Electoral and partisan cycles in counterterrorism

Most empirical work on terrorism examines terrorist groups’ actions, that is, the volume or character of attacks, while relatively little work focuses on states’ counterterrorism actions. I address this gap with a focus on the electoral and partisan motivations of democratic states’ domestic counterterrorism actions. Do electoral concerns give incumbent governments incentives to increase the level of their counterterrorism activities? I show that elections are an important determinant of governments’ actions against domestic terrorism. However, governments’ ideological orientation is essential to understanding the relationship between elections and counterterrorism. Using data from Western European democracies between 1950 and 2004, I show that as elections approach, only Right-oriented governments increase the volume of their counterterrorism activities.