The Terror Effect
John Sides directs our attention to a new paper from Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor called “Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate”. Key findings:
This article relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. We find that the occurrence of a terror attack in a given locality within three months of the elections causes an increase of 1.35 percentage points on that locality’s support for the right bloc of political parties out of the two blocs vote. This effect is of a significant political magnitude because of the high level of terrorism in Israel and the fact that its electorate is closely split between the right and left blocs. Moreover, a terror fatality has important electoral effects beyond the locality where the attack is perpetrated, and its electoral impact is stronger the closer to the elections it occurs. Interestingly, in left-leaning localities, local terror fatalities cause an increase in the support for the right bloc, whereas terror fatalities outside the locality increase the support for the left bloc of parties. Given that a relatively small number of localities suffer terror attacks, we demonstrate that terrorism does cause the ideological polarization of the electorate. Overall, our analysis provides strong empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate shows a highly sensitive reaction to terrorism.
They conclude that the “terror effect” was enough to put Likud over the top in 1988 and in 1996.
To state what’s obvious to me, but apparently not to a majority of voters, what you’re see here is the dysfunctional codependence of competing nationalisms. Terrorist attacks lead to right-wing political policies that lead to repressive policies that lead to more terrorist attacks. This is good for violence-friendly leaders on both sides of the green line but makes both the Israeli and the Palestinian populations worse off than they would have been had the Palestinians eschewed violence and the Israelis elected dovish politicians. It’s particularly maddening to see how this played out in 1996 which was a real turning-point election.
22 Responses to “The Terror Effect”
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October 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Just before the end of his government, the Prime Minister admitted that Israel would have to evacuate all colonies in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) if she wants peace.
Why can’t all Isreali politicians be that honest while they actually are in office?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Can you please remove this picture. It covers up the article, and it’s very disturbing.
Thanks!!
October 9th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I actually don’t know any Israelis, but I get the impression they are not as easily freaked out by terrorism as Americans. It’s like the difference in attitudes between California, where there are frequent earthquakes, and other places that get hit very infrequently by large quakes.
If Israel’s political landscape is distorted by terrorism, it’s arguably worse here due to our tendency to overreact. Sometimes I think our government is in league with al-Qaeda, because of all the fear-mongering.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Children of Abraham
music and lyrics by Arlo Guthrie
Children of abraham, what’s your story?
Killing each other for a piece of land.
Children of Abrahma, this ain’t glory.
You’ve got to walk together hand in hand
Take down the flags that just seperate the people
Take down the wire on the boundry
Take back the words that were spoken in anger
You’ve got to live just like a family
Children of Abraham,I must be dreaming
Rivers of blood running thru your hands
Children crying, mothers screaming
It just wasn’t looking like the Promised Land
October 9th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Re: They conclude that the “terror effect” was enough to put Likud over the top in 1988 and in 1996.
But against the Israeli example we have the Spanish example where the events of 3-11 led to an expected victory for the opposition. Yes, it helped that the Spanish government lied about the attacks initially, but I do think it’s a good rule that incumbents (provided they aren’t new to office as Bush was on 9-11) get the blame for such things.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Seems like how the media spins a terrorist attack might have a lot to do with the reaction. It took some dizzy spin to make the country rally behind George W. Bush after the largest air defense failure in U.S. history.
What were people thinking? I don’t get it.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Re: It took some dizzy spin to make the country rally behind George W. Bush after the largest air defense failure in U.S. history.
???
Failure of air defense? Well, if you count the screeners at the airports as “air defense”, that may apply.
The 9-11 attacks were extremely low-tech; the perpetrators were armed with box cutters! To some extent the US’ vaunted centi-billion dollar defense force was a Maginot line when faced with such an brutal, simplistic attack by fanatics.
More significant I think is the fact that the US public forgave (and forgot) Bush’s behavior that day: the panicky, directionless flying hither and thither on Airforce One, instead of heading straight back to DC and taking very public command of the situation. I recall being disgusted when I learned the details of Bush’s actions that day (I was camping in Canada and did not learn of the attacks at all until a day later). Very few people even on leftwing blogs ever mention this. Maybe the circumstances of how I learned about 9-11 give me a perspective that others lack who experienced that day minute-by-minute.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Uhhh. No excuses. Got excuses? Tell it to the judge at the court martial. NORAD is responsible for air defense. They failed.
Period.
Isn’t it odd that the nation suddenly focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, and ne’er a peep about how our very expensive air defense system can be defeated by something as “extremely low-tech” as bad men with box-cutters?
Amazing the Soviets didn’t just turn off their transponders and bomb us off the planet, huh? Surely our enemies were aware of this weakness, no?
No. Radar works just as well as it always has.
Wake up.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:21 am
“This is good for violence-friendly leaders on both sides of the green line but makes both the Israeli and the Palestinian populations worse off than they would have been had the Palestinians eschewed violence and the Israelis elected dovish politicians.” (MY)
The Palestinians tried non-violent protest. Oh, did they try. But, compared to the IDF – Bull Connor was Heidi. The Palestinians saw their children murdered with impunity and realized the Israelis badly needed a taste of their own medicine. There was no other option.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:04 am
This is a very shewd observation, Matt. It seems to me that this is just part of the typical cycle of escalation that occurs between countries, groups, and individuals, quite frequently. Once started, something like this is almost impossible to stop, which is why it is so important to recognize this as a major aspect of human nature and avoid starting it in the first place by not using highly confrontational behavior.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I thought that Hamas stated openly in 1996 that the whole point of the terror campaign was to get the Likud party elected so they could kill the peace process.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I am suspicious of the statistical methods of this study.
However, as an Israeli, I see that terrorism has driven
many Israelis further right politically. The 2000 Intifada
helped Sharon to get elected. Bibi Netanyahu is leading in
polls of whom voters want as Prime Minister. The Second
Lebanon War with Hezbullah rocket attacks on Israeli civilian
(not strictly terrorism – but its a similiar phenomenom)
and the attacks on the Western Negev region from Gaza have
contributed to this.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
trevor – either you have no idea what you’re talking about or you are an active bigot.
the palestinians have never tried non-violence. and in stealing jewish land, no less. if what they really wanted was peace – they would have gotten it decades ago. never truer words have been spoken than those by golda meir – that there will be peace when the arabs start loving their children more than they hate us.
and to matt yglesias – once again you have managed to oversimplify a situation by framing a situation in your own words to meet your own ends. “violence-friendly leaders” and “the Israeli and the Palestinian populations [would be better off] had the Palestinians eschewed violence and the Israelis elected dovish politicians.”
dovish politicians in israel are always the ones that pursue policies that cause wars. always. they capitulate to their enemies, making the enemy think they are stronger – and then, wow – barak => 2nd intifada, olmert => war in lebanon, shimon peres => 1st intifada, golda => yom kippur war, etc (the only exception is the first lebanon war which started as a pointed military operation and then blew out of proportion)
October 11th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I am an Israeli, and I disagree with the findings in the paper. Yes, terror attacks in Israel tend to drive Israeli voters to the Likud. But that has to do with the political parties in Israel. The left-wing parties take a stand on reaching out to Palestinians, and offering more concessions; the Likud focuses on hard-line tactics that involve collective punishment and military involvement. In the years that the paper seems to have covered, terror attacks make people a lot more cynical about the left-wing approach; suppose, for instance, that after Barack Obama had talked about reaching out to Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad had launched missile attacks on Israel. It would deeply change Americans’ impressions of Obama’s strategy.
The paper doesn’t seem to take into account the rise of Kadima as a party, which has both given strong concessions (Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza) and taken strong military action (Olmert’s disastrous jaunt in Lebanon). As a centrist party, it disrupts the Likud/Labor polarity in a way that the paper doesn’t really account for.
A better paper would have statistically examined other nations with a history of terrorism: the Basques, the Irish, the Tamil Tigers, etc. and seen whether the same patterns exist. I think the better conclusion would be that whichever party advocates taking stronger action against terrorists will reap more rewards; not being British (for instance) I don’t know exactly what to make of this, but the Labor party didn’t seem to be weakened by domestic terrorism.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Matt, you write:
“[a] Terrorist attacks lead to right-wing political policies that lead to [b] repressive policies that lead to more terrorist attacks.”
Spain, as has already been mentioned, is a significant counter-example to [a], and given that terrorist attacks have also occurred when there’ve been dovish gov’ts in Israel, [b] is also less straightforward than it might seem. Not that repressive policies shouldn’t be opposed on justice grounds alone. They should be. It’s the causal linkage I’m skeptical about.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
So there are several problems w/ both the study and Matt’s summary of it here. For starters Berrebi and Klor never define what a “terror attack” is, a simple oversight unless of course your study happens to be about that subject and its influence on the electorate. Second, after conceding that “Although terrorism is not a new phenomenon in Israel, the number of terror fatalities was relatively low before the elections of 1988,” the authors note that “Our data set on terrorist attacks dates back to 1949. We start our empirical analysis after the elections of 1984 because the electoral data is available only for the elections of 1988 onwards.” So what was the terror attacks in 1988 that led to the backing of the Likud government, the largely non-violent first Palestinian intifada, in which from 1987-1988 alone according to the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, over 326 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers and civilians, including 55 children. In the same time period there were 6 Israeli non-combatants, including 3 children, and 4 Israeli soldiers killed. (http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/First_Intifada_Tables.asp)
Yet, from 1989-1991, there were 532 Palestinian fatalities, including 135 children. During this period, there were 14 Israeli civilians killed and 10 soldiers. However, in 1992, the year in which the Israeli electorate elected the “dovish” Yitzhak Rabin after 3 plus years of the intifada and the first Gulf War, there were 11 civilians and 14 soldiers killed alone. In the same year, 136 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. This data hardly supports Berrabi and Klor’s conclusion that “This study provided strong empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate is highly sensitive to terror fatalities. Notably, it presented solid evidence that terrorism causes an important increase in the support for the right bloc of political parties.”
Then of course there is the issue of coding the terror attacks and the terror bases. Using datasets which contain information on “each and every terror attack that caused the death of at least one Israeli noncombatant that occurred on Israeli soil between July 13, 1984, the day of the elections for the 11th Israeli parliament, and June 30, 2004.” So what is Israeli soil? “The areas spanned by these three disjoint geographical units completely cover the Israeli territory, including localities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” To be an occupier and the victim at the same time is quite an achievement.
Contrary to “lb” above the Palestinians have tried non-violence repeatedly, only to be subjected to brutal measures initially by the British forces during the mandate and Israeli forces under the occupation since 1967 that have forced more extreme responses.
Think Progress indeed.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:23 am
TERROR IN CANA TIPPED 1996 ELECTION
The other “terror” attack that was critical to the 1996 election was the Israeli bombardment of a UN base in Cana, Lebanon, just days before the election, which killed almost 100 Lebanese civilians and led many Israeli Arabs to cast blank ballots in the vote for Prime Minister. Shimon Peres lost the election to Netanyahu by just 29,000 votes, less than 1% of the total votes cast. Had this not occurred, Peres might have won the election.
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