Do economic, social and political globalization affect terrorism? Fresh evidence from international panel data

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of economic, social and political globalizations on the incidents of global terrorism. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply negative binomial regressions model because the variable is event count. The sample size covers 195 countries from 1990 to 2017. Findings There is strong evidence that the higher level of economic and social integrations internationally lead to a reduction in terrorist activities. However, the results relating to political globalization are inconsistent. Comparing the top 20 most affected countries with the full sample, the authors find a negative association between economic globalization and terrorism, whereas social and political globalization is found to be statistically insignificant. Finally, the evidence holds firmly pre-9/11 attacks on World Trade Centre. Research limitations/implications This paper suffers through the lack of consensus on a unique and consistent definition of terrorism. The definition of terrorism varies across time and countries. Furthermore, there is a variation among the main databases of terrorism, which could potentially affect the reliability of findings. Practical implications This paper provides policymakers with a policy recommendation that the economic and social integration across countries should be encouraged, as it might decrease the number of terrorist events taking place worldwide. In addition, the benefits of economic development generated through global integration must be fairly distributed across societies as an effort to decrease motivation of disgruntles population to involve in terrorism. Originality/value This paper contributes empirically to the existing literature through investigating the impact of economic, social and political globalizations on the incidents of terrorism worldwide.