Fighting terrorism in Africa: evidence from bundling and unbundling institutions

Abstract

This study assesses government mechanisms in the fight against terrorism with particular emphasis on the bundling and unbundling of ten governance dynamics. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 53 African countries for period 1998-2012 and GeneralizedMethod of Moments. The following findings are established. First, for the most part, political governance and its constituents respectively have negative effects on all terrorism dynamics, with the following consistent increasing order of negative magnitude: unclear terrorism, transnational terrorism, domestic terrorism and total terrorism. Second, overwhelmingly for economic and institutional governances, the governance dynamics and their constituent components affect terrorism negatively, with the magnitude on domestic terrorism consistently higher than that on transnational terrorism. Third, for most specifications, the effect of general governance is consistently negative on terrorism variables.Theoretical and practical policy implications are discussed.

Can Foreign Aid Dampen the Threat of Terrorism to International Trade? Evidence from 78 Developing Countries

“…In order to avoid mathematical concerns that are related to log-transforming zeros and correct the positive skew in the data, the study considers the natural logarithm of terrorism incidents by adding one to the base. This transformation approach is in accordance with recent literature (Choi & Salehyan, 2013;Bandyopadhyay et al, 2014;Asongu et al, , 2018aAsongu et al, , 2018bAsongu & Nwachukwu, 2017). Terrorism-specific definitions are from Efobi et al (2015, p. 6).…”

Fighting Terrorism in Africa When Existing Terrorism Levels Matter

“…The extant literature substantiating the nexus between political governance and terrorism can be engaged in three main strands, notably, the: relationship between political governance and domestic terrorism; linkage between political governance and transnational terrorism and debate underlying the governance-terrorism relationship (Asongu et al, , 2019.…”

“…Moreover, societies endowed with better political governance also provide nonviolent channels for the resolution of conflicts (Choi, 2010). Hence, as maintained by Asongu et al ( , 2019, the likelihood for transnational terrorism can be curtailed by the availability of political institutions because political governance offers free and fair democratic means for the election and replacement of political leaders. Hence, in an environment of political stability, violence and terrorism as means to the settlement of scores are less likely.…”

“…First, terrorism is increasing in Africa because of endemic corruption, failure of states; plundering of resources; ethnic and tribal tensions and; religious fundamentalism (Fazel, 2013;Alfa-Wali et al, 2015;Asongu et al, , 2019. Despite the increasing concern about terrorism on the continent, compared to the Middle East, Africa is not receiving the policy and scholarly attention it deserves (Clavarino, 2014).…”

Aid in Modulating the Impact of Terrorism on FDI: No Positive Thresholds, No Policy

“…A number of solutions have been proposed in recent literature as means of preventing terrorism on the one hand and mitigating its negative externalities on economic development, on the other hand. These include: the importance of transparency (see Bell et al, 2015); the relevance of the rule of law (Choi, 2010); the role of educational channels (Brockhoff et al, 2014) like bilingualism (Costa et al, 2008); enhanced press freedom and publicity (Hoffman et al, 2013); the employment of military strategies and tactics (Feridun & Shahbaz, 2010), behavioural investigations of attitudes towards terrorism (Gardner, 2007), policy harmonization against terrorism (Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2018;Asongu et al, 2018a), the role of inclusive development, governance and military expenditure in fighting the scourge (Asongu et al, , 2018b and the relevance of foreign aid in mitigating the effect of terrorism on trade (Asongu & Kodila-Tedika, 2017) and natural resources (Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2016, 2017a.…”