Public Administration, Local and Regional Governance, and Domestic Terrorism

Abstract

This study examines how the nature of public administration and local and regional governance affects domestic terrorism in 73 mixed and democratic countries from multiple regions and levels of development. In conducting a cross‐national statistical analysis from 1991 to 2019 with standard political, economic, and social controls, and controlling for endogeneity, we find that domestic terrorism increases when public administration is more partial, biased, corrupt, and unreliable, and as local and regional governments are controlled to a greater extent by unelected bodies. In addition, we find that the nature of public administration and local and regional governance influences the types of institutions that are most likely to be targeted in domestic terror attacks. These findings have important implications in considering how public administration and local and regional governance affect political violence in mixed and democratic regimes.