Has Globalization Reduced Worldwide Terrorist Attacks?

Policymakers and researchers have frequently assumed that worldwide globalization has increased terrorist attacks, especially following the 9/11 attacks. However, we argue that there are strong theoretical reasons to expect that globalization is instead associated with decreases in terrorism. There are surprisingly few direct empirical tests. Using annual data from a sample of 143 countries, from 1970 to 2018, we provide a systematic, cross-national analysis of the impact of globalization on terrorist attacks for a maximum of 5,194 country years. We use dynamic panel-data regression to examine the impact of four globalization indices (economic, social, political, and overall) on three types of terrorist attacks (total, transnational, and domestic). We find that high levels of globalization are consistently associated with low rates of terrorist attacks. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these effects vary across different dimensions of globalization and types of terrorism. Compared to social and political measures of globalization, economic globalization has stronger negative effects on terrorism. Economic and social globalization have a stronger impact on reducing domestic terrorism, while political globalization more effectively mitigates transnational attacks. If the world is in fact entering a new era of de-globalization, this could have important implications for the future spread of terrorism and political violence.

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