Do natural disasters fuel terrorism? The role of state capacity

Abstract

Natural disasters create a fertile environment for terrorists by creating or exacerbating vulnerabilities within a state. Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the effect of natural disasters on terrorist activity. In the present paper, we reconcile these views by putting state capacity in the spotlight using a dataset of 165 countries from 1970 to 2018 and an iterative Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator. We show that states with high military capacity experience increased domestic attacks, whereas states with high bureaucratic capacity experience fewer attacks. This dichotomy arises as different actors are involved in disaster-relief in the two types of states. These findings indicate that in a world that experiences more natural disasters, investment in bureaucratic capacity can serve as an efficient policy against terrorism. In contrast, in the same setting, excessive investment in military capacity increases terrorist incidents.