Citation

Godefroidt A. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 2023; 67(1): 22-38.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/ajps.12692

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

How does terrorism affect citizens' political attitudes? Over the years, many scholars have tried to answer this question. This article performs a meta-analysis on this literature, reviewing about 325 studies conducted between 1985 and 2020 on more than 400,000 respondents. The findings confirm that terrorism is associated--to a small but significant extent--with outgroup hostility, political conservatism and rally-'round-the-flag effects. At the same time, the effects of terrorism vary widely, with studies on Islamist violence, conducted in the United States or Israel, and using cross-sectional data yielding stronger results on average. Finally, the review reveals remaining gaps in this field of study, including a lack of research on non-Islamist violence or conducted in non-Western contexts. Taken together, this meta-analysis consolidates existing evidence, determines which results hold across contexts, and identifies key gaps in our current knowledge. Its data can also be accessed interactively via a Shiny App.

Language: en