The interaction between democracy and terrorism

Abstract

There is a great deal of research about terrorism and policy changes, but the broader political dimension has thus far received scant attention. I have therefore written a literature review focusing on this broader political dimension of the interaction between democracies and terrorism. The results show that, contrary to the foreign policy aim of the United States to turn countries with a lot terrorist activity into democracies for the purpose of decreasing the risk of terrorist attacks, being a democratic country actually increases the probability of suffering such an attack. It has also been found that, following a terrorist attack, fundamental features of democratic countries sometimes change, though this issue requires further research. Interestingly, it seems more important to know how a country, whether democratic or not, acts towards their own citizens and abroad to accurately predict the probability of future terrorist attacks.