Abstract
We examine the effect of class cleavages on terrorist activity by anarchist and leftist terrorist groups in 99 American, Asian and European countries over the 1860-1950 period. We find that higher levels of political exclusion of the poor, our main measure of class conflict, were associated with higher levels of socialrevolutionary terrorist activity during this time period. This finding is robust to an instrumental-variable approach and a battery of additional robustness checks. We argue that class cleavages - in the form of the monopolization of political power by the rich - perpetuated and exacerbated the socio-economic ordeal of the poor, while simultaneously curtailing their means to effect relief in the ordinary political process. Consistent with our expectations, this provoked terrorist violence by groups whose ideological orientation highlighted concerns over class conflict, economic equality and the political participation of the poor. Indeed, our empirical analysis also shows that terrorist groups motivated by other ideologies (e.g. extreme nationalism) did not respond to political exclusion of the poor in the same manner, which further emphasizes the role of ideological inclinations in the terrorist response to class antagonisms.
Highlights
Modern terrorism emerged in the second half of the 19th century.1 For the first time, advances in military technology made it possible for military laymen to carry out spectacular terrorist attacks, while advances in communication and transportation multiplied the propagandistic reach of these attacks (e.g. Parker and Sitter 2016)
We show that terrorist groups motivated by other ideologies did not respond to political exclusion of the poor in the same manner
Concerning our main independent variable of interest, we find that higher levels of political exclusion of the poor are associated with higher levels of activity by social-revolutionary terrorist organizations
Summary
Modern terrorism emerged in the second half of the 19th century. For the first time, advances in military technology (e.g. the invention of dynamite and easy-to-use handguns) made it possible for military laymen to carry out spectacular terrorist attacks, while advances in communication and transportation (e.g. the invention of the telegraph and railroad as well as the emergence of mass media) multiplied the propagandistic reach of these attacks (e.g. Parker and Sitter 2016). We show that social-revolutionary terrorism was more likely in countries characterized by high levels of political exclusion of the poor. Two-Way Fixed-Effects Approach To estimate the effect of political exclusion of the poor (exclusion) on the number of active social revolutionary terrorist groups (terror) in country i and year t, we consider the following model: terrorit 1⁄4 β1 exclusionit þ β0 Xit þ /i þ λt þ εit (1). We argue that regional political exclusion has no direct effect on social-revolutionary terrorist activity in country i, conditional on our usual set of controls and fixed effects. Social-revolutionary terrorism Political exclusion of the poor Life expectancy Electoral democracy index Population Regional discrimination Domestic Autonomy Internal conflict International conflict Public sector corruption index Physical violence index N*T.
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