Citation

Piazza JA. Confl. Manage. Peace Sci. 2017; 34(1): 52-80.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0738894215570429

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study tests three categories of motivations for domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: economic grievances, particularly those produced by economic restructuring; societal changes that challenge notions of white male privilege; and political and public policy elements that stoke resentments. Executing a series of negative binomial regression estimations on state-level data in the USA for the period 1970-2011, I find that measures of societal factors--specifically increase in abortion rates and growing female participation in the labor force--and political indicators such as Democratic Party control of the White House, precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks. Factors associated with economic hardships--such as poverty, the decline of manufacturing employment and the "Farm Crisis"--as well as growth of the non-white population, control of state government by the Democratic Party and growth of average Federal Income Tax rates--are not found to be significant predictors of right-wing terrorism.

Language: en