The Blame Game: Public Outcry and Terrorism within and Exported from the Sanctioned State

What effects do economic sanctions have on the volume of domestic terrorism within target states and transnational terrorism directed toward Americans by targeted nationals? In this article, we theorize that sanctions imposed by the United States increase the likelihood of domestic and transnational terrorism, but the suggested effect is conditioned by the freedom of expression in sanctioned states. When media freedom and other information freedoms are high, we posit that citizens are more likely to direct their grievances against their own government, leading to an increase in domestic terrorism as time under economic sanction increases. When freedom of expression is low, however, leaders of sanctioned states may be able to exploit sanctions to channel hostility away from the home regime via transnational terrorism exported from the sanctioned state. Results from a time-series, cross-national data analysis lend support to our argument on domestic terrorism in the sanctioned state while showing no statistical support for the hypothesis concerning transnational terrorism.