Public opinion and terrorism: does the national economic, societal and political context Really Matter?

Counterterrorism Evaluation and Citizens: More Than about Policing?

“…Economic, cultural and physical (safety) insecurities arising from the fairly widespread popular dissatisfaction with political institutions and their economic, societal and political outputs are likely to feed into public opinion about the effectiveness of the police in tackling terrorism. Consistent with earlier research that found that citizens' concerns about their country's direction and the state of democratic practice in their country are a key individual (level) predictor of, respectively, public opinion about terrorism threat and public confidence in policing (Balestrini 2020;Jang et al 2010), it is maintained here that public perceptions about the economic, societal and political situation explain more public attitudes towards the effectiveness of terrorism policing than citizens' financial and social positions or levels of education. It is therefore hypothesized that citizens' perceptions about the national socio-economic situation are better predictors of public opinion on terrorism policing than citizens' financial and social positions or levels of education (Hypothesis H2).…”

“…It was demonstrated that objective national indicators such as the crime rate and a nation's actual level of terrorism are likely to influence public confidence in policing and public fear of terrorism, respectively (Stack et al 2007;Jang et al 2010;Balestrini 2020). It is argued here that these relationships are unlikely to apply in the context of terrorism policing.…”

“…However, what was shown to be more important to explain national publics' fear of terrorism is national publics' perceived economic, cultural and physical (safety) insecurities. Citizens' perceptions about the national economic, societal and political situation have been found to be a more powerful predictor of their attitudes towards terrorism than citizens' financial and social positions, or levels of education, and the objective national socio-economic context itself (Balestrini 2020).…”

“…It is often shared across class and ideological divides (Dalton 2004(Dalton , 2006Rodrik 2018). Apart from a country's actual level of terrorism, 4 no other objective national socio-economic indicator-be it unemployment, income dispersion, press freedom, crime, immigration or the positioning of political party leaderships on multiculturalism-was found to influence public fear of terrorism (Balestrini 2020). The policy convergence of mainstream left-and right-wing political elites witnessed in the last few decades has contributed to make objective national economic, societal and political indicators largely irrelevant to explain public attitudes towards terrorism.…”

“…Extant literature on terrorism suggests that feelings of security are psychologically fashioned on the basis of an interaction between information about the environment and personal profiles of individuals (Bar-Tal and Jacobson 1998; Huddy et al 2002). More specifically, whilst prior empirical research has found that citizens' social conditions and perceptions about the national economic, societal and political situation-rather than the objective national context-explain public attitudes towards terrorism (Hewitt 1990;Huddy et al 2002;Von Sikorski et al 2017;Balestrini 2020), extant literature about terrorism has not investigated whether these factors shape national publics' opinions about the policing of terrorism. We contend here that the related factors could influence the latter.…”