This week Susan Fahey, assistant professor of criminal justice at Stockton College, returned to START to discuss her research examining political instability, state capacity and terrorism. A noted researcher and scholar, Fahey worked on the Global Terrorism Database during her time at the University of Maryland and was later awarded one of START's highly competitive Terrorism Research Awards.
Through the award, she investigated the relationship between state instability and terrorism and found that political instability is a positive, statistically significant predictor of the count of terrorism and fatal terrorism incidents. In terms of state capacity, bureaucratic quality was not a statistically significant predictor of terrorism or fatal terrorism. Additionally, she found that a higher tax to GDP ratio seemed to be an important predictor of fatal terrorism incidents in some contexts.
