Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Replication Data for: Double-edged Bullets: The Conditional Effect of Terrorism on Vote for the Incumbent

Identifier	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CVQ0V9

Creator	Falcó-Gimeno, Albert Muñoz, Jordi Pannico, Roberto

Publisher	Harvard Dataverse

Description	Terrorism often seeks to impact democratic politics. This article explores how it can influence the electoral fortunes of the incumbent. Existing research is contradictory: models of retrospective voting predict a negative impact, as terrorism is detrimental to voters' welfare. But the well-known 'rally around the flag' effect suggests otherwise: following a terrorist attack, voters often cling to the incumbent. We reconcile these arguments, and defend that both effects can coexist, but the retrospective assessment is more durable than the rally around the flag. Using data on all deadly domestic terrorist attacks in Spain between 1977 and 2008, matched with municipal-level national election results, we show how exposure to strikes occurred during the last quarter of the term benefit the incumbent, while more temporally distant attacks are electorally harmful. In line with our theory, we find a more pronounced temporal heterogeneity for the indiscriminate attacks and those that target civilians.

Subject	Social Sciences Terrorism Voting Spain Rally around the flag Accountability

Contributor	Falco Gimeno, Albert

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