Terrorism in the Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

This contribution investigates the link between welfare policies and domestic terrorism for 15 Western European countries during 1984-2003. We argue that welfare policies improve national social and socio-economic conditions and thus increase the opportunity costs of terrorism. We investigate whether spending in certain policy fields translates into a reduction of terrorism, and whether certain worlds of welfare capitalism [Esping-Andersen (1990)] are more resistant to the threat of domestic terrorism. We find strong support that higher spending in certain policy fields is associated with a significant reduction in domestic terrorist activity. Only moderate evidence indicates that the different worlds of welfare capitalism are differently prepared to deal with domestic terrorism. Spending - or the mere existence of a social system - seems to be more strongly associated with a reduction in domestic terrorism than the actual welfare systems' institutional design. Our findings are robust to a variety of specifications