Types of Minority Discrimination and Terrorism

Abstract

Qualitative research suggests that discrimination against minority groups precipitates terrorism in countries. This study adds to this body of research by determining which specific manifestations of minority discrimination—political, socioeconomic or cultural—are important and substantive predictors of terrorist activity. To do so, I conduct a series of negative binomial estimations and substantive effects simulations on a cross-national dataset of terrorist attacks and the treatment of minority groups in four specific areas: political participation and representation, economic status, religious and language rights. The results indicate that socioeconomic discrimination against minorities is the only consistently significant and highly substantive predictor of terrorism. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings to the scholarly literature on terrorism.

The Cost of Living and Terror: Does Consumer Price Volatility Fuel Terrorism?

“…For Crenshaw and Ross, terrorist movements more easily draw recruits, and various levels of active and passive support (for example, noncooperation with authorities, fundraising, intelligence, political backing), from populations with socioeconomic grievances and a feeling that they are deprived from better economic statuses they justly deserve. Crenshaw (1981) and Ross (1993) mainly consider poverty and economic discrimination to be the fuel for socioeconomic grievances that drive relative deprivation; though the former has little consistent empirical support, the latter has been demonstrated to precipitate terrorism (see, for example, Abadie 2006;Piazza 2006Piazza , 2011Piazza , 2012Enders and Hoover 2012). In this study, I argue that rapid fluctuation of consumer prices-either the dramatic increase or drop in consumer prices-could also produce popular feelings of relative deprivation and general economic grievances that bolster terrorist activities in countries.…”

Internally Displaced Populations and Suicide Terrorism

“…This assumption is buttressed by the theoretical work of Juergensmeyer (2003) and Tilly (2003)-both of them argue that such sociocultural boundaries ease the psychological pain of committing atrocities against members of another communityand by the observations of Kaufman (1996Kaufman ( , 1998, who claims that conflicts involving clashes of ethnic identity more often result in extreme forms of violence because the victims have been rhetorically dehumanized. Other recent empirical works by Piazza (2011Piazza ( , 2012 and Choi and Piazza (2012) find that countries with greater numbers of ethnic minority communities experiencing discrimination or exclusion from political power induce more frequent as well as more lethal attacks.…”

Effect of Bank Holding Company Structure on Farmers’ Financial Welfare in Nigeria

“…Following Tidwell (2001) and Sykes (2007), we can, therefore, infer that whenever an individual suffers multiple deprivations in specific areas of their lives which they deemed essential to their self-esteem, they become not only alienated, they also develop the tendency to manifest anti-social behavior like aggression and conflict. Research findings have established a close relationship between discrimination against a minority group, creation, and reinforcement of collective identity, development of a sense of alienation and mobilization on the basis of otherness (Piazza, 2012). Similarly, theoretical and empirical arguments have linked minority group marginalization and discrimination to otherness, grievance, and mobilization (Gurr, 1993); terrorist group formation and activity (Piazza, 2011).…”