Perception of human rights, law enforcement interference and justifiability of terrorism: a Cross-National Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to understand how subjective perceptions of human rights influence the justifiability of terrorism at the individual level, net of individual and country-level controls. Utilizing the seventh wave of World Values Survey data and 65,668 respondents from 52 countries, this study finds those who report greater interference in their lives from security agents and those who see the country as being run more democratically are more likely to find terrorism justified, while those who perceive less respect for human rights are less likely to do so. The effect of state terror on the justifiability of terrorism is moderated by perceived democracy, with those perceiving the country as being run more democratically being more likely to find terrorism justified when state terror is high.KEYWORDS: Terrorismhuman rightssocial psychologyCross-National researchquantitative multilevel models AcknowledgementThe author thanks The Editor of this journal, the two anonymous peer reviewers, the anonymous peer reviewer in an earlier version of this manuscript and Ms. Merit Goddard Martens for her help in copyediting this paper.Disclosure statementThere are no conflicts of interests.Notes1. For fundraising of WVS see https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp;fieldwork and sampling: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp;questionnaire development: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp2. Puerto Rico (PR) was surveyed in 2018 but in this study, PR & US are treated as one country.3. An example of what kind of state terror leads to a particular PTS score: is https://www.politicalterrorscale.org/Data/CodingExamples.html4. Taiwan’s HDI was found on Taiwan’s national Statistics website (Not UNDP): https://eng.stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=25280&ctNode=6032&mp=5Additional informationNotes on contributorsNabil Bill JulkifThe author is a PhD student at SIU Carbondale