International Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations

British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 711-734, 2009

44 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2006 Last revised: 22 Oct 2009

See all articles by Eric Neumayer

Eric Neumayer

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Thomas Pluemper

University of Essex - Department of Government; Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Socioeconomics

Date Written: October 1, 2008

Abstract

An emerging "clash of civilizations" should reveal itself in patterns of international terror¬ism. Huntington himself explicitly refers to terrorism in the conflict between specific civilizations, and particularly so in the clash between the Islamic civilization and the West. We confront his hypotheses with ones derived from our theory of the strategic logic of international terrorism. We predict more terrorism against nationals from countries whose government supports the government of the terrorists' home country. Similar to Huntington, we also predict excessive terrorism on Western targets, but because of the high strategic value of attacking Westerners, not because of inter-civilizational conflict per se. Contrary to Huntington, our theory does not suggest that groups from the Islamic civilization commit more terrorist acts against nationals from other civilizations in general. Nor do we expect a general increase in inter-civilizational terrorism after the end of the Cold War. Our empiri¬cal analysis - based on estimations in a directed dyadic country sample from 1969 to 2005 - finds broad support for our theory: foreign political support generates more terrorism against nationals of the supporting foreign country. Our results also suggest that the Rest-West and the Islam-West dyads indeed encounter signifi¬cant¬¬ly more terrorism, which is in line with Huntington, but not necessarily inconsistent with our own theory either. However, in contradiction to Huntington we do not find that there is generally more ter¬rorism from the Is¬lamic against other civiliza¬tions. Also, we find no evidence for a general structural break in the pat¬tern of international terrorism after the end of the Cold War.

Keywords: terrorism, clash, civilizations, Huntington, international conflict

JEL Classification: D78, P16, H8

Suggested Citation

Neumayer, Eric and Plümper, Thomas and Plümper, Thomas, International Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations (October 1, 2008). British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 711-734, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=952208

Eric Neumayer (Contact Author)

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://ericneumayer.wordpress.com/

Thomas Plümper

Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Socioeconomics ( email )

Vienna
Austria

University of Essex - Department of Government ( email )

Wivenhoe Park
Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.polsci.org/pluemper

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