Taming the Beast: Democratic Institutions and Terrorist Groups’ Involvement in Civil War

Abstract

ABSTRACTMost scholarly literature explores the relationship between regime type and terrorism, while little attention has been paid to the influence of regime on terrorist groups’ decision to engage in civil war. This paper argues that the onset of civil war involving terrorist organizations is conditioned by regime type. Democratic regimes create conditions that prevent the onset of civil war involving terrorist organizations, although similar regimes might provide the opportunities for such groups to emerge in the first place. The pacifying effect of democracy on terrorist organizations’ decision-making calculus is, however, mediated through a set of democratic institutions. Empirical tests on a global dataset of terrorist organizations show that democratic institutions such as political rights, repression (lack of), rule of law, civil liberties and high state capacity indeed mediate the effects of a democratic regime in lowering the likelihood of civil war onset involving terrorist organizations.KEYWORDS: Terrorist groupsrebelsterrorismcivil war and democracy Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2023.2256399.Notes1. Alex P. Schmid, “Terrorism and Democracy,” Terrorism and Political Violence 4, no. 4 (1992): 14–25; Jennifer L. Windsor, “Promoting Democratization Can Combat Terrorism,” Washington Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2003): 43–58; Seung-Whan Choi, “Fighting Terrorism through the Rule of Law?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54, no. 6 (2010): 940–966.2. William L. Eubank and Leonard B. 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Henderson, “Democracy, Threats and Political Repression in Developing Countries: Are Democracies Internally Less Violent?” Third World Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2002): 119–136; Marta Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (2002): 29–54; M. Rodwan Abouharb and David Cingranelli, Human Rights and Structural Adjustment. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); James R. Vreeland, “The Effect of Political Regime on Civil War: Unpacking Anocracy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 3 (2008): 401–425.6. Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31, no. 2 (2006): 42–78.7. Madhav Joshi and T. David Mason, “Civil War Settlements, Size of Governing Coalition and Durability of Peace in the Post-Civil War States,” International Interactions 37, no. 4 (2011): 388–413.8. Of the 125 civil wars that occurred in seventy-one countries between 1945 and 2005, about 44.8 percent (fifty-six) terminated in government victory, 22.4 percent (twenty-eight) in rebel victory, and 32.8 percent (forty-one) in negotiated settlement (Ibid).9. Amrita Shastri, “The Material Basis for Separatism: The Tamil Eelam Movement in Sri Lanka,” Journal of Asian Studies 49, no. 1 (1990): 56–77.10. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), 2022, Global Terrorism Database 1970–2020, https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd.11. Brian J. Phillips, “Enemies with Benefits? Violent Rivalry and Terrorist Group Longevity,” Journal of Peace Research, no. 52, no. 1 (2015): 62–75.12. Jeffry A. Frieden, David A. Lake, and Kenneth A. Schultz, World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).13. Charles Townsend, Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction (London: Oxford University Press, 2011).14. Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982), 210.15. In fact, civil wars are fought at different levels of intensity. Kalyvas and Balcells (2010) have argued that civil wars are fought at three levels: conventional civil, irregular civil war and symmetric nonconventional war. See Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laila Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict.” American Political Science Review 104, no. 3(2010): 415–429.16. Nicholas Sambanis, “What Is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 6 (2004): 814–858.17. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).18. Victor Asal, Marcus Schulzke and Amy Pate, “Why Do Some Organizations Kill While Others Do Not: An Examination of Middle Eastern Organizations,” Foreign Policy Analysis 13, no. 4 (2017): 811–831.19. It is not to say that dissident groups stop attacking non-combatants when they transition to rebels. In most cases, rebels keep targeting defenseless state population for different strategic reason. In fact, most terrorism happen in the context of civil wars.20. Jessica A. Stanton, “Terrorism in the Context of Civil War,” Journal of Politics 75, no. 4 (2013):1009–1022; Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca and Luis De la Calle, “Domestic Terrorism: The Hidden Side of Political Violence,” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): 31–49; Virginia Page Fortna, “Do Terrorists Win? Rebels’ Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes,” International Organization, 69, no. 3 (2015): 519–556; Sara Polo and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Twisting Arms and Sending Messages: Terrorist Tactics in Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 53, no. 6 (2016):815–829.21. Michael G. Findley and Joseph K. Young, “Terrorism and Civil War: A Spatial and Temporal Approach to a Conceptual Problem,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 2 (2012): 285–305.22. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism; Luis de la Calle and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, “How Armed Groups Fight: Territorial Control and Violent Tactics,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 10 (2015): 795–813.23. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism.24. Fortna, “Do Terrorists Win? Rebels’ Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes.”25. Havard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (2001): 33–48; Regan and Henderson, “Democracy, Threats and Political Repression in Developing Countries: Are Democracies Internally Less Violent?”; Martha Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (2002): 29–54; James Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90; James Raymond Vreeland, “The Effect of Political Regime on Civil War: Unpacking Anocracy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 3(2008): 401–425.26. Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992.” P.33.27. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”28. 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Regardless of constitutional limitations, democracies can pursue aggressive counter-terrorism policies at home by passing laws of preventive detention or other intrusive legislations (for example, Patriot Act in the United States after 9/11). Many democratic constitutions allow special emergency provisions to deal with existential threats from violent anti-state groups (for example, Constitutional Emergency in France after 2015 Paris attack).83. Darren Davis and Brian D. Silver, “Civil liberties vs. Security: Public Opinion in the Context of the Terrorist Attacks on America,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 1 (2004): 28–46; Max Abrahms, “Why Democracies Make Superior Counterterrorists,” Security Studies 16, no. 2 (2007): 223–253; Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor, “Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? 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I use the twenty-five battlefield deaths as a threshold as opposed to 1000 because; (a) the Cunningham et al. dataset is based on twenty-five deaths threshold, and (b) I explore a transition from one form of political violence (terrorism) to another form (civil war), a qualitative change in the type of violence. It can be argued that a single battlefield death would indicate a transition. However, UCDP data (Pettersson, Högbladh and Öberg), the source of Cunningham et al.’s dataset, does not provide casualty data before the onset of civil war with twenty-five battlefield deaths. (See Pettersson, “Organized Violence, 1989–2018 and Peace Agreements;” Cunningham et al., “Non-State Actors in Civil Wars: A New Dataset”).94. Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Polity V Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2018 (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, 2020), https://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html (accessed July 2, 2021).95. Ibid.96. Li Quan and Drew Schaub, “Economic Globalization and Transnational Terrorism: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 2 (2004): 230–258; James Piazza, “Regime Age and Terrorism: Are New Democracies Prone to Terrorism?” International Interactions 39, no. 2 (2013): 246–263.97. Havard Hegre and Nicholas Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 4 (2006): 508–535.98. 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Ghatak and Karakaya, “Terrorists as Rebels.”103. See note 101 above.104. Mixed effects logistic regression models are also tested for robustness check, thus supporting the results of the logit models (reported in the Online Appendix). Moreover, a Cox proportional hazard model might fit the best with the question at hand and the nature of the data. In addition to non-linearity and right-censoring of the data, the point of survival analysis is to follow subjects (terrorist organizations here) over time and observe at which point in time they experience the event of interest (civil war onset here). However, statistical tests and graphical diagnostics based on Schoenfeld residuals show that the models do not fulfil the proportional hazards (PH) assumptions. Although the results of the Cox proportional hazard models support the findings of the logit models, I prefer not to report those models here.105. Reuben M. Baron and David A. Kenny, “The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(1986): 1173–1182.106. Ibid.107. Freedom House 2022, “Freedom in the World,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world.108. Ibid.109. David Cingranelli and David L. Richards, “Measuring the Level, Pattern, and Sequence of Government Respect for Physical Integrity Rights,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 2 (1999): 407–417.110. David Cingranelli, David L. Richards, and K. Chad Clay, “The CIRI Human Rights Dataset,” http://www.humanrightsdata.com. Version 2014.04.14.111. International Country Risk Guide (ICGR) Researchers, 2013, “International Country Risk Guide (ICGR) Researchers Dataset,” https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4YHTPU.112. Choi, “Fighting Terrorism through the Rule of Law?” 944.113. Freedom House, “Freedom in the World.”114. Ghatak and Karakaya, “Terrorists as Rebels.”115. Monty Marshall and Benjamin Cole, 2014, “State Fragility Index and Matrix 2013,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/SFImatrix2013c.pdf (accessed May 21, 2020).116. The scale is changed to positive integers from 1 to 20.117. Alternative recursive models with regime type as the Democracy–Autocracy twenty-one point Polity Index show the same results, thus supporting the robustness of the models in Table 3 through Table 7 (Reported in the Online Appendix).118. Patrick Shrout and Niall Bolger, “Mediation in Experimental and Nonexperimental Studies: New Procedures and Recommendations,” Psychological Methods 7 (2002): 422–445; Andrew F. Hayes, “Beyond Baron and Kenny: Statistical Mediation Analysis in the New Millennium,” Communication Monographs 76–4 (2009): 408–420.119. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace. New Haven (CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001).120. Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992.”121. Conrad, Conrad and Young, “Tyrants and Terrorism.”122. Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992”; Regan and Henderson, “Democracy, Threats and Political Repression in Developing Countries: Are Democracies Internally Less Violent?”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”123. Kydd and Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism.”124. The paper is not advocating a top-down approach of imposing democracy by foreign powers.Additional informationNotes on contributorsSambuddha GhatakSambuddha Ghatak is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Affairs and SDSU Imperial Valley at San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA.