Why Nations Breed Terror: Governance Failures, Inequality, Economic Sanctions, and Religious Diversity in Panel Data Perspective

Abstract

The study assesses the major determinants of the terrorism for a selected sample of twenty countries from the Asian region, Eastern Europe, and African continent for a period of ten years from 2011 to 2020. A dynamic panel model of system GMM has inspected the impacts of various socioeconomic roots on terrorism including GNI per capita, government effectiveness, income inequality, religious diversity, and economic sanctions. The findings reveal that the current year terrorism GTI has a positive and statistically significant association with the previous year terrorism   GTI_t-1. Income inequality presented by the Gini coefficient also has a positive and statistically significant linkage with terrorism. Moreover, religious diversity has shown a negative and noteworthy association with terrorism. Likewise, an inverse association has been found between economic sanctions and terrorism, while Government effectiveness has shown a slight negative role in determining terrorism. The current study will help the policymakers in better understanding the underlying causes that push people or organizations to extreme ideology and violent behavior, allowing for the formation of more effective counter-terrorism tactics. By recognizing patterns of marginalization, inequality, deprivation and institutional quality, policymakers may undertake targeted policies that treat the core causes rather than the symptoms.