Veto Player Framework

554 Words2 Pages

Abstract
Young and Dugan (2011) attempted to provide a different perspective to explain the puzzle of why democracies are more likely to be main targets of terrorist with veto player framework. However, they include autocracies and examine international terrorism in addition to domestic one. In this paper, I exclude international terrorism and focus only on democracies to understand if Young and Dugan (2011) really explains this puzzle. The alternative hypothesis is created based on the same theoretical framework and is tested by using GTD. The results on veto player in my study is and is not significant unlike to Young and Dugan’s (2011) finding. Although Young and Dugan (2011) explain the terrorism with veto player framework in autocracies, …show more content…

Yet, in addition to these shocking transnational attacks, domestic terrorism seems to be underemphasized although it causes more casualties and greater damage than transnational terrorism in the long term. Democracies are among the countries suffering from both domestic or transnational terrorism and their long term consequences. In particular, Turkey, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy suffered from domestic terrorism for many years and still struggle with the damaging consequences. Yet, while some democracies are targets of terrorism, it is not a problem for all democracies. This phenomenon raises the research question for this paper: Why are some democracies targets of terrorism and others are not?
Prior research provides competing arguments to answer this puzzle. In particular, previous studies discuss the effect of the level of democracy (Eubank and Weinberg 2001), democratic competition (Chenoweth 2010) or democratic participation (Li 2005), and low threshold of cost of violence in democracies (Pape, 2003) to explain why one nation becomes a target. In addition to these studies, Young and Dugan (2011) approaches this question from a policy-based perspective, and use veto player theory to understand the differences among democracies in terms of their number of terrorist

Open Document