by Robert C. Sage

Created on: August 25, 2007

There is no proven, direct correlation between the incidence of so-called "democracies" and a lessening of non-governmental terrorism. Unfortunately, governmental terrorism does exist and it tends to be worse under the more autocratic systems, but that is a different question altogether. In fact, young democracies probably experience more unrest because the freedoms are recently won and societal standards for self-expression are still underdeveloped. In all political systems, there are "crazies" and people who abuse the liberties of others. Terrorists have developed under all types of political systems, however democracies tend to be more accepting of diversity and people with terrorist bents can take advantage of that. A terrorist is someone who uses terror to accomplish his goals.

On the other hand, democracies tend to encourage reasonable resolutions to difficult social and political issues. In some cases, accepting radically different opinions could enable proto-terrorists to get the hostility and frustration out of their systems non-violently. However, to credibly debate the implied proposition that democracy prevents terrorism, the terms "democracy" and "terrorists" need some clarification. In fact, there is no such thing as a truly democratic country, because it would require that all citizens be involved in all decisions. Meanwhile, a terrorist is someone who uses terror to accomplish goals. Terrorists can be individuals, insurgent groups or even governments.

Terrorism exists under all political systems. Where the government actively terrorizes its citizens, there may be higher levels of terrorism as a reaction. However, there are many relatively undemocratic countries that have low incidences of individual and group terrorism. Thus, the implied proposition that democracy leads to less terrorism is not supported by empirical data. It is wishful thinking. Most people would like to believe that their form of government is better than others, but it would be very difficult to prove that democracy reduces terrorism, since there are so many forms of terrorism and of democracy.

The implied proposition seems to be based largely on self-righteousness, self-pride and ethnocentrism. In fact, it is somewhat immaterial whether the implied proposition is true or not, unless you believe that America has the right and responsibility to promote, institute and enforce the practice of democracy in other countries according to our definitions. This idea seems to have been

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