1. Aaron Gold Sambuddha Ghatak Brandon Prins Peace Science Society Annual Meeting November 13, 2015 Democracy, Discrimination, and Domestic Terrorism

2. Research question An important factor in explaining terrorism is the existence of concrete grievances among an identifiable subgroup of a larger population (Crenshaw 1981). But how do democratic institutions affect the levels domestic terrorism in the presence of minority discrimination?

3. Literature Review and Puzzle Democracy and terrorism – positive relationship (increases terrorism) Political and civil liberties (Eubank and Weinberg 2001; domestic, ITERATE) Intergroup competition (Chenoweth 2010a; transnational) Executive constraints (Young and Findley 2011; domestic; Li 2005; transnational) Veto players (Young and Dugan 2011; “homegrown”) Democracy and terrorism – negative relationship (decreases terrorism) Democratic (electoral) participation (Li 2005; transnational) Interest articulation, peaceful resolution mechanisms (Schmid 1992; Eyerman 1998, transnational) Rule of law/judicial independence (Choi 2010; domestic and transnational; Findley and Young 2011; domestic) Bureaucratic/administrative capacity (Hendrix and Young 2014; domestic) Democracy and terrorism – nonlinear relationship (Abadie 2006; Chenoweth 2010b) Minority discrimination increases terrorism (Crenshaw 1981; Piazza 2012; Choi and Piazza 2014)

4. Research Design Global Terrorism Database (GTD) of 172 countries Dependent variable: country-year count of domestic incidents from 1998-2007 (Enders et al., 2011; Pape et al., 2014) Explanatory Variables: measures, proxies of democracy Polity IV (Marshall & Jaggers, 2010) Democracy dummy variable (Cheibub et al., 2009) Rule of law Judicial Independence Explanatory Variables: measures of discrimination Percentage of Discriminated Population (Wimmer, 2009, EPR) Economic Discrimination Index (MAR)

5. Control variables Anocracy (Marshall & Jaggers, 2010) Population ln (Heston et al., 2012, Penn World Database) GDP per capita ln t-1 (Heston et al., 2012, Penn World Database) Regime Durability ln t-1 (Marshall & Jaggers, 2010) Interstate war US Intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq GEE estimator with Negative binomial specification and AR(1) error structure

11. Conclusion Democracy increases domestic terrorism in the presence of discrimination. Political openness provides mobilization opportunities to aggrieved minority/s. Electoral democracy with no protection for the minority might facilitate domestic terrorism. Institution building with well-defined mechanism of minority protection must be a core part of any effort to address terrorist violence.