Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness

Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness
Cambridge University Press | 326 pages | 2008 | ISBN: 0521887585 | PDF | 2.4 mb

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============= Book Introduction (page 1 only) ====================


Terrorism is as old as war, but only with the attacks of September 2001 in NewYork and Washington, March 2004 in Madrid, and July 2005 in London did it become a central concern of governments in the rich countries of the West. This concern prompted policy makers to focus on the potential links to development of both terrorism and the response to terrorism, quickly revealing important lacunae in the literature. To what extent is terrorism related to development? If development is a determinant of terrorism, what are the relative weights of the economic, political, and social aspects of development? And what is the development effect of different responses to terrorism? This volume addresses these crucial questions, synthesizing what we know about the development links with terrorism – and pointing out what we do not.

Policy makers and scholars are concerned with development-terrorism links in both directions: the economic effect of terrorism, but also the devel-opment roots of terrorist activity. This volume bridges both, first with con-tributors who examine the economic and fiscal costs of terrorism and the response to terrorism, and second with others who assess how development affects terrorism, drawing on existing linkages and also reporting on new evidence. The first is a much-investigated issue. Nevertheless, as chapters by Enders and Sandler and Treverton et al. demonstrate, evidence is much more abundant about the costs of terrorism in developed countries than in poor countries. Enders and Sandler also find that the economic costs of terrorism appear to be low in rich countries and, in all likelihood, high in poor countries.

Acontentious debate surrounds the second question. Does terrorism relate to development? If it does, is it the economic or another dimen-sion of development that matters? On the one hand, the contributors to this volume present consistent empirical support for the hypothesis that....