Date of Award

3-1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Operational Sciences

First Advisor

Kenneth W. Bauer, Jr., PhD

Abstract

In this research the effect of socioeconomic factors on terrorism and government instability in Latin America are studied. A commonly held opinion is that terrorism and instability are caused by repressive conditions. The objective of this research was to generate a methodology to forecast terrorism and instability given certain socioeconomic indicators. This methodology was generated for individual countries, two groups of countries, and a composite developing country. A set of 28 socioeconomic factors were evaluated and reduced based on correlation analysis. Patterns of terrorism and instability were investigated through data analysis and factor analysis. Multiple regression was used to develop predictive models. Although autocorrelation was present in most of the models, all terrorism trends except in the individual country models of Paraguay and Venezuela were fairly well fitted by the models. Similar results were observed in modelling the trend of instability generated for Argentina. Data analysis showed that there was a correlation between terrorism and some socio-economic factors. Generally, countries having a relative high level of standard of living experienced less terrorism.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GOR-ENS-93M-10

DTIC Accession Number

ADA262341

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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