Does More Democracy Lead to Less Terrorism?

Today Andrew Sullivan repeats what has become the primary justification for the Iraq War over the last few years. Sullivan writes:

"Many reasonable people argue that the Iraq
invasion made matters worse, not better in the
short term. Let's concede that, for the sake of
argument. But deep down, how do we drain the
swamp of Islamo-fascism? For all my criticisms
of the conduct of the Iraq war, the reason I'm still
glad we did it and still want us to get it right is that
I see no fundamental solution to this unless we give
the Muslim Arab world an alternative apart from
Jihadism or the autocracy that fosters it.
Democracy is the only cure; the only way for the
silent majority of Muslims to regain power from the
fanatics, to undermine this pathology and evil
from within." (emphasis added)

In a previous post, I suggested that liberals are often too quick to dismiss the merits of this argument. I wrote:

"The problem we have is reconciling our strong
belief that Bush should be held accountable for
his deceptions and incompetence, while at the
same time being open to the possibility that his
policy, had it been pursued honestly and competently,
may actually have been the right one."

For people like me, the notion that increased democracy "is the only cure" for terrorism has the virtue of appealing to our liberal beliefs in the imperative for universal justice and the power of open societies, and I'm positive that many more rank-and-file liberals would be receptive to the idea if it wasn't coming from Bush's mouth.

That being said, however, the more I think about this proposition, the less it makes obvious sense to me. What exactly is the logical or empirical basis for the assertion that increased democracy results in less terrorism? After all, the Madrid and now the London attacks appear to be the work of European residents, people who grew up in First World democracies. Reports indicate that many of the jihadists now entering Iraq are coming from Europe. These are not people who were driven to fanaticism by oppressive regimes. These are people who freely chose their ideology from the open marketplace of ideas. Moreover, despite being a brutal dictatorship (or perhaps because of it), Iraq had very few homegrown jihadists prior to our invasion. Although I believe strongly that increased democracy is always a good thing, it may actually lead to more, not less, fanaticism. In an open society, people have the freedom to associate, to share their views, to pursue any belief no matter how crazy. That's why fanaticism of all sorts flourishes in open societies. In America we live in a model democracy (at least relatively speaking), yet we have our own share of homegrown fanatics. Look at Timothy McVeigh, or neo-nazis, or the people who bomb abortion clinics. And it doesn't take very many fanatics to cause a problem, as the Oklahoma City bombing so tragically demonstrated. It seems that democracy, while clearly a good in and of itself, does not necessarily bear any relationship to the overall prevalence of fanaticism in society. At the very least, I think the onus is on those who tout democracy as a cure for terrorism to provide some compelling empirical or logical basis for that assertion.

And finally, it's worth noting that fanaticism itself may not actually be the root of terrorism. In an article in the American Conservative, Professor Robert Pape discusses his new book, "Dying to Win," which offers a detailed study of worldwide incidents of suicide bombing over the last twenty years. (Hat tip: Kevin Drum). Pape's central thesis is the following:

"The central fact is that overwhelmingly
suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by
religion as much as they are by a clear strategic
objective: to compel modern democracies to
withdraw military forces from the territory that
the terrorists view as their homeland."

Now I'm not sure what to make of Pape's work, but his empirical argument must at least be addressed by those who contend that fanaticism is the problem and democracy is the cure.