents than any other category (Eyerman 1998, 170). James A. Piazza adds to
Eyerman’s research by conducting a similar test with a different database and finds that new
democracies are more likely to be victims of terror attacks (Piazza 2013, 263). Similar to this,
Wade and Reiter find in their study that suicide bombings are correlated with regime type along
with a number of other factors (Wade and Reiter 2007, page 329). Alberto Abadie also
contributes to this school of thought by finding that countries that have recently converted into a
democracy are far more likely to be the victim of terror attacks (Abadie 2004, 1). Along with the
concept of democracies are more susceptible to domestic terrorism, Matt Qvortrup and Arend
Lijphart’s look at underrepresentation in democracies as a probable cause for the incidents.
Qvortrup and Lijphart find that fatal domestic terrorist attacks are less frequent in small countries
that are able to more easily represent a greater amount of the population (Qvortrup and Lijphart
2013, 471). Quan Li finds in his work that democratic participation reduces the number of
terrorist incidents, but the constraints in place along with freedom of press increase the number
of terrorist incidents that a country experiences (Li 2005, 290).
One school of thought dictates that failed states can be seen as one of the indicators of
domestic terror incidents and terror incidents as a whole. This view comes from the idea that
failed states give terrorist organizations the ability to operate liberally and with less costs (Piazza
2007, 523-524). Supplementing the idea that failed states cause domestic terrorism is Daniel
Agbiboa’s case study of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Agbiboa points out that the ineffectiveness of

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the government of Nigeria is essential for Boko Haram’s ability to thrive (Agbiboa 2013, 432).
In her research done on weak states and domestic terrorism, Bridget L. Coggins finds that the
most failed states are significantly more likely to experience and be responsible for all kinds of
terrorism even when attempting to control for wars within these nations (Coggins 2015, 477). In
addition to this, Piazza’s research on poverty and minority discrimination found that countries
with groups of people that experience severe minority economic discrimination are more likely
to be victim to domestic terror incidents. Piazza uses minority economic discrimination as an
indicator because it is a sign of marginalization of a group of people that could lead to violence.
It is important to note, however, that it is economic marginalization of groups, according to
Piazza, that cause an increase in domestic terror incidents and not poverty as a whole (Piazza
2011, 339). While falling more into the school of thought that weak democracy is most prone to
domestic terror incidents, Joe Eyerman wrote in his research that failed states were also prone to
domestic terror incidents than most other types of countries (Eyerman 1998, 170).
There are also scholars that believe that socio-geography and authoritarianism are key
proponents of domestic terror. Anna Simons argues that a socio-geographical approach to
analyzing terrorism is more effective than either failed states or poverty. This argument is based
on the idea that it is more cost effective to move around in less developed areas and therefore it
is easier for terrorist organization to form, act, and spread their influence without the outside
world being aware (Simons and Tucker 2007, 387). There are also a number of scholars that
disagree with the notion that democracy and poverty are causes of terrorism. One scholar argues
that all forms of terrorism would be much more widespread in regions of Africa if poverty was a

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key indicator. Instead, some scholars believe that authoritarian regimes are more responsible for
terrorist attacks because they are state sponsored (von Hippel 2002, 31). Jennifer L. Windsor
directly contradicts the idea democracy breeds terrorism and encourages democracy as a way to
suppress it. Windsor argues along similar lines as von Hippel claiming that authoritarian regimes
are more repressive and therefore breed more terrorism (Windsor 2013, 44). Further
supplementing this idea is Nahla Shahrouri who finds that terrorism is more likely to occur in
locations that are not democratic and finds a negative correlation between democracy and the
number of terrorist attacks (Nahla, 2010, 41).
With this research, I intend to contribute to the debate by supporting, in a manner, both
the democracy and failed state school of thought. By picking weaker democracies and comparing
them with weak autocracies, I look at both state weakness as a primary cause for domestic terror
and the possibility that such incidents are caused by conditions present in democracies even
among weakest states. Through data analysis and case studies, I will be able to use my research
to discover evidence leaning towards weak democracies or weak autocracies as a cause of
domestic terror incidents. I believe that the lack of security effectiveness, constraints on
government, and increased civil liberties present in democracies contribute to acts of domestic
terror that weak autocracies avoid.
Hypothesis and Claims:
The main hypothesis I explore is that among the weakest of states, democracies are more
likely to experiences acts of domestic terrorism than autocratic states because terrorists are able
to use civil liberties, and lack of security to their advantage. In order to look at this hypothesis, I

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look at a number of different claims that assert to prevalence of terrorist attacks in weak
democracies. The first idea I explore is that weak states as a whole experience more domestic
terrorism. From this, I look at weak democracies and weak autocracies in order to show that
democracies are still more likely to experience domestic terrorism even when weak. Because
part of being a weak state includes poor security effectiveness and legitimacy, and because weak
democracies have fewer controls on movement, I look at state security as an indicator for
domestic terrorism. After analyzing state security, I move on to state that warfare is an
inadequate explanation for an increase in domestic terror because incidents of domestic terror do
not necessarily increase during a time of war. Because many weak states are found in areas with
similar geography and social makeup, I then argue that Socio-Geography does not fully explain
an increase in domestic terrorism because there are other countries around the world with
different social compositions and geographic locations that also experience high incidents of
domestic terrorism. Finally, I claim that weak democracies have more civil liberties than weak
autocracies and that these additional freedoms contribute to terrorist incidents.
Conceptualizationand Operationalization:
In order to define a terrorist incident, I will use the RDWTI (RAND Database of
Worldwide Terrorism Incidents) definition that determines what is included in their dataset.
According to the RDWTI, a terrorist attack is violence or the threat of violence that is calculated
to generate fear in order to further a political goal. In general, these attacks are aimed towards
civilians and, in the case of domestic terrorism, are perpetrated by a member of that society
(RAND, 2009). This definition concurs with the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) definition of

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terrorism but because the focus is domestic terrorism it is important to note that these attacks
need to be perpetrated by members of the same nationality of the victim (Global Terrorism
Databse, 2015). There are some scholars that debate this definition and opt instead to use an
actor-base system for determining terrorist violence, but this system is ineffective for this study
because it turns terrorism into a single unit rather than differentiating between transnational and
domestic incidents (Sanchez-Cuenca and de la Calle, 2009). The next definition that is
important to distinguish is what constitutes a weak state. In order to do this, I use the definition
of a failed state provided by Rotberg in his analysis of state failure dictating that state failure is a
country that is unable to sustain itself by providing security needs, judicial needs, civil or
political liberties, or public welfare (Coggins 2015, 461)1. Though this definition is for a failed
state, its descriptors are the same as those used in the State Fragility Index (SFI) in order to
determine state fragility. A weak state is therefore a state that has severe problems but does not
completely fail in providing security needs, judicial needs, civil or political liberties, or public
welfare.
With the definition of what constitutes a weak state established, the definition of
government types in this state of weakness becomes the next step in the process. In order to find
the definition of weak democracy, I look to the Polity IV index that measures levels of autocracy
and democracy within a country and gives the state a corresponding score. Because of the nature
of the Polity IV scale, there are a number of different levels of democracy and autocracy. States
with a high polity score are considered to be well established democracies. States with
1 This definition is found in Coggins 2015 but is cited to Rotberg 2004.

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intermediate scores that are positive are considered to be open anocracies, or countries that have
tendencies towards both democracy and autocracy but favor democracy. States with a low
negative polity score can be considered to be closed anocracies, or countries states that lean
towards autocratic tendencies. The Polity IV index defines democracy as follows:
“Democracy is conceived as three essential, interdependent elements. One is the
presence of institution and procedures through which citizens can express effective
preferences about alternative policies and leaders. Second is the existence of
institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the executive. Third is the
guarantee of civil liberties to all citizens in their daily lives and in acts of political
participation.”- Polity IV User’s Manual (Polity IV 2015)
Because I am using the Polity IV in order to determine regime type but am also using the State
Fragility Index that has its own definition of weak democracy, there is a slight difference in
definitions. The State Fragility Index uses the Polity IV scale in order to determine regime type,
but it considers open anocracies to be the most accurate definition of what constitute a weak
democratic state. This problem also exists for the labeling of weak autocratic governments that
are considered to be closed anocracies by Polity IV. Also in accordance with Polity IV, the
definition of weak autocracy is as follows:
“Institutionalized Autocracy: ‘Authoritarian regime’ in Western political
discourse is a pejorative term for some very diverse kinds of political systems whose
common properties are a lack of regularized political competition and concern for
political freedoms. We use the more neutral term Autocracy and define it operationally in
terms of the presence of a distinctive set of political characteristics. In mature form,
autocracies sharply restrict or suppress competitive political participation. Their chief
executives are chosen in a regularized process of selection within the political elite, and
once in office they exercise power with few institutional constraints.” - Polity IV User’s
Manual (Polity IV, 2015)

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These variables are measurable via variables provided by their respective datasets. The
Piazza Dataset contains the variable GTDDomestic that is a measure of the number of domestic
terror incidents that occurred in a nation that particular year (Piazza, 2011). This variable has
been used by Piazza and Enders previously in order to provide an accurate analysis of what a
domestic terror incident is. Due to the nature of this research, there is a possibility that domestic
terror incidents will either go unreported or be falsely reported by some nations. Because of this,
the numbers reported in the variable GTDDomestic might be under representative of the actual
number of terrorist attacks that take place due to reporting bias (Drakos and Gofas, 2006). In
order to measure state fragility, the SFI is built around the variable sfi that measures a collection
of data from security effectiveness and legitimacy, political effectiveness and legitimacy, and
social effectiveness and legitimacy (INSCR 2013). These three factors fit perfectly with
Rotberg’s definition of state failure and therefore coincide with my definition of state weakness.
In order to measure regime type, I will look at the variable Polity2 for states because it is a sum
of the democratic and autocratic tendencies of nations. A weak democracy can be considered to
have a positive polity score but a weak location on the State Fragility Index and a weak
autocracy can be considered to have a negative polity score and a weak location on the SFI. Due
to the merging of datasets, there were a small number of cases lost due to countries not included
in one dataset or the other. As a result the dataset is composed of 78.8% matching data with the
rest excluded from the calculations.

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Methods:
In order to test the claim that domestic terror incidents will be more frequent in weak
democracies, I use a negative binomial regression using data available from James A. Piazza’s
dataset on domestic terror incidents, the State Fragility Index, and the Polity IV dataset. Piazza’s
dataset is essential because it contains a count variable of domestic terror incidents for each
country along with population averages and other essential variables to the study. The State
Fragility Index is important because it measures state capacity in several different areas that can
be looked at individually or as a whole. The Polity IV dataset is useful because it provides a
means to distinguish between regime types in the broad statistical analysis such as democracy,
anocracy, and autocracy. These datasets were also chosen because they are operated by third
parties and are well known or come from respected researchers in the field. These datasets will
provide a good overview on the comparison between weak autocracies and weak democracies
because they cover most states with a population of over 500,000 between the years of 1995 -
2007.
Along with the broad statistical analysis using negative binomial regression, I chose six
countries specifically from the State Fragility Index that are in a similar categorized state of
weakness, have not experienced war recently, are of similar sizes, but are not all necessarily
located in the same geographic area. In addition to this selection process, I chose three because
they were weak democracies and three because they were weak autocracies in terms of fragility
and polity score. By choosing case studies to look at based on state fragility, I can look at

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whether or not they follow the trends seen in the overarching statistical analysis and find
explanation for aberrant nations.
Population:
In order to draw broad conclusions on whether domestic terror incidents are more
common in weak democracies or weak autocracies, I will analyze 167 countries that are
available in James A. Piazza’s data set on domestic terrorism and the State Fragility Index in
order to determine what states are considered strong, weak, or failed. The State Fragility Index
has 18 years of data from 1995 – 2013 while James A. Piazza’s dataset used the GTD and covers
the years from 1970 – 2007. In order to use the variable sfi and GTDDomestic, I look at the 12
year time period that these datasets share.
In order to get a more country-specific look at domestic terror incidents, I specifically
look at the data for three weak democracies and three weak autocracies. The three weak
democracies I have chosen to look at more closely are Burundi, Nigeria, and Niger. The logic
behind these choices was based off of their location on the state fragility index, how long they
had gone since an armed conflict, their size, and their regime type based off of the polity IV
scale. In a similar manner, the three weak autocracies I have chosen are Rwanda, Myanmar, and
Uganda. Rwanda was chosen because it had a similar population, geographic size, ethnic
makeup, and is a neighbor of Burundi. Myanmar was chosen as a mean to look closely at a state
that is outside of Africa and the Middle East and is one of the few states in the upper 2/3 of

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severity to be located out of this geographic region. Uganda was chosen as a comparison because
it has the same state fragility index score as Niger and can be used to compare the two countries.
Results:
State Fragility:
Before going into the main claims of this study, it is important to establish a more basic
claim in regards to weak states as a whole. Part of this study wants to demonstrate that weak
states overall are more likely to experience domestic terror incidents due to poorer conditions
overall than more stable nations. Part of the problem in weak states is that they do not have the
same levels of security, political, and economic legitimacy that is needed to keep the people
complacent and discourage domestic terrorists from acting. In order to look at this in particular, I
did a negative binomial regression comparing the number of terrorist attacks in a country to its
sfi score with a number of other common indicators (Table 1). As stated previously, the State
Fragility Index variable was created in order to look at the levels of weakness in different areas
of state governance.

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Table 1:
Continuous Variable Information
N Minim
um
Maxim
um
Mean Std.
Deviation
Dependent
Variable
Sandler and
Enders
1694 0 383 5.98 22.012
Covariate State Fragility
Index
1694 0 25 9.80 6.824
Durable 1694 0 197 23.99 30.655
Executive 1694 -8.00 5.70 3.691
1
1.56212
Partic 1694 1.00 5.00 3.323
5
.98549
polity 1694 -88 10 .92 16.087
exconst 1694 -88 7 2.25 15.105
polity2 1694 -10 10 3.45 6.493
Relation Between Domestic Terror (Sandler and Enders) and State Fragility
Parameter B Std.
Error
95% Wald
Confidence Interval
Hypothesis Test
Lower Upper Wald Chi-
Square
df Sig.
(Intercept) -.104 .1932 -.482 .275 .288 1 .591
sfi .137 .0057 .125 .148 568.322 1 .000
Durable .005 .0010 .003 .007 26.246 1 .000
Executive .140 .0348 .072 .208 16.165 1 .000
Partic -.202 .0308 -.263 -.142 43.094 1 .000
exconst .017 .0023 .012 .021 53.534 1 .000
polity2 .073 .0068 .060 .087 115.220 1 .000
(Scale) 1a
(Negative
binomial)
1a
Dependent Variable: Sandler and Enders
Model: (Intercept), sfi, Durable, Executive, Partic, exconst, polity2
a. Fixed at the displayed value.

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As the table shows, there is statistical significance in the relationship between state
fragility and the number of terrorist incidents to past the 99% confidence interval. The
relationship shown in this table is positive and therefore reflects that as levels of state fragility
increase, the number of terrorist incidents increase. That is to say, the weaker a state becomes,
the more likely it is to experience incidents of domestic terror incidents. With this basic claim
supported by the data, it becomes possible to look at other facets of domestic terrorism specific
to weak democracies and weak autocracies.
Regime Type:
The first major claim that needs to be looked at in this study is that weak democratic
governments experience more incidents of domestic terror than weak autocratic regimes. Using
negative binomial regression and the creation of a categorical value based off of the Polity IV
scale, I measured the statistical significance of terrorist events based on regime types. The new
variable I created, named polity_reg, divided the polity2 variable into 4 categories with -10 - -6
being an autocracy, -5 – 0 a weak autocracy, 1- 5 a weak democracy, and 6 -10 a democracy.
After performing the statistical analysis I found that there is a positive trend between regime type
and domestic terror incidents (table 2). Because the intention of this thesis is to compare weak
democracies and weak autocracies, this positive correlation shows that, in general, weak
democracies are more likely to experience domestic terror incidents. There are a number of
reasons why the results could show statistical significance, however, such as the exceptional
countries like Colombia with astronomically more average terror incidents (113 per year) than

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most other nations even though it is an established democracy with a moderate state fragility
score.
Table 2:
Inclusion of polity_reg
Parameter B Std.
Error
95% Wald Confidence
Interval
Hypothesis Test
Square
df Sig.
(Intercept) -.650 .1328 -.910 -.390 23.965 1 .000
polity_reg .585 .0137 .559 .612 1837.629 1 .000
Durable 7.731E-
5
.0005 -.001 .001 .021 1 .886
Executive
constraint
-.012 .0010 -.014 -.010 135.883 1 .000
Participation -.244 .0164 -.277 -.212 221.135 1 .000
GINI .041 .0025 .036 .046 278.561 1 .000
(Scale) 1a
(Negative
binomial)
1a
Model: (Intercept), polity_reg, Durable, exconst, Partic, GINI
While the positive trend with the polity score supports scholars that have done studies on
democracy and terrorism, the case studies show a different result. When comparing the average
number of terrorist attacks of the six different cases from 1995 – 2006, the first two states that I

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looked at were Rwanda and Burundi. As a weak democracy with a Polity IV score of 4 – 6 over
the time period, Burundi’s average of 15.54 domestic terror incidents per year rises to around
double the global average2. In stark contrast to this, the weak autocratic government of Rwanda
experienced only 3 domestic terror incidents per year3.
While contrasting with the idea that weak democracies are victims of domestic terrorism
than weak autocracies, the next two case studies show that regime change does not increase the
number of terror incidents45. Even with this positive shift, Burma maintains a state of weak
autocracy while Nigeria can be defined as a weak democracy as of 2000. Interestingly, although
Nigeria experienced much more dramatic shifts in Polity score over the course of the last 20
years, it has experienced far fewer acts of domestic terrorism than the only slightly shifting
2 SPSS Analysis, State Fragility Index and James A. Piazza’s Poverty, minority economic discrimination and
domestic terrorism dataset.Available from http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.htmland
https://www.prio.org/JPR/Datasets/#2011
3 Ibid.
4 Larger images available http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. Polity IV
5 Graph legend found at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/keynew.htm. Blue lines indicate Polity, Red lines
indicate a period of factionalism that usually precedes regime change,and dotted green lines represent a regime
change.

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Burma. Nigeria has experienced an average of 2.81 domestic terror incidents per year from
1995-20066. In contrast, Burma has experienced an average of 5.91 domestic terror incidents
within the same time period7.
The next two case studies, Niger and Uganda, show a comparison contrary to the
statistical analysis and shows that weak autocracy seems more subject to terror than weak
democracy8. Niger has experienced a number of changes to regime since 1995 with a fall
towards autocracy in the beginning around 1995 to a sudden jump back up to democracy around
the year 2000. From 2000 – 2006 Niger experienced a Polity rating of 5 -6 as a result of this
regime change and the sudden drop in 2010 is not accounted for in the Piazza’s data on domestic
terror incidents therefore it is unknown if this coup d’état sparked domestic unrest. In Uganda,
the trend has been a slow movement away from pure Autocracy to weak anocracy or weak
autocracy. The period of factionalism shown in the chart only occurs around the year 2006
therefore data is not available for use regarding domestic terror incidents. Within the time period
being studied however, there were significantly more terrorist attacks in Uganda than there were
in Niger with Uganda experiencing 9.27 domestic terror incidents per year and Niger only
experiencing an average of 0.36 domestic terror incidents9.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Larger Images available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. Source: Polity IV
9 Ibid.

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What, then, accounts for these differences in levels of domestic terrorism? The case
studies do not show an immediate consistency regarding the reason for these different levels.
The nations that underwent regime changes did not necessarily have increased averages in
domestic terrorism. Though many of the variables in these case studies shift, one common
variable that received a poor ranking was the economic effectiveness of each of the six case
studies. With that in mind, poverty is one of the common schools of thought regarding domestic
terrorism and it is possible that marginalized groups are responsible for these differing levels of
domestic terror.
Security Effectiveness:
The next claim that I look at is that weak democracies have poorer security effectiveness
and legitimacy than weak autocracies. Security effectiveness is a measure of vulnerability to
political violence and the general security of a nation. Security legitimacy supplements this by
measuring levels of state repression. If domestic terror is deterred by strong security
effectiveness and legitimacy, a positive relationship should appear when using a negative

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binomial regression (Table 3). If a state has a better level of security effectiveness, it is able to
more accurately able to hunt down perpetrators of terror incidents.
Table 3:
Parameter Estimates
Parameter B Std.
Error
95% Wald Confidence
Interval
Hypothesis Test
Square
df Sig.
(Intercept) -.088 .1408 -.364 .188 .392 1 .531
seceff .750 .0437 .664 .836 294.773 1 .000
secleg .572 .0442 .486 .659 167.271 1 .000
Durable .007 .0009 .005 .009 59.732 1 .000
exconst .205 .0251 .156 .254 66.954 1 .000
parcomp -.198 .0255 -.248 -.148 60.215 1 .000
Partic -.130 .0331 -.195 -.065 15.434 1 .000
(Scale) 1a
(Negative
binomial)
1a
Model: (Intercept), seceff, secleg, Durable, exconst, parcomp, Partic

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As expected, the negative binomial regression showed a significant correlation between
secleg and seceff signifying that as countries have poorer security effectiveness and legitimacy
they are more likely to experience domestic terror incidents.
While the data analysis shows that security legitimacy and effectiveness are statistically
significant when looking at domestic terror incidents, the case studies show that security
effectiveness is not necessarily determined by regime type. The seceff variable is measured from
0 to 3 with 3 being the states with the poorest security efficiency. Of the case studies with poor
security effectiveness scores, each of these countries experienced higher numbers of domestic
terror incidents than the lower ranking counterparts. For example, Burma, a weak democracy
with a security effectiveness score of 2.95, was victim to more terrorist attacks than most of the
other case studies except for the weak democracy Burundi10. Burundi actually was on the lower
end of security effectiveness with a score of 1.95 signifying moderately strong security
effectiveness even though it had the highest rate of terror incidents among the case studies11. The
majority of case studies (Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria) settled at 2.00 with moderately weak
security effectiveness12. Interestingly, Niger scored the best security effectiveness score of all the
case studies with a 0.4713. This score is interesting because it strongly relates to the statistical
10 SPSS Analysis, State Fragility Index
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.

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significance of the broad statistical analysis but also contradicts the idea that regime type is
predictive of security effectiveness because Niger is a weak democracy. Niger, along with
having the best security efficiency, also had the lowest number of domestic terror incidents of
any of the case studies.
War:
While looking at the state of security effectiveness, it is also important to argue that states
at war do not necessarily experience more terrorist incidents than states outside of conflict.
Political violence might increase during warfare, but it is not an adequate predictor of terror
incidents14. The state fragility index uses several different markers in order to define the state of
war a country is in. Using these markers it is possible to determine whether or not a country is
currently experiencing conflict, has experienced conflict in last 5 years, or has experienced
conflict in the last 20 years. Based on this, the case studies show that countries that have not
been at war within the last 5 years still manage to have higher levels of domestic terrorism than
countries that are currently experiencing war. Burundi sticks out more than the other cases
because it has not experienced war in the last 5 years and has only experienced an armed conflict
within the last 20 years but still manages to have the highest average of domestic terror incidents
than any of the other cases15. Another case where the average number of terrorist incidents is
higher than those of the countries at war is Uganda which experiences an average of 9.27 terror
14 Based on the method I chose my case studies,two of the six countries were considered to be in a state of war in
2014: Burma and Nigeria. This data is newer than the data used in the dataset because the State Fragility Index page
stays up to date and does not keep available archives of past wars. The dataset itself does not contain the variable
saying whether or not the country is at war and instead focuses on the contents ofthe sfi variable.
15 State Fragility Index, 10.

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incidents per year16. While Nigeria is considered to be at war, it experiences only 2.81 domestic
terror incidents per year on average which is almost half of the global average of terror incidents
per year. Similarly, though not to the extent of Nigeria, Burma is also considered to be in a state
of war but still experiences slightly less than the global average of terrorist incidents per year.
Socio-Geography:
For my next claim, I argue that socio-geographic circumstances are also an inadequate
means of determining levels of domestic terror attacks. One of the first things that becomes
apparent when looking at the case studies is that neighboring states experience drastically
different levels of domestic terror incidents. Burundi and Rwanda are the optimal cases to
demonstrate this because they are nations of similar size, population, and ethnic makeup but
differ on regime type. If terrorist activity had a spillover effect that affected other countries in the
area, then there should be similar levels of terrorist activity but Burundi, a weak democracy, has
the highest average of 15.4 domestic terror incidents while Rwanda, a weak autocracy, only
suffers 3 annually.
Another way I challenge the geographic argument for terror incidents is by looking at
samples globally that directly contradict this argument. For example, Colombia has the highest
average number of domestic terror incidents of any nation with 113 domestic terror incidents per
year from 1970 – 200717. India, on the other side of the world and with an average of 75.92, also
has a very high number of domestic terror incidents annually within the same time period18. In
16 Ibid, 10.
17 SPSS Analysis, James A.Piazza Dataset
18 Ibid.

Craven 24
order to bring yet another example into this argument, I looked at Spain which has a long history
of domestic terror issues. Spain has an average of 52.45 annually within the same time period19.
There are a number of reasons why the Spanish average is so high but one of the biggest ones is
the prevalence of ETA after the transition from autocracy to democracy. While this can be
considered a democracy in transition, the violence brought about was to manipulate
governmental politics by a single group and not due to massive internal conflict. By moving
away from only weak states and looking instead at examples of high average of domestic terror
incidents, one finds that the highest averages are dispersed around the globe. For that reason, I
argue the geographic location cannot explain accurately the cause of domestic terrorism.
Another social argument for terrorism that I approach is that population contributes to
levels of domestic terror incidents within countries. The case studies do not fit the population
mold. For example, although Burundi has the highest average number of terror incidents of the
six countries I looked at, it has the lowest population20. Another example from the case studies
where there is a notable difference in population and domestic terror incidents is Burma.
Although Burma has a population of around 56,000,000, it has double the rate of terrorist
incidents as Nigeria even though Nigeria has a population of 181,000,0002122.
19 Ibid.
20 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Burundi” CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/by.html
21 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Burma.” CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/bm.html
22 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Nigeria” CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/ni.html

Craven 25
Next, I argue that no particular race is particularly responsible for the number of domestic
terror incidents within a country. In order to go about supporting this, I look at the ethnic
makeup of three different states with high levels of domestic terrorism and I also look at the
established religion within these states. By looking at the higher averages of domestic terror
incidents, I can argue that states with high levels of domestic terrorism are not limited to
countries with a single race. My first example is Colombia, which has the highest number of
average domestic terror incidents, because 84.2% of the population of Colombia identify
themselves as white or mixed23. Following this, India also has a high rate of domestic terror but
72% of the Indian population identify as Indo-Aryan with most of the rest identifying as
Dravidian24. Finally, I look at the Philippines which has a very diverse society with 28.1%
identifying as Tagalog, 13.1% identifying as Cebuano, 8.1% identifying as Ilocano, 7.6%
indentifying as Bisaya, 7.5% identifying as Hiligaynon Ilonggo, 6% identifying as Bikol, 3.4%
identifying as Waray, and, finally, the 25.3% remaining identify as other25. Though not as
prevalent as in Colombia and India, the Philippines have an above average rate of domestic terror
incidents with 32.5 per year.
Next, I argue that the majority type of religion in a country is not a good indicator for
domestic terrorism. In order to do that, I look at the major religions of the same three countries
with high annual domestic terror incidents. Colombia has a large Catholic population with about
23 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Colombia” CIA World Factbook
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/co.html
24 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “India” CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/geos/in.html
25 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Philippines” CIA World Factbook
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rp.html

Craven 26
90% of Colombians claiming to be practicing Catholics26. India follows this example with 79.8%
of the population indentifying as Hindu27. With 82.9% of the people identifying as Catholic, the
Philippines has a similar composition to Colombia28.
Because poverty is commonly thought of in regards to what contributes to terror incidents,
it is necessary to determine that, overall, weak democracies are not poorer than weak autocracies.
In order to demonstrate this, I did a cross tabulation of the variables ecoeff and ecoleg which
measure the economic effectiveness and legitimacy of the nation with the variable polity_reg to
look at regime type (table 4).
Table 429:
Economic Effectiveness and Regime Type
Count
Regime Types Total
Autocrac
y
Weak
Autocracy
Weak
Democracy
Democracy
Economic Effectiveness 0 119 39 1 666 825
1 60 37 79 395 571
2 155 100 58 209 522
3 93 93 119 229 534
4 66 231 108 131 536
Total 493 500 365 1630 2988
26 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Colombia” CIA World Factbook
27 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “India” CIA World Factbook
28 Central Intelligence Agency,2015. “Philippines” CIA World Factbook
29 Economic Effectiveness is measured on a scale of 0 – 4 with 0 being most effective and 4 being the least effective.
Economic Legitimacy has a similar measure but is measured from 0 – 3.

Craven 27
Economic Legitimacy and Regime Type
Count
Regime Types Total
Autocracy Weak
Autocracy
Weak
Democracy
Democracy
Economic Legitimacy 0 93 105 120 1072 1390
1 40 50 35 157 282
2 115 113 56 220 504
3 245 232 154 181 812
Total 493 500 365 1630 2988
These crosstabs show that weak democracies are more likely to have legitimate economies but
less likely than autocracies to have effective economic activities. Along with this, however, more
weak democratic economies are likely to be relatively effective than weak democracies. In
summation, when taking into consideration that weak democracies and democracies tend to be
more economically effective and legitimate than weak autocracies and autocracies, it is possible
to make the claim that democracies are not poorer than autocracies even though they experience
more acts of domestic terrorism.
Civil Liberties:
Another facet of weak democracies versus weak autocracies is the level of civil and
political rights within the country. There are a number of ways to go about determining civil
liberty, but I use the variable parcomp in order to look at competitiveness of political competition
within a country. This variable is representative of civil liberty because one of the most
important liberties is the right to vote (Table 5). While looking at that, I use two different parts of
the Freedom House in order to establish that the democratic case studies are both more accepting
in terms of civil liberties and freedom of the press. The cross-tabulation used on the variables

Craven 28
polity_reg and parcomp show an expected high number of autocracies with fully suppressed
political competition. The two interesting categories to look at in regards to political rights in
weak states, however, are the weak autocracies and weak democracies. The weak autocracy
column shows significantly more instances of political suppression (2) than weak democracies.
Weak democracies appear to aggregate around factional and transitional amounts of political
competition which are closer to true competition.
Table 530
Political Competitiveness and Regime Type
Count
Polity IV divided by regime type Total
Autocracy Weak
Autocracy
Weak
Democracy
Democracy
parcomp -88 5 52 44 4 105
-77 0 110 0 0 110
0 0 13 80 16 109
1 1764 27 0 0 1791
2 545 370 40 0 955
3 4 323 350 447 1124
4 0 83 133 1033 1249
5 0 0 0 1398 1398
Total 2318 978 647 2898 6841
For the case studies, Freedom House has two different means of measuring civil liberties
within states. Freedom House has one dataset that measures numerically the ranking of civil
liberties that a country has based on a scale of 1 – 7 with 1 being the most free and 7 being the
least free of states. In general, the weak democracies received better scores in terms of civil
30 The variable parcomp is separated into 7 categories. Categories 1 – 5 are important for this claim because 1 stands
for repressed competition, 2 stands for suppressed competition, 3 stands forfactional competition, 4 stands for
transitional competition, and 5 stands for fully competitive competition.

Craven 29
liberties than the weak autocracies. Burundi and Nigeria received civil liberty scores of 5 while
Niger received a better score with a 431. While these scores are still on the worse side of levels of
civil liberties, they scored higher than the case studies of weak autocracies. For example, both
Rwanda and Burma have civil liberty scores of 6, which is almost as restrictive as it can be.
Uganda, however, meets the civil liberty score of Burundi and Nigeria with a similar score of 5.
The closeness in civil liberty scores is not by itself significant since there is an overlap, but when
combined with the cross tabulation used prior to this, the level of political and civil rights is
higher in democratic regimes even in weak states.
Because freedom of the press is a useful incentive for terrorists, I argue that weak
democracies have higher levels of freedom of the press than weak autocracies. Freedom House
has a separate dataset that measures the levels of freedom in the press based on a scale of 1 –
100. Similar to the Freedom in the World dataset, the lower the score a country receives in the
freedom of the press rating, the more free press is in that state. Freedom of the press is an
important factor for domestic terror because some terrorists will seek out countries that are more
likely to report on terrorist incidents. This means that weak autocracies with lower levels of
freedom of the press that contain methods of manipulating information to the public are not ideal
targets for terrorists (van Belle, 1997, 405). Some scholars disagree about the importance of
freedom of the press and instead focus on press attention as a main factor in terrorist incidents,
but since this is a measure of civil liberty the use of freedom of the press is not lost (Hoffman,
Shelton, and Cleven, 2013, 899 – 897). For the most part, with the notable exception of Burundi,
31 Freedom House, 2015. “Freedom in the World.”
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2009

Craven 30
the weak democracies had far better freedom of the press scores than their autocratic
counterparts. Niger and Nigeria have very similar freedom of the press scores with 51 and 53
respectively32. Burundi is an interesting exception among the three democracies because it has a
high enough polity score to be considered a full-fledged democracy but has a freedom of the
press score of 74 which is significantly worse than most other open anocracies of a similar state
fragility such Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, and Pakistan. The freedom of press score is very similar to
both Rwanda and Burma who scored 79 and 73 respectively. Uganda took the reverse trend of
Burundi and scored a low score of 56 which is comparable to the scores of the other two
democracies33.
Conclusion:
Domestic terrorism is a hard issue to tackle because of how many speculative causes it
can have. There are the personal motivations of the terrorist, what economic indicators drive a
terrorist to act, whether a terrorist can act without being stopped, and whether or not the state
attacked will even report the incident. For this reason there were a number of claims that needed
to be tackled and established in order to show a strong connection to weak democracy over weak
autocracy. In general, state fragility appears to indicate that weak states experience domestic
terror incidents at a higher rate than stronger states. There are a number of possible reasons for
this such as high security efficiency that can safely capture or stop terrorists before they act. Of
all regime types, there was a positive correlation to the .000 significance that countries that are
32 Freedom House, 2015. “Freedom of the Press.” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom-press-
2015#.Vij9BfmrShc
33 Ibid.

Craven 31
more democratic are more likely to experience domestic terror incidents. It was also the case that
economic effectiveness, political competition, security effectiveness, and the other statistically
tested variables seem to influence the number of terrorist incidents.
Among the case studies, Burundi proved to have the most interesting average of
domestic terror incidents because of its size, regime type, and population. Because Burundi is a
small nation, with a tiny population, and a democratic regime type, it contradicts the ideas of
Qvortrup and Lijphart that smaller nations will experience less domestic terror because they
more easily represent the people (Qvortrup and Lijphart, 2013). With that said, the averages of
terror incidents did not appear to match with the current school of thought that democracies
experience domestic terror more than other nations. Niger’s low rate of domestic terror and its
strong rate of security effectiveness proved very interesting because it contradicted the idea that
democracies have poorer security effectiveness than weak autocracies. With that said, its good
security effectiveness is a possible explanation for its low terrorist incident rate because it is an
exception to the other six case studies. Burma was a good choice for case study because its
location outside of the Middle East and Africa provided an opportunity to see whether or not the
trends of domestic terror persisted outside that geographic area. In this case, it seems that
Burma’s autocratic government experienced more domestic terror incidents than most other case
studies.
In the end, the causes of domestic terrorism are many and because of this it is difficult to
demonstrate whether or not one variable is more effective in determining the likelihood of
domestic terrorism than others. Research will need to continue in regards to domestic terrorism
because it seems that many different variables drastically affect the outcome of terrorist incidents.

Craven 32
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