The determinants of domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: Economic grievance, societal change and political resentment

摘要

This study tests three categories of motivations for domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: economic grievances, particularly those produced by economic restructuring; societal changes that challenge notions of white male privilege; and political and public policy elements that stoke resentments. Executing a series of negative binomial regression estimations on state-level data in the USA for the period 1970-2011, I find that measures of societal factorsspecifically increase in abortion rates and growing female participation in the labor forceand political indicators such as Democratic Party control of the White House, precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks. Factors associated with economic hardshipssuch as poverty, the decline of manufacturing employment and the Farm Crisisas well as growth of the non-white population, control of state government by the Democratic Party and growth of average Federal Income Tax ratesare not found to be significant predictors of right-wing terrorism.