Does Democracy Prevent Terrorism?

It has been argued that democracy helps prevent terrorism because the voting process gives people an outlet to express themselves - a role filled by terrorism under repressive, undemocratic governments. I've believed this to be at least partly true, but recent arguments suggest that I was wrong and that not too much hope should be invested in democracy.

The Autumn 2005 issue of the Wilson Quarterly discusses “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” by F. Gregory Gause III, in Foreign Affairs (Sept.–Oct. 2005):

Promoting democracy in the Middle East, Bush maintained last March, will “change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror.” Under dictatorships, “responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme.”

But there’s “no solid empirical evidence for a strong link between democracy, or any other regime type, and terrorism,” asserts Gause, a political scientist who directs the University of Vermont’s Middle East studies program. During the 1970s and 1980s, various terrorist organizations arose in democratic countries, including the Red Brigades in Italy, the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Ireland and the United Kingdom, and the Baader-Meinhof Gang in West Germany. One study found that most terrorist incidents in the 1980s were committed in democracies, generally by their own citizens. There’s no reason to think that Al Qaeda would be unable to recruit followers under democratic Arab governments—especially if those governments fashioned policies in tune with American interests or made peace with Israel.

I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t thought of all the examples of terrorism in democracies, committed by their own citizens, when I accepted the general validity of the argument that democracies should help stop terrorism. I focused on current terrorist situations which, by and large, involve acts committed by people from nations where they are denied even the theoretical ability to change the system to conform to their views. It was a serious mistake to focus so much on recent terrorist acts as if they were representative of terrorism overall.

Quoting from Grause’s original article further:

Between 2000 and 2003, according to the State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, 269 major terrorist incidents around the world occurred in countries classified as "free" by Freedom House, 119 occurred in "partly free" countries, and 138 occurred in "not free" countries. (This count excludes both terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israel, which would increase the number of attacks in democracies even more, and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which originated in other countries.) This is not to argue that free countries are more likely to produce terrorists than other countries. Rather, these numbers simply indicate that there is no relationship between the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree of freedom enjoyed by its citizens. They certainly do not indicate that democracies are substantially less susceptible to terrorism than are other forms of government.

Terrorism, of course, is not distributed randomly. According to official U.S. government data, the vast majority of terrorist incidents occurred in only a few countries. Indeed, half of all the terrorist incidents in "not free" countries in 2003 took place in just two countries: Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems that democratization did little to discourage terrorists from operating there -- and may even have encouraged terrorism.

As for the "free" countries, terrorist incidents in India accounted for fully 75 percent of the total. It is fair to assume that groups based in Pakistan carried out a number of those attacks, particularly in Kashmir, but clearly not all the perpetrators were foreigners. A significant number of terrorist events in India took place far from Kashmir, reflecting other local grievances against the central government. And as strong and vibrant as Indian democracy is, both a sitting prime minister and a former prime minister have been assassinated -- Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv Gandhi, respectively. If democracy reduced the prospects for terrorism, India's numbers would not be so high.

Comparing India, the world's most populous democracy, and China, the world's most populous authoritarian state, highlights the difficulty of assuming that democracy can solve the terrorism problem. For 2000-2003, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report indicates 203 international terrorist attacks in India and none in China. A list of terrorist incidents between 1976 and 2004, compiled by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, shows more than 400 in India and only 18 in China. Even if China underreports such incidents by a factor of ten, it still endures substantially fewer terrorist attacks than India. If the relationship between authoritarianism and terrorism were as strong as the Bush administration implies, the discrepancy between the number of terrorist incidents in China and the number in India would run the other way.

These are some of the factual problems with the idea that democracy will create new habits of thinking and action which should reduce the desire to engage in terrorism — but there are logical problems as well. For example, terrorists usually represent fringe groups with little support in the mainstream population. They know that they are a fringe group with little public support, but generally believe that they are right anyway — perhaps believing that their cause is validated by God.

Since they know that they already have little public support, why would they take a chance on running for election? If they are willing to commit acts of terrorism against a dictatorship that doesn’t give in to their demands, why would they hesitate to do the same against a democracy that doesn’t give in to their demands? Since terrorist groups are not themselves democratic, why would they accept democracy on a national level? Why take the chance on people choosing incorrectly when voting?

Indeed, many current terrorist leaders haven’t had anything good to say about democracy. Osama bin Laden openly opposes it, preferring instead to establish a new caliphate. Other members of Al Qaeda see democracy as a Western imposition and as part of the path towards secularism, godlessness, and apostasy. With that kind of attitude, it’s hard to see how much would be accomplished by democratizing the Middle East.

 

Quick Poll: Will greater democracy prevent terrorism?

1. Yes, democracy will be key in eliminating terrorism.
2. Yes, but only liberal democracy - a theocratic democracy, like in Iran, won't help.
3. Maybe a little, but we shouldn't be too optimistic.
4. No, probably not.
5. I don't know.
6. I don't care.

Click an option to vote, or View Current Poll Results

 

Read More:

• Guide to Ethics and Morality
• War and Morality
• War on Terrorism
• News on Free Speech and Civil Liberties
• Recent Books on Free Speech