Terrorism and affinity of nations

Abstract

This article investigates whether a country’s political proximity to the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom exposes the country to terrorist attacks. We merge information on political proximity between countries and terrorism data to construct a panel of world countries for 1968–2014. Various measures of terrorism are included—i.e., number of transnational terrorist attacks, number of domestic terrorist attacks, and number of terrorist attacks with casualties. In addition, two measures of political proximity or affinity are employed. A host of control variables are included to account for standard determinants of terrorism. We find a clear relationship indicating that countries displaying a political affinity with key Western countries’ policy views attract more transnational and domestic terrorist attacks. The results are robust to alternative empirical specifications. Furthermore, countries’ affinity with the United States puts US citizens in greater peril from terrorist attacks in those countries.