Does democracy influence the export of terrorism

This study uses two-country gravity models to examine whether terrorists export terrorism from non-democratic countries to democratic countries and whether the ease of using the internet to publicize a terrorist event in a country motivates this export. When the characteristics of both the host country and the origin country are included in a PROBIT model predicting the probability that at least one terrorist attack will occur between the two countries in a given year, the democracy level of the host country increases the probability, at a decreasing rate, that an attack will result while the democracy level of the origin country exerted no effect. Additionally, the specific scenario of export from a non-democratic origin to a democratic host exerted no effect beyond the independent effect of the democracy level in each individual country---country pairs involving a non-democratic origin country and a democratic host were no more likely to participate in a terrorist attack than any other pairing of countries. The specific scenario of a non-democratic target country and a democratic host country, however, did increase the likelihood that the two countries would participate in a terrorist attack, suggesting that terrorists attempt to circumvent the logistical hurdles of waging a terrorist attack in a non-democratic country by targeting citizens of that country in a democratic host country. Additionally, when the target country and the host country differed, the number of internet users in the target country increased the probability that the two countries would experience a terrorist attack. The number of internet users in the origin country, however, did not influence the likelihood of attack when the host and the origin country differed. This dichotomy suggests either that terrorists' true audience is the populace of the target country, rather than the populace of the origin country, or that terrorists use modes of communication other than the internet to publicize their attacks within the populace of their own country.