Attitudes and action: public opinion and the occurrence of international terrorism.

Full Abstract

The predictors of terrorism are unclear. This paper examines the effect of public opinion in one country toward another country on the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated by people or groups from the former country against targets in the latter country. Public opinion was measured by the percentage of people in Middle Eastern and North African countries who disapprove of the leadership of nine world powers. Count models for 143 pairs of countries were used to estimate the effect of public opinion on terrorist incidents, controlling for other relevant variables and origin-country fixed effects. We found a greater incidence of international terrorism when people of one country disapprove of the leadership of another country.

Author information

Author/s: Krueger, Alan B (AB); Malecková, Jitka (J);

Affiliation: Department of Economics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. akrueger(-atsign-)princeton.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Science (New York, N.Y.) (Science), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Sep; vol 325 (issue 5947) : pp 1534-6

Dates: Created 2009/09/18; Completed 2009/09/28;

PMID: 19762640, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 9/28/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.