Does Democracy Really Fuel Terrorism in Africa?

ABSTRACT

This article complements the extant literature on terrorism by paying particular attention to the influence of democracy on a panel of 49 African countries, over the period 1980–2012. For this broad objective to be achieved, terrorism is decomposed into four main categories, namely domestic, transnational, uncertain and total. Due to the count nature of terrorism data, the study employs a negative binomial regression estimator, in which the following key findings are established: (i) there is a mitigating role of democracy on measures of terrorism, with the exemption of transnational terrorism; (ii) there is existence of threshold values of democracy which must be attained in order to ascertain its mitigating role on terrorism; (iii) the importance of other covariates such as conflicts, population, surface areas and physical integrity rights are no less significant across the model specifications. These results have important policy implications. We also offer suggestions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Democracy
• terrorism
• negative binomial regression
• Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The only exception is Ajide (2019) who examined causal linkages among democracy, regime durability and terrorism in Africa.

2 Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) describes such countries in which not only basic political freedoms and civil liberties are respected, but which also tend to be underpinned by a political culture conducive to the flourishing of democracy. The functioning of government is satisfactory. Media are independent and diverse. There is an effective system of checks and balances. The judiciary is independent and judicial decisions are enforced. There are only limited problems in the functioning of democracies.

3 The figures can be seen on the table at Appendix 1.

4 The range lies between 8 and 10.

5 The countries considered in this study are Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo Dem. Rep., Congo Rep., Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt Arab Rep., Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

6 Domestic terrorism can be said to include all incidences of terrorist activities that involve the nationals of the venue country; Transnational Terrorism is terrorist activities which include two or more countries; Unclear is a terrorist act that stands in between domestic and transnational on whose decision of where it eventually falls is hard to take; and finally, Total is the summation of the abovementioned terrorism categories.