Assessing the Cultural, Political, and Economic Determinants of Terrorism

Following the horrific incidents of September 11, 2001, the number of studies regarding the determinants of terrorist activity has drastically increased. After reviewing literature that has found significant correlations between political and socio-economic aspects of a given society and their propensity to be involved in terrorist acts, I attempted to find cultural determinants as well. One factor, in particular, is the Hofstede measurement of individualism. Since higher rates of individualism have been shown to lead to higher GDP and more political freedom, two factors leading to less terrorism, I wanted to see if individualism was conducive to terrorism on its own. To examine this relationship, I conducted a series of regressions for 186 countries from 1996-2017 to test the hypothesis that a higher level of individualism is negatively correlated with a nation’s propensity for terrorism. I first ran my regressions using all terrorist attacks around the world. Next, I split up my data into transnational and domestic attacks to see if that played a factor in my results. After controlling for a plethora of political, economic, and cultural measurements, I was unable to find a significant relationship between individualism and terrorism. However, the Index of Economic Freedom’s measurement of government integrity did have a significant correlation with the number of terrorist acts conducted in a nation, when using all attacks. Also, a Hofstede measurement other than individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance, had a significant, positive correlation with transnational terrorism. Lastly, a history of infectious disease, as well as a nation’s polity score (measurement of regime authority), both had a significant, positive correlation with terrorism. These findings could help contribute to the necessary changes to the current Laws of War, which do not currently account for non-state actors, terrorists.