Citation

Newman LS. Terrorism Polit. Violence 2013; 25(1): 8-28.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/09546553.2013.733247

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The shadow of violence that elections cast remains poorly understood. A key obstacle impeding cross-national empirical analysis of electoral violence has been the varied nature of such violence. To address this challenge, I examine terrorist attacks as one particular form of electoral violence. By tracking the incidence of terrorist violence relative to election dates over time and across countries using an original dataset for the period from 2000-2005, I find strong support for the hypothesis that terrorist violence increases as we move closer to an election date. In fact, terrorist violence approximates a normal distribution centered on the election date.