Terrorism and emergency constitutions in the Muslim world
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Author | Stefan Voigt,Christian Bjørnskov |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433211012445 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Regular Articles
Terrorism and emergency constitutions
in the Muslim world
Christian Bjørnskov
Department of Economics, Aarhus University
Stefan Voigt
Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg & CESifo Munich
Abstract
Previous research has indicated that constitutionalized emergency provisions effectively constrain the behaviour of
democratic governments subsequent to terrorist attacks. In this article, we ask if this is also true for autocratic
governments. Are non-democratic governments equally subject to constitutionalized constraints regarding their
reactions to emergencies and particularly to terrorist attacks? To answer the question, we analyse the behaviour of
a specific group of predominantly autocratic governments that are particularly subject to frequent terrorist incidents,
namely the states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Employing data on terrorist activity
from the Global Terrorism Database and constitutional data from the Index of Emergency Powers, we estimate the
association between constitutionalized constraints and terrorist attacks in a dataset covering 48 member-states of the
organization observed annually between 1970 and 2014. As hypothesized, we find that emergency constitutions that
politically make it relatively cheap for governments to declare a state of emergency are more likely to be invoked. In
addition, we find that governments are more likely to increase repression after terrorist events when the constitution
allocates more discretionary power to the government in emergencies. Our evidence thus suggests that emergency
constitutions also impact on the behaviour of largely autocratic governments.
Keywords
constitutional emergency provisions, institutions, Middle East, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, positive
constitutional economics, state of emergency, terrorism
Introduction
Terroristsrely on violence not only to inflict harm on their
immediate victims but also to intimidate a large public.
Emergency provisions exist to enablegovernments to react
swiftly to terrorist attacks butalso to reduce the likelihood
of additional attacks being carried out in the future. In a
previous study, Bjørnskov & Voigt (2020) inquired into
the effectiveness of emergency constitutions by asking
whether they affect the likelihoodof terrorist events taking
place, and what their side-effects are in terms of reduced
levels in basic human rights. The findings indicated that
the contents of different emergency constitutions do
indeed shape both terrorist events and government reac-
tions in typical Western democracies. Yet, they also
showed that emergency provisions are frequently abused
to increase repression levels. It is, however, an open ques-
tion to what degree these results also hold for autocratic
governments.
This is why we here ask whether these results hold for
countries governed by autocrats as wellas for democracies.
Specifically, we ask whether constitutionalized emergency
provisions influence the decision of autocratic govern-
ments to declare a state of emergency and their behaviour
while running a state of emergency. To answer these
questions, we analyse the behaviour of governments of
Corresponding author:
stefan.voigt@uni-hamburg.de
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(3) 305–318
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211012445
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