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Much qualitative research has drawn an association between social media and domestic terrorism, with the studies reaching different conclusions. However, few empirical studies have evaluated whether the surge in social media participation affects domestic terrorist events. Controlling for common explanations in the literature, we conduct a cross-national, time-series analysis of up to 151 countries from 2000 to 2019 to assess the impact of social media penetration on domestic terrorism. We find that greater social media penetration increases the likelihood of domestic terrorism in countries as it supports extremists' ability to recruit, mobilize, and train terrorists. Using mediation analysis, we also find that greater social media penetration amplifies online and political polarization, increasing the likelihood of domestic terrorism events. Our work indicates the possible mechanisms linking social media and domestic terrorism and the need to develop and apply appropriate counterterrorism strategies to mitigate terrorist operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, credit rating agencies have played a prominent financial role in developing countries, rating their sovereign bonds and determining capital costs. Over much the same years, domestic terrorism has expanded, increasing market disruptions in countries. Despite the heightened costs related to rebel attacks, few studies investigate the impact of domestic terrorism on bond ratings. Using a sample of seventy-one developing countries between 1996 and 2018, we find that domestic terrorist incidents result in sovereign bond downgrades for countries that receive ratings. Further, when we disaggregate terrorist events by target type, we observe that attacks directed at the government, military and police, business, non-governmental organizations, and private citizens/property have a larger effect than other terrorist incidents. We argue that specific domestic terrorist attacks increase economic instability, leading to capital flight, and a shifting of resources from productive economic sectors to counterterrorism. The resulting economic changes weaken a country's economy and increase debt nonpayment risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "ethnic outbidding" refers to an auction-like process where ethnically-based political parties adopt extreme ideological positions as a means of distancing themselves from rival parties. While a lot of research references ethnic outbidding, very little empirical analysis actually assesses the ability of the outbidding model to explain the actions of ethnic political parties. More generally, existing research on outbidding fails to account for ideological variation among ethnic parties. In this article, we review the research on ethnic party tactics and propose a strategy for implementing ideological data into future ethnic politics research. Employing local-level voting data for Romania and Slovakia, we show that ideological variables have a significant degree of explanatory power. This finding implies that it is only by treating ethnic party ideologies and tactics as exogenous independent variables that we can properly assess the validity of the outbidding model and the existence of outbidding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his seminal work, Going Public, Samuel Kernell (1987) argued that changes in the congressional bargaining environment incentivized an increase in presidential speeches. Although subsequent research rejected that these changes increased speeches, Congress continues to evolve, having become more centralized and unified (by political party) since the 1970s. The purpose of this article is to revisit the changing congressional environment to assess what impact it has had on presidential speechmaking. We argue that if greater centralization and party unity are to affect speechmaking, they should decrease it, but only under unified government. We find that although congressional centralization, which should promote more bargaining between presidents and legislators, decreases speeches, the impact is not conditional on unified government. To this end, we conclude that the president's electoral not policy goals are the primary motivation for presidential speechmaking. These results have major implications for our theories of going public and our understanding of the public presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]