Global governance and security challenges: transnational pathways to reducing terrorism mortality in a globalized world

This study investigates the transnational drivers of terrorism mortality through the lens of global governance, focusing on countries most affected by terrorism during the study period (1995–2023), identified dynamically using Global Terrorism Index rankings across multiple years rather than a single static list. Using the Cross-Sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model, it analyzes how key governance variables—political stability, regional conflict, human development, militarization, liberal democracy, and political corruption—influence terrorism-related deaths across interconnected regions. The analysis accounts for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity, and additionally incorporates country and year fixed effects in robustness checks to mitigate omitted variable bias and capture unobserved heterogeneity across space and time. Findings reveal that governance factors traditionally considered strengths, such as political stability, human development, and democracy, may inadvertently escalate terrorism mortality when poorly aligned with regional security dynamics. Conversely, militarization and corruption exhibit paradoxical effects, while regional conflict presents unexpected negative associations. The study uncovers several counterintuitive governance effects, reinforcing the need for caution in interpreting long-run elasticities and highlighting the importance of future research into potential nonlinearities and omitted variable influences. This study uniquely contributes to the global governance literature by offering a transnational econometric framework to understand terrorism mortality within a sustainable development context. It concludes with policy insights calling for internationally coordinated governance strategies that reinforce institutional resilience and promote SDG 16 objectives through inclusive, development-oriented security reforms.