Democratic skepticism and support for terrorism in the Palestinian Territories

James A. Piazza ()
Additional contact information
James A. Piazza: The Pennsylvania State University

Public Choice, 2019, vol. 178, issue 3, No 6, 417-443

Abstract: Abstract Research has found that, among other factors, skepticism about democracy and its suitability as a form of government helps to drive public support for violent extremism in the Muslim World. According to scholars, Muslim skeptics of democracy resent it as the product of Western political and cultural intrusion and reflexively support violent extremism as an expression of cultural resistance. Using public opinion data on support for various forms of terrorism among survey respondents in the Palestinian Territories, I find evidence for a more complex explanation. Respondents that support terrorism are indeed more likely to be skeptical of democracy because they regard it to be incompatible with Islam. However, terrorism supporters also reject democratic rule because they associate it with poor economic performance. The results suggest that democratic skepticism is associated with support for terrorism in Muslim societies, but point to both religious-cultural and socioeconomic factors as important components of the relationship.

Keywords: Terrorism; Democracy; Public opinion; Palestine; Economic performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-018-0596-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:178:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-018-0596-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-018-0596-3

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().