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Whether or not nationalism fuels terrorist violence by ethnic groups is an important yet underexplored research question. This study offers a theoretical argument, empirical analysis and a case study. When political leaders such as presidents and prime ministers use nationalism to shore up legitimacy, they threaten the existence of disfavored ethnic groups. In turn, those groups are more likely to respond with terrorist attacks. The author tests this argument using a sample of 766 ethnic groups across 163 countries from 1970 to 2009. The multilevel mixed-effects negative binomial regression results provide evidence that leader nationalism is a significant driver of ethnic terrorism. The detrimental effect of nationalism remains the same after using a generalized method of moments method to account for possible reverse causality. A case study of Sinhalese nationalist leaders versus Tamil Tigers also supports the nationalism and terrorism nexus.

Common belief holds that economic misery motivates more people to commit acts of suicide terrorism. The existing literature, however, fails to find an empirical linkage between these two phenomena. This study offers a novel theoretical perspective and statistical evidence on the economy and terrorism connection. I argue that Muslim women decide to engage in acts of suicide terrorism because of their perception of the national economy, rather than actual economic conditions such as gross domestic product per capita or the Gini index. Based upon a statistical analysis of 4,495 incidents of suicide terrorism during the period from 1981 to 2015, the study shows that, when Muslim women perceive their national economy to be unfavorable, they are more likely to commit acts of suicide terrorism.

Why does the United States as a third party intervene abroad in responding to humanitarian crises? While liberals argue that the purpose of an intervention is to protect victims of human rights violations, realists contend that interventions have little relation to humanitarian concerns and aim, instead, at certain national interests such as securing an oil supply. Making scientific progress, in explaining the determinants of US humanitarian intervention, requires confronting these theoretical positions with data. Drawing on a cross-national, time-series data analysis of 153 countries for the years 1981–2005, the quantitative research presented in this study is the first of its kind to evaluate the relative importance of these competing theoretical perspectives. After controlling for other variables such as democracy and media coverage, this study finds evidence that the United States is likely to use force in a manner consistent with the theory put forth by liberals. This finding indicates that US humanitarian interventions are utilized for the purpose of preserving liberal norms and moral values rather than for pursuing national interests.

In an attempt to explain the democratic peace phenomenon, existing studies postulate institutional and normative models but treat them as contending and mutually exclusive explanations. This approach is both theoretically and empirically flawed. Extant institutional models fail to acknowledge that institutional factors have an impact only in the presence of requisite normative factors. Similarly, normative models fail to acknowledge that normative factors have the hypothesized impact only in combination with institutional factors. Since the possibility of such an interaction effect is overlooked, existing empirical models of the democratic peace are misspecified. This study fills the gap by introducing a multiplicative interaction model. This study presents evidence that, ceteris paribus, for democratic dyads in which the interaction effect of institutional and normative constraints is high, the likelihood of interstate disputes is lower than for nondemocratic dyads. Consequently, the democratic peace phenomenon should be seen primarily as an outcome of institutional and normative constraints working together. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

In an attempt to explain the democratic peace phenomenon, existing studies postulate institutional and normative models but treat them as contending and mutually exclusive explanations. This approach is both theoretically and empirically flawed. Extant institutional models fail to acknowledge that institutional factors have an impact only in the presence of requisite normative factors. Similarly, normative models fail to acknowledge that normative factors have the hypothesized impact only in combination with institutional factors. Since the possibility of such an interaction effect is overlooked, existing empirical models of the democratic peace are misspecified. This study fills the gap by introducing a multiplicative interaction model. This study presents evidence that, ceteris paribus, for democratic dyads in which the interaction effect of institutional and normative constraints is high, the likelihood of interstate disputes is lower than for nondemocratic dyads. Consequently, the democratic peace phenomenon should be seen primarily as an outcome of institutional and normative constraints working together.