Sunday, February 08, 2015

Corruption breeds terrorists

Saw this in today's Boston Globe: "How bribes create terrorists."
What stokes terrorism? There are lots of explanations, many of which focus on macro forces, like the politics of fundamentalist Islam and the uneven distribution of rewards in market economy. This past Friday at the Boston Athenaeum, Sarah Chayes offered a surprisingly different explanation: Terrorism, she argued, is an outgrowth of the daily humiliations that arise in corrupt countries.
Here's the link to her speech at the Boston Athenaeum.  Basically, her "Thieves of State" states that young and productive members of society get exasperated by kleptocracies and gravitate towards extremist movements.

2 comments:

ISIS nice said...

Did she fail to notice the latest scholarship that showed Islamic terrorism is a counter balance to the Crusades and the Inquisition?

You didn't behead that! said...

Ha ha, it's funny because it comes from a Drudge Report scare headline!