Willingness and Opportunity:
Minority Discrimination, State Strength and Domestic Terrorism
Sambuddha Ghatak
University of Tennessee
&
Brandon C. Prins
University of Tennessee
Research Question
A major driving factor of terrorism is the existence of concrete
grievances among an identifiable subgroup of a larger population
(Crenshaw, 1981).
One of the most permissive causes of terrorism is a government's
inability or unwillingness to prevent it (Crenshaw, 1981).
How does state weakness influence domestic terrorism in the
presence of minority discrimination ?
Literature Review
• Minority Discrimination:
o Bradley, 2006; Buendia, 2005; Whittaker, 2001; Ergil, 2000: Case
studies identify minority discrimination as a major driver of
terrorism.
o Piazza, 2012; Piazza, 2011; Lai, 2007: Large n-studies similarly
found terrorism to be driven by minority discrimination.
• State Weakness:
• Piazza, 2008; Lai (2007): Transnational terrorism increases in weak
states.
• Fearon and Laitin (2003); Englebert and Ron, (2004) on rebellion,
insurgency and civil war.
• Bodea (2012) on civil war.
Domestic Terrorism
• Limited research on domestic terrorism although it is far
more frequent than transnational terrorism.
Incidents of Terrorism
Domestic
International
21.7%
78.3%
Theory
• Any theoretical framework exploring terrorism needs to take two
factors into account.
• The first factor is the existence of concrete grievances among an
identifiable subgroup of a larger population (Crenshaw, 1981).
• The second is opportunity for social or political movement to
develop in order to redress these grievances (Tilly, 1978, pp.133138).
Rank of Countries by Number of Domestic Terrorist Incidents,
2007
Theory
• Terrorism is a strategy of the weak in two senses; terrorist
organizations are weak relative to the extensive demands they
make, and they are weak relative to their targets - usually, states
(Frieden et al., 2010).
o Interests and methods of the terrorists may not be widely
shared by the larger population they claim to fight for.
o If the rebel groups can muster enough popular support for
their cause, they might engage in armed conflict against the
state.
Theory
• Terrorism is highly asymmetric warfare.
• States are nearly always stronger politically and
militarily than the terrorist networks they face.
• It is their weakness that motivates terrorist groups to
target unarmed civilians.
• They bypass the state’s military to avoid certain
defeat, and inflict pain on unarmed civilians.
Theory
• The weakness of the terrorist groups influences:
o their resource mobilization (criminal activities like drug trafficking,
bank robbery and currency counterfeiting)
o selection of weapons (Improvised Explosive Devises in most cases)
o and their organizational structure (cell structure to evade detection
and capture).
Theory and Hypothesis
• The extremist sections of national minority groups
generally face the collective might of the national
majority and a state.
• In the face of such powerful opposition, the minorities
are more likely to choose terrorism as their strategy.
o Hypothesis: The number of domestic terrorist incidents
within a country will increase with the increase in state
strength if minority group/groups are discriminated.
Research Design
• Global Terrorism Database (GTD) of 172 countries.
• Dependent Variable: country-year count of domestic
terrorist incidents between 1998 - 2007 (Enders et al.,
2011)
• Independent Variables:
1. Economic Discrimination Index (MAR).
2. Percentage of Discriminated Population (Wimmer, 2009,
Ethnic Power Relations dataset).
3. Relative Extractive Capacity, State Fragility Index,
Government Effectiveness, Control on Corruption
(Arbetman-Rabinowitz et al., 2012, Marshall & Cole,
2010; World Bank, 2013)
Research Design
Control Variables:
Regime types: Democracy, anocracy and Autocracy; GDP
per capita; Civil War (1000 or more deaths), Regime
Durability, Spatial Dispersion, US Intervention (Iraq
and Afghanistan)
Specification: GEE Models with Negative Binomial
Estimator and AR(1) Error Structure
Table 1: Direct Effects Across 5 Different Measures of State Strength,
Using MAR Repression as Measure of Grievance
Table 2: Direct Effects Across 5 Different Measures of State Strength,
Using Discriminated Population as Measure of Grievance
Table 3: Effectsof State Strength on Domestic Terrorism Conditional on
Repression, Using MAR as Measure of Repression
Table 4: Effect of State Strength on Domestic Terrorism Conditional on
Repression, Using Discriminated Population as Measure of Repression
Figure 1: Marginal Effect of State Strength Across the 5 Models
Figure 2: Marginal Effect of Repression(MAR) Conditional on State
Strength
Figure 3: Marginal Effect of Repression (Discriminated Population)
Conditional on State Strength
Conclusion
In each model, the interaction term between state strength and
minority discrimination is statistically significant in the hypothesized
direction.
We find strong support that terrorism increases in strong state in
the presence of minority discrimination.
Thank you.
Questions and Comments