Governments often argue that terrorist attacks necessitate restrictions on human rights in order to improve security. Do governments around the world generally respond to terrorist attacks by restricting human rights? A new article (non-gated version) in the Journal of Law and Economics by Axel Dreher, Martin Gassebner, and Lars Siemers investigates this question in a panel of countries. They find that incidents of terrorism significantly increase the probability of disappearances, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and torture, although the substantive size of the effects are small. They find no significant effect of terrorism on empowerment rights such as political participation, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of movement. This is an important empirical contribution to long-standing normative debates about terrorism and human rights, although it cannot address the question whether restrictions on human rights work to deter or fight terrorism or whether terrorism is a mere pretext for governments to impose human rights restrictions.
h/t Eric Lawrence