The Impact of Rural-Urban Economic Disparities on Terrorist Organizations’ Survival and Attacks

This study investigates the influence of rural-urban economic disparities on the survival and tactical choices of resident terrorist groups. These disparities inflame social and ethnic group grievances and erode the state’s capacity to police its rural hinterlands, thereby motivating support for terrorists and providing resident terrorist groups with the ability to attack with impunity. Based on the Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG), survival analysis shows that rural-urban disparities foster terrorist group survival. Other empirical methods–negative binomial regressions and competing risk analysis–indicate how rural-urban disparities and other controls affect resident terrorist groups’ campaigns and prospects. With mediation tests, rural-urban inequalities are shown to benefit terrorist groups by increasing social group grievances and by limiting host state’s control over territory.