Socioeconomic Determinants of Terrorism

Abstract

The term “terrorism” is notoriously difficult to define, but terrorism has become a global concern over the last two decades. The findings of prior research on the social, political, and economic determinants of terrorism are mixed and inconclusive. Accordingly, this study investigates the relationship between socioeconomic indicators and terrorism in Tunisia for the period 1979–2015. The error correction model has been used to determine the stability of any long‐term relationship. Using autoregressive distributed lag bound testing, the findings reveal that the unemployment rate, political instability, the informal sector and higher school enrollment rates positively and significantly affect terrorism. However, gross domestic product per capita and foreign direct investment have a negative and significant impact on terrorism. Interestingly, the poverty rate has no relationship to terrorism. Policy implications and future research are also discussed.

Ortadoğu ve Kuzey Afrika'da İnsani Gelişme, Temel Makroekonomik Değişkenler ve Terörizm: Bir Panel Nedensellik Analizi

“…On the other side, the country level causality analysis denoted a significant causality from real GDP per capita to the terrorism in Libya and Saudi Arabia, and Yemen and a significant causality from terrorism and real GDP per capita in Lebanon, and bilateral causality between real GDP per capita and terrorism in Yemen. The findings were found to be compatible with theoretical expectations and the findings of Freytag et al (2010), Yildirim and Öcal (2013), Shahbaz (2013), Nurunnabi and Sghaier (2018), and Tahir (2020). The mutual interaction between unemployment and terrorism was analyzed through Emirmahmutoğlu and Kose (2011) causality test taking notice of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity and the test findings were shown in Table 8.…”

“…On the other side, the country level causality analysis denoted a two-way causality between unemployment and terrorism in Morocco and Yemen, a significant causality from unemployment to the terrorism in Tunisia, and a significant causality from terrorism and unemployment in Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The findings were found to be compatible with the findings of Yildirim and Öcal (2013), Nurunnabi and Sghaier (2018). The mutual interaction between youth unemployment and terrorism was analyzed through Emirmahmutoğlu and Kose (2011) causality test taking notice of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity and the test findings were shown in Table 9.…”

“…Khan et al (2018) explored the impact of terrorism and economic growth on human development in Pakistan for the period of 1990-2016 through ARDL approach and revealed that terrorism negatively affected the human development. On the other side, Nurunnabi and Sghaier (2018) explored the interaction between terrorism and socioeconomic variables in Tunisia over the 1979-2015 duration through ARDL approach and reached that unemployment, political instability, shadow economy size and higher school enrollment rates positively affected the terrorism, but GDP per capita and foreign direct investments negatively influenced the terrorism. Ozcan and Karter (2020) analyzed the mutual interaction among terrorism, economic growth, and human development in 12 MENA countries over the 2002-2017 period and revealed a bilateral causality between terrorism and human development.…”

Racial and Religious Determinants of Terrorism in Western Europe

“…Uneven economic development, difficult economic conditions, declining economic growth (Shahbaz, 2013;Meierrieks, 2014;Poveda, 2012;Hou, 2021) Income inequality (Shahbaz, 2013;Sanso-Navarro et al, 2021) Lack of education, education coverage level (Shahbaz, 2013;Nurunnabi and Sghaier, 2018) Unemployment, employment rate, labour market conditions (Shahbaz, 2013;Okafor and Piesse, 2018;Ismail and Amjad, 2014;Okafor and Piesse, 2018;Nurunnabi and Sghaier, 2018;Sanso-Navarro and Vera-Cabello, 2020;Sanso-Navarro et al, 2021) Significant number of people with low living standards (low GDP per capita) (Shahbaz, 2013;Ismail and Amjad, 2014;Poveda, 2012;Tahir et al, 2019;Tahir, 2020) Increasing population density (Freytag et al, 2011;Hou, 2021) Lack of effective and strong political control, political instability, civil wars, number of refugees (Okafor and Piesse, 2018;Tahir et al, 2019;Coggins, 2015;Nurunnabi and Sghaier, 2018;Tahir, 2020;Hou, 2021) Ethnic, linguistic diversity of society (Gassebner and Luechinger, 2011) Religious diversity of society, religious fanaticism (Gassebner and Luechinger, 2011;Halkos et al, 2017) Rising inflation (Ismail and Amjad, 2014) Accumulation of human capital (Okafor and Piesse, 2018) The importance of the business sector (San...…”

Rise and fall in the Third Reich: Social advancement and Nazi membership

“…Beginning with Becker (1968), the examination of the economics of crime offers a framework that relates low education, low social status and low income levels to extremism and terrorist activities. This body of literature is concerned with modern-day case studies on the Middle East and Africa and finds that support for and participation in terrorist organisations increases with unemployment, poverty, low economic activity, inflation and with a lack of economic opportunities (see for example Bagchi and Paul (2018); Ismail and Amjad (2014); Nurunnabi and Sghaier (2018); Salihu (2018) for some recent contributions). Likewise, Ljujic et al (2017) look at Dutch and European foreign fighters and terrorists and find that the majority have only completed secondary school or lower and were unemployed.…”