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Social Welfare and ISIS Foreign Fighters

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Abstract

We provide empirical support for a positive relationship between social safety spending and the phenomenon of ISIS foreign fighters, particularly among OECD countries. We argue that the problem with social safety spending is not its abuse by recipients but the way it is distributed. When examining the nature of social safety spending, we find that OECD countries that prioritize passive rather than active labor market programs have, on average, proportionally more ISIS foreign fighters. We conclude that social safety spending that supports socioeconomic immobility is significantly associated with radicalization and terrorism.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the helpful comments we received from the editor of this journal, two anonymous referees, as well as participants of the Annual Conference of the Economic Research Forum, the 39th MEEA/ASSA Annual Meeting, the International Conference of the Korea Association of Middle East Studies and the International Conference of the Korean Association of International Studies, all of which helped to improve the paper. Moamen Gouda acknowledges support by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5C2A01093123). This paper was previously entitled “Thank you, infidels! Social welfare and Islamic State Recruitment”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea

    Moamen Gouda

  2. Department of Economics, Finance, and Quantitative Analysis, Coles College of Business and School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development, Norman J. Radow College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA

    Marcus Marktanner

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Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 2
figure 2

Countries included in dataset

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Fig. 3
figure 3

Foreign fighters per million (ln) vs. social safety spending (%GDP)—with entire sample cubic trend line and linear trend lines for OECD and non-OECD countries

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Table 1 Data and sources
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Table 2 Summary statistics
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Table 3 Correlation matrix (entire sample)
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Table 4 Correlation matrix (OECD sample)
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Table 5 Tobit regression results—entire sample
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Table 6 Correlation matrix social safety spending, social safety spending × (OECD = 1)
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Table 7 Correlation matrix foreign fighters, social safety spending, and instruments
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Table 8 OLS regression results to instrument social spending (OECD sample, n = 36)
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Table 9 Regression results focusing on OECD countries only—focus variable: social spending
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Table 10 OLS regression results to instrument ratio of passive to active labor market program expenditures (OECD sample, n = 32)
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Table 11 Regression results focusing on OECD countries only—focus variable: ratio of passive to active labor market program spending
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Gouda, M., Marktanner, M. Social Welfare and ISIS Foreign Fighters. Eur J Crim Policy Res 28, 297–326 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-021-09485-4

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