In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, security from terrorism has become a central issue of the political debate in many democratic countries. By brutally exposing the vulnerability of western democracies to terrorist strikes on their domestic soil, these terrorist acts have generated a deep sense of fear within the public, who has demanded additional security from terrorism and has since indicated repeatedly terrorism prevention as one of the top policy priorities. The later events of 2004 in Madrid, of 2007 in London, and of 2015 in Paris, have represented periodic and tragic reminders of how the fight against terrorism still remains an open issue and have reinforced its relevance in the domestic political arena.
In light of the emergence of terrorism prevention as a major political concern in many democratic systems, it is important to understand the impact that terrorism violence has on democratic institutions and processes, beyond the tragic loss of human lives. In this paper, I address this fundamental issue by focusing on the effect that the occurrence or the threat of terror acts have on some of the defining aspects of a liberal democracy. In particular, I ask: what is the effect of terrorism on the electoral process, on the policy-making process, and the protection of citizens’ individual rights and liberties?
I argue that, in order to provide a satisfactory answer to these questions and to develop an in-depth understanding of the far-reaching consequences of terrorism violence in democracies, we need a comprehensive analysis of the strategic incentives underlying the behavior of the key actors at play. In fact, the emerging electoral relevance of terrorism prevention creates an incentive for accountable elected officials to adopt new counterterrorism measures that not only reflect the need to balance security and liberties, but that also account for the voters’ reaction to such measures, which in turn is shaped by the different reputations that political parties tend to have regarding their approach to the fight against terrorism.
To account for the strategic feedback between voters’ reaction to terrorism violence, counterterrorism policy-making, and the electoral ambitions of elected representatives, I develop a game-theoretic model where a reelection-seeking incumbent is in charge of counterterrorism provision, and terrorist attacks can occur before the election. Voters want politicians to prioritize security in times of high terrorist threat and to prioritize liberties in times of low terrorist threat. Politicians differ with respect to their partisan affiliation, and, in turn, about their views on the security–liberty trade-off: right-wing politicians tend to be biased toward security, while left-wing politicians tend to have a bias toward defending liberties. Voters are uncertain about the actual preferences of the candidates for office.
The model yields four main results. First, I show how incumbents use counterterrorism policy-making to further their electoral ambitions. This strategic behavior comes either at the expense of citizens’ security or their civil liberties, depending on the incumbent’s partisan affiliation. Specifically, for right-wing incumbents, who have a reputation for being potentially biased toward excessive security, the task is to convince the electorate that they are not willing to curtail civil liberties unless necessary for security reasons. For left-wing incumbents, who are known to be potentially biased toward an excessive protection of civil liberties, the objective is to convince voters that they are not going to blindly defend such liberties if a severe terror threat manifests. To achieve their objective, incumbents will act “against type” and adopt policies that are supposed to defy their reputation, thus leading left-wing incumbents to enact more aggressive antiterrorism measures than right-wing counterparts.
Second, I show how the electoral consequences of successful terrorist attacks crucially depend on the incumbent’s partisanship and the perceived terrorist threat level. In particular, I show how right-wing incumbents either benefit or remain unaffected by the occurrence of terrorist attacks, while left-wing incumbents see their electoral prospects either hurt or unchanged by the occurrence of terror acts. The driving force is the direction in which each candidate is potentially biased and their desire to appear unbiased to the electorate. For a right-wing incumbent, the occurrence of an attack leads voters to believe that her approach was not excessively aggressive, otherwise, all else equal, an attack would have been less likely to succeed. Conversely, for a left-wing incumbent, the occurrence of an attack leads voters to believe that her approach to the fight against terrorism was too lenient and her reputation as an unbiased incumbent is damaged.
Third, I show how even an incumbent believed to be biased is not doomed to fail in her reelection bid. Depending on voters’ outlook on the future threat level, voters have different standards for reelecting incumbents with different partisan affiliation. When the future terrorist threat is likely to be high, electing a right-wing politician is de facto costless, since this politician is biased toward policies that in such a high threat environment are actually optimal from the voters’ standpoint. Conversely, left-wing incumbents suffer in electoral terms when voters are particularly pessimistic about the future threat: it is too risky to elect somebody who might turn out to be unwilling to restrict liberties even in times of concrete danger for national security. The opposite is true when the future threat from terrorism is low. Thus, voters can elect a candidate who is ex ante more likely to be biased, if the direction of her bias matches the future optimal policy, given the nature of the threat coming from terrorists. Even if terrorist attacks affect an incumbent’s reputation for being biased, this might ultimately not have an effect on the electoral result when the perceived future threat is either very high or very low.
Finally, I analyze the impact that secrecy in the counterterrorism policy-making process has on the provision of counterterrorism An increase in the level of transparency of counterterrorism policies increases the likelihood of suboptimal counterterrorism provision, regardless of the incumbent’s partisan affiliation. The strategic suboptimal design of a counterterrorism strategy relies on the ability of incumbents to use policy-making to signal congruence between the voters’ preferences and theirs. This ability to signal congruence depends on the transparency of the antiterrorism measures, and thus higher levels of transparency provide incumbent politicians with an incentive to try and convince voters of their lack of bias, while low transparency levels push incumbents to choose counterterrorism policies that are optimal from the voters’ standpoint. I also show how this implies that an increase in transparency increases the chances of a successful terrorist attack under a right-wing government, while it reduces the chances of a terror act under a left-wing incumbent’s watch. Moreover, I show how different parties have diverging incentives to increase or decrease transparency depending on the nature of the terrorist threat.
The results I present have three merits. First, the results reconcile and explain several empirical regularities: (a) leftist incumbents tend to enact more aggressive counterterrorism policies than rightist incumbents (Berrebi and Klor Reference Berrebi and Klor2006; Plümper and Epifanio Reference Plümper and Epifanio2014); (b) there is mixed evidence on the effect of terrorist attacks on incumbents’ electoral prospects (Bali Reference Bali2007; Berrebi and Klor Reference Berrebi and Klor2008; Gassebner, Jong-A-Pin and Mierau Reference Gassebner, Jong-A-Pin and Mierau2008; Montalvo Reference Montalvo2011; Koch and Tkach Reference Koch and Tkach2012); (c) the terrorist threat level affects incumbents differently depending on their partisan affiliation (Getmansky and Zeitzoff Reference Getmansky and Zeitzoff2014). Second, the results have implications for optimal institutional design with respect to counterterrorism policy-making, by providing a new rationale for keeping the policy-making process and its outcomes outside of public sight. Third, the results have implications on how to design empirical investigations that aim to assess the effect of terrorist threats and terrorist attacks on incumbents’ electoral fortunes. Specifically, terrorist attacks (or their absence) provide useful information to the electorate about the underlying threat level, and, in turn, about the incumbent’s suitability to fight terrorism without ideological biases. When the electorate already possesses precise information about threat levels and enacted antiterrorism measures, the informational value of terrorist attacks decreases and we should not expect electoral results to be affected by terror acts. Additionally, if the perceived threat level is very high, a good or poor performance in terms of terrorism prevention can be offset by the reputational effects that partisan affiliations carry with them. It is then crucial for empirical work to take into account the informational environment in which voters make their electoral decisions and the key role of partisanship in shaping the relationship between terrorist attacks and electoral fortunes.
RELEVANT LITERATURE
This article contributes to the large literature on the political economy of terrorism.Footnote 1 First, I contribute to the literature on the electoral consequence of terrorism. The evidence on this topic is mixed: some scholars have shown that terrorism hampers the electoral success of incumbents (e.g., Bali Reference Bali2007; Gassebner, Jong-A-Pin and Mierau Reference Gassebner, Jong-A-Pin and Mierau2008; Montalvo Reference Montalvo2011), while other researchers have shown how terrorist attacks might lead to an increase in support for the incumbent (e.g., Berrebi and Klor Reference Berrebi and Klor2008; Koch and Tkach Reference Koch and Tkach2012; Getmansky and Zeitzoff Reference Getmansky and Zeitzoff2014).
Second, I add to the growing literature on counterterrorism provision. Analysis of the policy response of western democracies to the looming threat of transnational terrorism has identified several factors affecting the number and depth of the measures adopted (Epifanio Reference Epifanio2011; Neumayer, Plümper and Epifanio Reference Neumayer, Plümper and Epifanio2014). In particular, the incumbent executive’s partisanship has been shown to have an important effect on the extent of the counterterrorism measures, with left-leaning governments implementing more counterterrorism regulations than right-leaning governments, even if they tend to have a reputation for being “softer” on terrorism (Berrebi and Klor Reference Berrebi and Klor2006; Plümper and Epifanio Reference Plümper and Epifanio2014). Although they have been largely analyzed separately, the connection between counterterrorism policy-making and electoral outcomes has not received sufficient attention. Notable exceptions are the theoretical contributions of Berrebi and Klor (Reference Berrebi and Klor2006), Bueno de Mesquita (Reference Bueno de Mesquita2007), and Plümper and Epifanio (Reference Plümper and Epifanio2014), which differ from my model in a variety of ways.Footnote 2
Berrebi and Klor (Reference Berrebi and Klor2006) consider a dynamic game between Palestinians and Israeli citizens, who elect either a leftist or a rightist party to deal with terrorism. The outcomes generated by each party if they were to assume office are exogenously fixed. They show how the level of terrorism is higher when the leftist party is in government and that support for the rightist party surges during periods of high terrorist activity. Unlike their model, I allow the incumbent to strategically choose her counterterrorism strategy to balance electoral ambitions and security concerns. As a consequence, I am able to explain “the surprising findings” that left-wing incumbents react more firmly to the terrorist threat than right-wing incumbents (Berrebi and Klor Reference Berrebi and Klor2006, 904).
Bueno de Mesquita (Reference Bueno de Mesquita2007) develops a model in which the government strategically interacts with a terrorist organization and the electorate. He shows that the voters’ concern about the possibility the government might divert spending away from counterterrorism provision pushes the government to overspend on observable counterterrorism measures. In his model, all politicians are identical, while in mine they vary with respect to their preferences on the security–liberty trade-off. This allows me to derive novel results about the effect of partisanship on counterterrorism provision and on voters’ electoral behavior.
Finally, Plümper and Epifanio (Reference Plümper and Epifanio2014) develop a spatial model of counterterrorism provision in which they assume that security shocks move the partisan preferences of the median voter to the right but also increase the salience of counterterrorism, thus causing both left-wing and right-wing parties to shift to the center. They show, both theoretically and empirically, that left-wing governments respond to security shocks more than right-wing counterparts. Unlike their model, I explicitly model the possibility of the occurrence of a terrorist attack, I include a fully rational voter—which allows me to detail the mechanism through which security shocks affect electoral outcomes and counterterrorism policy-making—and I derive additional results on the effect that the threat level has on electoral outcomes.
Third, I contribute to a large literature on electoral accountability and pandering. Similar to several other papers (e.g., Maskin and Tirole Reference Maskin and Tirole2004; Canes-Wrone and Shotts Reference Canes-Wrone and Shotts2007; Fox Reference Fox2007; Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita Reference Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita2014; Fox and Stephenson Reference Fox and Stephenson2015), I build a model in which politicians have private information about their policy preferences but are homogeneous with respect to competence.Footnote 3 Similar to Fox (Reference Fox2007) and Canes-Wrone and Shotts (Reference Canes-Wrone and Shotts2007), the incumbent knows the state of the world but the voter does not. Unlike these models, in an extension of my model, I assume the voter observes the counterterrorism policy chosen by the incumbent only with positive probability, given the usually secretive nature of such a choice. This allows me to derive explicit comparative statics with respect to the level of transparency in counterterrorism policy-making. Finally, unlike most of these models, I posit that politicians differ with respect to their partisan affiliation, which the voter observes. Thus, while each politician can be one of three types (unbiased, biased toward aggressive policies, or biased toward moderate policies), a politician’s partisan affiliation (i.e., right-wing or left-wing), through the reputation that it carries, allows the voter to reduce the uncertainty about her actual type to a pair of possible types. To capture the dynamic of partisan competition, I assume that incumbent and challenger differ with respect to their partisan affiliation, thus making them two random draws from different candidate pools. As a consequence, the voter considers both the likelihood of the bias and the direction of the potential bias (i.e., the partisanship) of the incumbent. In particular, I show how the voter might elect a candidate who is ex ante more likely to be biased if such a candidate is biased toward policies that are likely to be optimal in the future fight against terrorists. That is, under certain conditions, partisanship, along with the voter’s perception of the state of the world, renders the incumbent’s congruence in terms of policy preference irrelevant.
THE MODEL
I consider a two-period model where the actors are an incumbent (I), a challenger (C), and a representative voter (V).Footnote 4 In each period, nature determines the level of the terrorist threat θ, which can be either high (i.e., θ=h) or low (i.e., θ=l). The incumbent observes the threat level θ, while the voter does not observe θ and his prior belief is Pr(θ=l)=π∈[0, 1].
The incumbent politician chooses a counterterrorism policy x, to combat the terrorist threat faced by the society. She can either choose a moderate policy, x=m, or an aggressive one, x=a.Footnote 5 Before the election, a terrorist attack can take place. The voter, after observing if an attack happened or not, chooses whether to reelect the incumbent, r=1, or opt for the challenger, r=0. After the election, the new incumbent observes the new threat level, chooses a counterterrorism policy, a new terrorist attack can happen, and the game ends.
All players face a trade-off between security from terrorism and civil liberties. The voter wants the incumbent to choose a counterterrorism policy that best suits the pressure of contemporary events. In times of danger, the concern for security outweighs the concern for civil liberties and the voter wants the incumbent to take resolute actions in order to curb the terrorist threat, even if this means sacrificing some individual rights. In safer times, the balance shifts the other way and the voter wants the incumbent to engage in the fight against terrorism without curtailing civil liberties.Footnote 6 Different types of politicians have differing views about the trade-off between security and liberty, with some politicians biased toward security, some toward liberties, and some sharing the unbiased view of the voter. Politicians also value holding office, and they view the choice of a counterterrorism strategy not only as a tool to fight terrorism, but also as an instrument to secure reelection.
Terrorist Threat and Successful Attacks
The occurrence of a terrorist attack depends on the counterterrorism policy chosen by the incumbent x, and the threat level θ. Denote the probability that a terrorist attack happens (i.e., T=1) by t(θ, x)=Pr(T=1|θ, x). For any threat level, the aggressive policy is always more effective than the moderate policy at reducing the probability of a terrorist strike. Additionally, the aggressive policy has a larger impact in curbing the chances of a successful terrorist strike when the threat is high than when it is low. Let Δ θ =t(θ, m)−t(θ, a) be the effectiveness of the aggressive counterterrorism policy at reducing the probability of a successful terrorist strike when the level of the threat is equal to θ. To capture these features, I assume Δ h >Δ l >0.Footnote 7 Finally, if an attack occurs (T=1), all players pay a cost α ∈ ℝ+.
Politicians
A politician in office observes the threat level θ and then selects a counterterrorism policy x∈{m, a}. Politicians differ with respect to the cost they incur to enact an aggressive counterterrorism policy, which implies a curtailment of civil liberties. Each politician can be either unbiased (ω=un), hawkish (ω=ba), or lenient (ω=bm).Footnote 8 An unbiased politician, who shares the voter’s policy preferences, pays a cost c un =c>, a hawkish type pays a lower cost c ba <c, while a lenient type pays a higher cost c bm >c.Footnote 9 I assume that c ba <αΔ l <c<αΔ h <c bm , which implies that, from a pure policy perspective, an unbiased type prefers matching the policy to the threat level, a hawkish type always prefers aggressive counterterrorism measures, and a lenient type always prefers moderate measures.
Even though politicians’ types are private information, their partisan affiliation is known. Politicians can be either right-wing or left-wing. While right-wing officials are more willing to err on the side of security, left-wing ones tend to have a more uncompromising stance on defending civil liberties. To model this, I consider two pairs of types, Ω R ={un, ba} and Ω L {un, bm}, and I refer to these type pairs as the candidate’s partisanship. Specifically, a right-wing politician’s type belongs to Ω R , while a left-wing politician’s type belongs to Ω L . Hence, a right-wing politician is either unbiased or hawkish, while a left-wing politician is either unbiased or lenient. I assume that the incumbent and the challenger have different partisanship, so as to capture a competitive dynamic between two candidates perceived to have different attitudes toward the balance between security and liberties.Footnote 10
Finally, when holding office, politicians receive a payoff B>0 that captures ego rents and other material gains, while when not holding office politicians receive a payoff of 0.
The Voter
The voter decides whether to retain the incumbent or to elect the challenger. In terms of policy preferences, the voter is identical to an unbiased politician. Specifically, he incurs a cost c>0 if the incumbent enacts an aggressive counterterrorism policy.
Therefore, voter prefers unbiased incumbents to biased ones, but he faces challenges in selecting unbiased politicians as the politicians’ types are private information. What helps the voter in this task is his ability to observe the partisanship of each candidate. Knowing whether each candidate is right-wing or left-wing allows the voter to restrict his uncertainty from a triple of types Ω={un, ba, bm} to pairs of types, Ω R ={un, ba} or Ω L ={un, bm}. Still, the voter remains uncertain about each politician’s actual type within each pair.Footnote 11 Formally, within each pair, the voter has a prior on the unbiasedness of the politician, Pr(ω i =un|ω i ∈Ω R )=Pr(ω i =un|ω∈Ω L )=p.
Summing up, the voter does not know the actual level of the terrorist threat and he does not know the incumbent’s and challenger’s types, while he knows whether each politician is right-wing or left-wing. Additionally, the voter observes whether or not a terrorist attack has occurred and the counterterrorism policy chosen by the incumbent.
Timing and Equilibrium Concept
To summarize, the timing of the game is as follows:
Period one
1. Nature determines the terrorist threat level θ∈{h, l}, the incumbent’s type, ω I ∈Ω I , and the challenger’s, ω c ∈Ω c .
2. The incumbent observes θ and ω I , and chooses a policy x∈{m, a}.
3. A terrorist attack happens with probability t(θ, x).
4. The voter observes the enacted policy and the occurrence or lack of an attack (x, T) and chooses whether or not to reelect the incumbent, r∈{0, 1}.
Period two
1. Nature determines the terrorist threat level
$$\tilde{\theta }\in\{ h,l\} $$
.Footnote
12
2. The incumbent observes
$$\tilde{\theta }$$
and chooses a policy
$$\tilde{x}\in\{ m,a\} $$
.3. A terrorist attack happens with probability
$$t(\tilde{\theta },\tilde{x})$$
and the game ends.
I solve for the pure strategy perfect Bayesian equilibria of the game that survive the intuitive criterion (Cho and Kreps Reference Cho and Kreps1987), which I refer to as equilibria.Footnote 13 For simplicity, I posit that biased types always choose their preferred policy and I focus on the behavior of the unbiased types, who share the voter’s policy preferences and yet, under some conditions, will fail to be faithful agents.Footnote 14 I say there is an optimal provision of counterterrorism when an unbiased type conditions her policy choice on the actual terrorist threat level in the same way that a perfectly informed voter would. Conversely, I will speak of underprovision (overprovision) of counterterrorism when an unbiased incumbent chooses a moderate (aggressive) policy even in times of high (low) threat. Finally, I assume, with no effect on the main results, that whenever indifferent between the incumbent and the challenger, the voter reelects the incumbent.
ANALYSIS
For convenience, and exploiting the symmetry of the model, I will mainly focus on the case where the incumbent is right-wing and the challenger is left-wing.Footnote 15 In the second period, without any accountability mechanism in place before the end of the game, the politician in office will enact her preferred policy. Recall that π is the probability the threat is low, α the cost associated with a successful terror attack, c the cost of civil liberties curtailment, and t(θ, x) the probability that a terrorist attack occurs when the politician in office faces a threat level θ and has enacted a policy x. Let γ w be the expected utility that the voter receives in the second period from having in office a politician of type ω. For the case of an unbiased, hawkish, and lenient politician we have, respectively:
$$\eqalignno{ & \gamma _{{un}} \,{\equals}\,\pi ({\minus}\alpha t(l,m)){\plus}(1{\minus}\pi )({\minus}c{\minus}\alpha t(h,a))\,;\, \cr & \gamma _{{ba}} \,{\equals}\,\pi ({\minus}c{\minus}\alpha t(l,a)){\plus}(1{\minus}\pi )({\minus}c{\minus}\alpha t(h,a))\,;\, \cr & \gamma _{{bm}} \,{\equals}\,\pi ({\minus}\alpha t(l,m)){\plus}(1{\minus}\pi )({\minus}\alpha t(h,m)). $$
Let us explore the voter’s electoral choice. The voter reelects the incumbent whenever the incumbent provides him with a higher expected second-period utility than the challenger, that is when
$$[u_{V} (I)]\, {\equals}\, (1{\minus}\mu _{{x,T}} )\gamma _{{un}} {\plus}\mu _{{x,T}} \gamma _{{ba}} \geq p\gamma _{{un}} {\plus}(1{\minus}p)\gamma _{{bm}} ,$$
where μ x,T =Pr(ω=ba|x, T) is the posterior belief about a right-wing incumbent being hawkish given that the policy is x and the terrorism occurrence variable takes value T.
Let us now determine the incumbent politician’s optimal behavior. First, notice that γ
un
is also the second-period policy payoff an unbiased incumbent would receive if she was reelected. As such the cumulative benefit of reelection is given by the sum of the policy payoff and the ego rents. Denote such cumulative benefit of holding office by
$${\scr B}\,\equiv\,\gamma _{{un}} {\plus}B$$
.
We have that an unbiased incumbent chooses counterterrorism policy a over policy m if
$${\minus}c{\minus}\alpha t(\theta ,a){\plus}{\scr B} \cdot v(a)\geq {\minus}\alpha t(\theta ,m){\plus}{\scr B} \cdot v(m),$$
where v(x) is the probability with which the voter reelects the incumbent when he observes counterterrorism policy x. As such, we have that v(x)=t(θ, x)r(x, 1)+1−t(θ, x))r(x, 0). Rearranging Equation 2 we obtain:
$$\mathop{\underbrace{{\alpha \Delta ^{\theta } }}}\limits_{{\rm security}\,{\rm benefit}}\geq \quad \mathop{\underbrace{{{\scr B} \cdot [v(m){\minus}v(a)]}}}\limits_{{\rm potential}\,{\rm electoral}\,{\rm costs}}\quad {\plus}\mathop{\underbrace{c}}\limits_{{\rm reduced}\,{\rm liberties}},$$
which is easily interpretable. Namely, the incumbent chooses x=a over x=m if the benefits an aggressive policy produces in terms of enhanced security outweigh the costs of curtailing civil liberties and the potential costs that such a choice might generate in terms of electoral prospects. This points toward a clear trade-off that incumbents face between ensuring security from terrorism, protecting civil liberties, and winning office. To simplify the algebra, I will maintain that
$$\alpha \,\gt\,c{\plus}{\scr B}$$
, meaning that the costs of a terrorist attack are severe.
The Security–Liberty–Reelection Trade-Off
Given the incumbent’s and the voter’s optimal behavior described above, I study how the equilibrium provision of counterterrorism is affected by the incumbent’s partisanship and her reelection ambitions.
Proposition 1: (Equilibrium characterization): Consider the case of a right-wing (left-wing) incumbent. For any prior on the threat level:
(a) There exists an optimal provision equilibrium iff the effectiveness of aggressive policies is high (low) enough or the probability of a low threat is low (high) enough.
(b) there exists an underprovision (overprovision) equilibrium iff the effectiveness of aggressive policies is low (high) enough and the probability of a low threat is high (low) enough.
Moreover, these are the only equilibria of the game.
An unbiased right-wing incumbent has to convince the voter she is not hawkish. To show her lack of bias, she would have to chose moderate measures. However, when the country faces a serious threat to national security, adopting such a strategy would translate into a relatively high probability of a successful terrorist attack.Footnote 16 In other words, the incumbent faces a dilemma: better reelection prospects entail a higher chance of experiencing a terror attack.
If the effectiveness of aggressive policies at preventing terrorism under a mild threat is low, choosing moderate polices instead of aggressive ones does not cause a big enough increase in the probability of a terrorist attack to outweigh the electoral benefits generated by such a choice. This induces an unbiased incumbent to underprovide counterterrorism to signal to the voter her lack of bias. Instead, when aggressive policies are particularly effective at curbing the probability of an attack even under a low threat, the incumbent is unwilling to sacrifice security in order to ensure for herself a higher probability of reelection.
An equivalent logic, working in the opposite direction, applies to the case of a left-wing incumbent, whose concern is not to appear too lenient in the fight against terrorism. As a consequence, the availability of policies that are “too effective” at preventing terror attacks leads to overprovision of counterterrorism. As such, Proposition 1 highlights how even a desirable feature of counterterrorism policies, namely their effectiveness at preventing terrorist attacks, could lead to less than optimal outcomes for the electorate.Footnote 17
The Effect of Terrorist Attacks on Incumbents’ Reputation
We have discussed the signaling mechanism behind the link between counterterrorism policy-making and electoral concerns. Let us now explore the reputational consequences of the occurrence or absence of a terrorist attack for incumbent politicians. Analyzing how the voter uses the informational content of terrorist attacks and policy choices is crucial to better understand and explain the variation in the electoral effects of terror acts uncovered in the empirical literature. More precisely, we are interested in the conditions under which a terror act improves or hinders the incumbents’ reputation, and thus, her electoral prospects. I provide such conditions in the following result. I refer to the voter’s posterior belief that the incumbent is unbiased as the incumbent’s reputation.
Proposition 2: (Effect of terrorist attacks on incumbents’ reputation): Consider the case of a right-wing (left-wing) incumbent. In any equilibrium:
(a) if the voter observes a moderate policy, the incumbent’s reputation is not affected (weakly worsened) by the occurrence of a terrorist attack;
(b) if the voter observes an aggressive policy, the incumbent’s reputation weakly improves (is not affected) after a terrorist attack.
This result shows how a right-wing incumbent tends to benefit while a left wing tends to suffer, in terms of reputation, from the occurrence of a terrorist attack. Let us focus on the case of a right-wing incumbent, and then briefly discuss the case of a left-wing incumbent.
The occurrence or absence of a terrorist attack can affect the incumbent’s reputation by providing the voter with information about the incumbent’s views on the security–liberty trade-off. However, the outcome of the fight against terrorism is not the only source of information for the voter about the incumbent’s preferences, the other one being the policy enacted by the incumbent. As such, if the voter is able to infer the incumbent’s type from the enacted policy alone, the occurrence or absence of a terrorist attack will not have any effect on the incumbent’s reputation. This is exactly what happens when a right-wing incumbent chooses a moderate policy (i.e., part (a)), and when she chooses an aggressive policy (i.e., part (b)) in the underprovision equilibrium, given that a hawkish incumbent always chooses aggressive counterterrorism measures.
In the optimal provision equilibrium, observing an aggressive policy leads the voter to believe the incumbent is more likely to be biased than he initially expected. In fact, a hawkish incumbent always curtails civil liberties, while an unbiased incumbent only does so when the threat is high. Still observing an aggressive policy is not enough evidence to determine with certainty that the incumbent is hawkish: the voter does not know the underlining level of the terrorist threat, and in the event it was high, he knows that both an unbiased and a hawkish incumbent would have chosen the aggressive policy. Because of this uncertainty, the occurrence or absence of an attack will provide useful information to help the voter assess the incumbent’s type. In particular, the occurrence of an attack will partially improve the incumbent’s reputation vis-à-vis the voter. A terrorist attack leads the voter to be more confident that the threat was high, and as such, he becomes more inclined to think that an aggressive policy was the result of a unbiased type attempting to protect the country during perilous times.
Combining this case with the underprovision equilibrium case (where the incumbent reputation is unaffected), we establish that observing an attack when the aggressive policy is known to be in place weakly improves the incumbent’s reputation. Following a similar logic, observing an attack when the moderate policy is known to be in place weakly worsens a left-wing incumbent’s reputation, while observing an act of terror when the aggressive policy is in place leaves a left-wing incumbent’s reputation unaffected. The result in Proposition 2 offers a possible explanation for the heterogeneous empirical findings regarding the link between terrorist attacks and the incumbents’ reputation and electoral performance. Specifically, it highlights the important role played by the incumbent’s partisanship and by the enacted antiterrorism policy as an alternative source of information that can render the informational content of terrorist attacks inconsequential.
The Effect of Threats and Partisanship on Electoral Outcomes
We have assessed how an incumbent’s performance on terrorism prevention affects her reputation. However, even incumbents with a reputation for being biased in their counterterrorism approach can still be reelected in office. In fact, the voter does not just try to elect the most faithful agent possible. On the contrary, he will try and elect the politician whose approach to terrorism prevention best suits the threat level the voter is likely to face in the future. Now, given that the threat level is redrawn in the second period, the voter’s assessment about the future threat level is based on his prior belief and not on what he has inferred about the first period threat.Footnote 18
Therefore, along with the likelihood of being biased, the direction of a politician’s potential bias is an important factor in the voter’s electoral decision. When his perception of the threat is skewed in one particular direction, the voter is willing to trade-off “absolute lack of bias” with “bias going in the right direction.”
Recall that a voter’s strategy specifies a voting decision for every pair (x, T) composed of what the voter has observed about the enacted counterterrorism policy and the outcome of the fight against terrorism. Define the restrictiveness of the voter retention rule to be the number of policy-outcome pairs (x, T) after which the incumbent is not granted reelection. Accordingly, I call the voter’s retention rule maximally restrictive if the voter reelects the incumbent if and only if he believes she is unbiased, while I call the voter’s retention rule maximally permissive if the voter always reelects the incumbent independently from the policy chosen and the outcome of the fight against terrorism. The restrictiveness of the voter’s retention rule depends on the direction of the incumbent’s potential bias and on the future threat level, which I show in the following result.
Proposition 3: (Effect of terrorist threat on electoral prospects): Consider the game with a right-wing (left-wing) incumbent. In any equilibrium, the voter retention rule is weakly more (less) restrictive as the probability of facing a low threat increases. Moreover, it is maximally restrictive (permissive) if the probability of facing a low threat is high enough, and maximally permissive (restrictive) if the probability of facing a low threat is low enough.
When the future terrorist threat is very likely to be high, the voter is concerned about the possibility of electing a politician that is too lenient against terrorism. This logic clearly helps a right-wing incumbent, who is always reelected when the threat is very likely to be high, independently from the policy enacted and from the results in terms of terrorism prevention. Even if the voter is aware that the incumbent is biased toward aggressive policies, he is better off keeping her in office than electing a potentially lenient challenger. While it is true that in the (unlikely) case the threat turns out to be low, a hawkish type will overprovide counterterror, in the most probable case that the threat is extremely serious, she will enact the aggressive policies needed to protect citizens from the occurrence of a terrorist attack.
As the probability of facing a high terrorist threat decreases, having a right-wing politician in office becomes increasingly less desirable than having a left-wing one. A low threat does not need to be addressed with policies that require a curtailment of civil liberties, and a hawkish politician would not refrain from enacting these intrusive measures.
Finally, when the level of the future terrorist threat is very likely to be low, the voter needs to guard against the possibility of electing a politician biased toward aggressive policies. As such, the voter is willing to reelect a right-wing incumbent only if he is sure that this politician is actually unbiased.
Substantively, the result in Proposition 3 shows how the level of the terrorist threat fundamentally mediates the relationship between the incumbent’s partisanship and her electoral fortunes. On the one hand, candidates who have a reputation for being potentially inclined toward an aggressive approach to fighting terrorism largely benefit from the prospect of a high future threat. On the other hand, candidates perceived to be potentially biased toward an inflexible protection of citizens’ civil liberties stand to suffer, in electoral terms, from the expectation of a serious future threat.
OBSERVABLE VERSUS UNOBSERVABLE COUNTERTERRORISM POLICIES
In June 2013, Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s data collection and surveillance programs showed how many counterterrorism measures remain largely out of the public sight. While the secrecy of some counterterrorism programs might have been hardly a surprise, given the strategic importance of not giving terrorists the upper-hand by exposing the measures enacted to counter their plans, the extent of the measures covered by the cloak of secrecy poses a challenge for the baseline model I have analyzed. The unobservability of counterterrorism policies reduces the amount of information available to the voter and thus it might hinder his ability to hold politicians accountable. In turn, these new informational challenges for the voter have a strategic feedback on the incumbent’s incentives to optimally provide counterterrorism. Given these considerations, it is important to assess how the results derived from the baseline model are affected by the possibility that the enacted counterterrorism measures might remain unobservable to the voter.
In order to do this, I modify the baseline model by allowing the voter to observe the enacted counterterrorism policy only with probability τ∈(0, 1), where τ captures the level of transparency of counterterrorism policies. The voter is now uncertain about politicians’ types, the terrorist threat level and, with probability (1−τ), he does not observe the counterterrorism policy enacted by the incumbent. If the policy remains unobservable, the one piece of information the voter can use to keep the executive accountable is whether or not a terrorist attack happened under the incumbent’s watch.
Allowing the possibility for the enacted counterterrorism measures to remain secret does not change the equilibrium provision of counterterrorism.Footnote 19 However, changes in the level of transparency of counterterrorism policies (i.e., changes in τ) do have an effect on the likelihood of optimal provision vis-à-vis underprovision or overprovision.
Proposition 4: An increase in the transparency of counterterrorism policies increases the likelihood of suboptimal counterterrorism provision from incumbents regardless of their partisan affiliation.
Proposition 4 highlights a perverse effect of policy transparency on counterterrorism provision when the stakes of terrorism prevention are high. In particular, higher transparency increases the ability of incumbent politicians to signal their lack of bias to the voters by strategically choosing counterterrorism policies, thus improving their reelection prospects while reducing the voters’ welfare. That is, by strengthening the incumbents’ incentive to try and signal their lack of bias, more transparency does not help voters, but actually prevents them from effectively disciplining the behavior of politicians in office.
This result has important implications for the policy debate regarding the benefits and cost of rendering counterterrorism policies more transparent to the public. The conventional argument in favor of keeping counterterrorism policies secret focuses exclusively on the strategic value of keeping the terrorists guessing. On the contrary, the pro-transparency counterargument claims that when the executive acts out of public sight it is very hard for voters to hold politicians accountable, and this would provide politicians with an opportunity to adopt and then use policy measures that are not necessary to fight the current terrorist threat, but rather are useful to advance their particular agenda. Hence, these arguments seem to suggest that policy transparency induces a critical trade-off between security and accountability (Goldsmith Reference Goldsmith2012). The result stated in Proposition 4 argues against the existence of such trade-off by showing how transparency severely undermines accountability, regardless of how it affects the terrorists’ strategy. In fact, higher transparency increases the likelihood that even an unbiased incumbent would privilege her reelection ambitions over societal welfare.Footnote 20
The fact that enacted counterterrorism policies might remain unobservable to the voter also raises the question of how a terrorist attack affects the incumbent’s reputation when it is the only source of information for the voter. I answer this question in the following result.
Proposition 5: Consider the case of a right-wing (left-wing) incumbent. In any equilibrium, if the policy remains unobservable to the voter, the incumbent’s reputation strictly improves (worsens) after a terrorist attack and worsens (improves) in the absence of an attack.
When the policy chosen by the incumbent is not revealed to the voter, the only information available to him is whether or not a terrorist attack occurred. With a right-wing politician in office, the voter becomes more optimistic about the incumbent’s bias when a terrorist attack does occur and more pessimistic about the incumbent’s bias when one does not occur. The logic of this updating process is very similar to the case in which the policy is observable and so it is thus omitted.
The result in Proposition 5 has an interesting and novel implication with respect to the politicians’ incentive to increase or decrease the transparency of counterterrorism policies.
Corollary 1: All else equal, when π increases, a right-wing (left-wing) incumbent is ex ante better off under a higher (lower) level of transparency.
To see this, consider the effect of an increase of the ex ante probability of the threat level being high (i.e., a decrease of π). All else equal, in any equilibrium, this increases the probability of a successful terrorist attack, which, in case the policy choice remained secret, would improve the reputation of a right-wing incumbent. Therefore, from an ex ante standpoint, an increase in the probability of a high terrorist threat generates an incentive for a right-wing incumbent to decrease transparency. Instead, when a low terrorist threat becomes more likely, a right-wing incumbent has an incentive to increase transparency. Once again, a similar logic holds for left-wing politicians, who have an incentive to increase transparency when the threat level is more likely to be high while they have an incentive to decrease transparency when the threat level is more likely to be low.
Finally, regarding the effect of the terrorist threat on the incumbent’s electoral prospects, the substantive result when counterterrorism policies might remain unobservable is substantively the same as the one described in Proposition 3 above.Footnote 21
DISCUSSION
How does terrorism violence affect democratic institutions? In particular, how do terrorist attack affect the electoral performance of incumbent politicians? What kind of counterterrorism measures do incumbent politicians adopt in response to terrorist threats? I argue that to give a satisfactory answer to these questions, it is crucial to account for the strategic feedback linking the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies enacted by incumbents, the electorate’s response to terrorist attacks, and the incumbent’s electoral ambitions.
To account for this strategic feedback, I have developed a game-theoretic model where a reelection-seeking incumbent in charge of designing counterterrorism policies interacts with a representative voter who values both security from terrorism and the protection of his civil liberties and individual rights and faces a trade-off between them. Importantly, politicians differ with respect to their views on this security–liberty trade-off and with respect to their partisan affiliation: right-wing politicians tend to be biased toward terrorism prevention at the expense of civil liberties, while left-wing tend to be biased toward a more inflexible protection of citizens’ rights possibly endangering security from terror acts.
I show that, in equilibrium, left-wing incumbents adopt more aggressive counterterrorism measures than right-wing incumbents in order to signal to voters the congruence between their preferences and the voters’ policy preferences regarding the security–liberty trade-off. I also show how terrorist attacks convey information to the electorate about the policy enacted by the incumbent and about the actual threat level the society faces. In particular, right-wing incumbents see their reputation improve in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, while the opposite holds true for left-wing incumbents. However, even a right-wing incumbent with a reputation for unnecessarily curtailing civil liberties or a left-wing incumbent with a reputation for blindly defending such liberties are not doomed to fail in their reelection bid, as this depends on the voters’ perception of the future terror threat. The presence of this “bail out” effect caused by a very high or very low threat has two important implications: first, it could be the driving factor behind the mixed empirical evidence on the electoral consequences of terror acts, and second, it might push politicians to manipulate the voters’ perception of the threat level so as to reduce the impact of their shortcomings in office.
Finally, I analyze how secrecy in the counterterrorism policy-making process affects the equilibrium provision of counterterrorism. I show how increasing transparency raises the likelihood of a suboptimal provision of counterterrorism, regardless of the partisan affiliation of the incumbent, and thus it increases the probability of a successful terrorist attack under a right-wing incumbent while it decreases this probability under a left-wing incumbent. Importantly, I also show how different parties have different incentives to increase or decrease transparency of counterterrorism policies depending on the threat level.
The findings I present in this paper have several implications, both for how to empirically assess the causal effect of terrorism on electoral outcomes and for the design of policies aimed at striking the right balance between security and liberty. From a policy perspective, I show that, independently from the conventional argument that transparent counterterrorism policies help terrorists develop more accurate and deadly plots, more transparency increases the likelihood of suboptimal counterterrorism provisions regardless of the incumbent partisanship, thus undermining accountability.
My analysis also carries implications for future empirical research on the effect of terror acts on electoral outcomes. Specifically, when the threat level and the enacted counterterrorism policies are unobservable to the electorate, the occurrence or absence of a terrorist attack is the only source of information about the incumbent’s preferences with respect to the security–liberty trade-off. As a consequence, we should expect the outcome of the fight against terrorism to shape the electoral results. However, when the uncertainty about the future threat is low or when the enacted policies are known to the electorate, observing a terrorist attack might not add much to the information already possessed by the electorate, thus not affecting their ultimate electoral decision. Therefore, future empirical work should pay closer attention to the informational environment in which the relevant electorates make their voting decisions, so as to avoid confounding the effect of terrorist attacks and the effect of the perceived level of threat on electoral outcomes.
Acknowledgement
For helpful comments and discussions I would like to thank Brett Casper, Jon Eguia, Tim Feddersen, Justin Fox, Michael Gibilisco, Sanford Gordon, Indridi Indridason, Trevor Johnston, Dimitri Landa, Adam Przeworski, Kris Ramsey, Peter Rosendorff, Ken Shotts, Alastair Smith, Scott Tyson, and seminar audiences at Bocconi University, New York University, the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the 2014 Annual Meeting of the European Political Science Association, and the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association. I am particularly indebted to Tiberiu Dragu for his support with this project.
