This study theorizes on the connection between corruption and political violence. It attempts to uncover whether domestic terrorism-as a specific form of political violence-can be more accurately depicted as an insurgent effort to reduce corruption or as an incumbent effort to exert influence when the channel of corruption has been rendered ineffective. Specifically, the concepts of terrorism and corruption are defined, and the relationship between the two is investigated through competing hypotheses based on social movement theory's (SMT) mechanisms of opportunity structures and grievances. Using a fixed effects longitudinal negative binomial regression based on Muller's model of domestic political violence, this study finds a statistically significant negative relationship between a leading measure of perceived corruption and changes in the rate of terrorist violence for 106 countries over the period of 1990-2010. Results identify corruption and terrorism as shared avenues within an extralegal opportunity structure and demonstrate that where the avenue of corruption has been restricted, countries experience greater rates of terrorist violence.Since the end of the Cold War, democracy and capitalism have enjoyed relatively

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