Table 1 presents the results from our test of competition and terrorist activity. The first model indicates that competition amongst terrorist organizations within their respective ideological niches has a negative and statistically significant effect on the number of terrorist attacks that occur on a yearly basis. The substantive effects confirm this relationship; a one standard deviation increase (.960) in competition yields a nearly 50% decrease in the number of terrorist attacks. Given that the average number of terrorist attacks in the data is 7.94, groups in environments with competition scores one standard deviation above the mean (1.69) an environment with one additional group – – will perpetrate four fewer attacks than it would in a less competitive environment. Unlike Bloom (2005), this initial finding seems to suggest that moderation, rather than outbidding, may be the way that terrorist organizations respond to competition. The controls generally perform as expected. A state’s orientation towards violence is statistically significant and associated with a greater number of terror attacks, echoing Mullins and Young (forthcoming). The effect of democracy is also positive and strongly significant. This may indicate that domestic terror is strongly influenced by the democratic process issues of representation or legislation may provoke groups to – violence. At the same time, this may also reflect the deep divisions in reporting terrorist acts between democracies and autocracies (Drakos and Gofas, 2006). GDP per capita is also shown to be positive and significant. This suggests that groups will be more active in areas where they can get the best recruits. As expected, relative political capacity is negative and significant, indicating that states with greater control over their territories experience less terrorism. This supports research by Fearon and Laitin (2003) and Piazza (2008) who find that higher levels of state capacity are related to decreased levels of both
Table 1 presents the results from our test of competition and terrorist activity. The first model indicates that competition amongst terrorist organizations within their respective ideological niches has a negative and statistically significant effect on the number of terrorist attacks that occur on a yearly basis. The substantive effects confirm this relationship; a one standard deviation increase (.960) in competition yields a nearly 50% decrease in the number of terrorist attacks. Given that the average number of terrorist attacks in the data is 7.94, groups in environments with competition scores one standard deviation above the mean (1.69) – an environment with one additional group – will perpetrate four fewer attacks than it would in a less competitive environment. Unlike Bloom (2005), this initial finding seems to suggest that moderation, rather than outbidding, may be the way that terrorist organizations respond to competition. The controls generally perform as expected. A state’s orientation towards violence is statistically significant and associated with a greater number of terror attacks, echoing Mullins and Young (forthcoming). The effect of democracy is also positive and strongly significant. This may indicate that domestic terror is strongly influenced by the democratic process – issues of representation or legislation may provoke groups to violence. At the same time, this may also reflect the deep divisions in reporting terrorist acts between democracies and autocracies (Drakos and Gofas, 2006). GDP per capita is also shown to be positive and significant. This suggests that groups will be more active in areas where they can get the best recruits. As expected, relative political capacity is negative and significant, indicating that states with greater control over their territories experience less terrorism. This supports research by Fearon and Laitin (2003) and Piazza (2008) who find that higher levels of state capacity are related to decreased levels of both