About Article

A wealth of literature exists on the relationship between a country’s domestic politics and its counterterrorism policies, yet few examine this relationship in the US. Past studies examining counterterrorism spending in the US find that domestic politics have little impact and that funding is distributed to the states largely as a function of its risk from a terrorist attack. Yet these studies suffer a number of shortcomings, including limited data on counterterrorist funding and a superficial conceptualisation of the variables that measure domestic politics. Using data on US outlays from the Department of Homeland Security Grants Program from 2003 to 2018, this study seeks to illuminate the process of counterterrorist spending in the US by reconciling three separate sets of predictors in the literature. Specifically, is counterterrorist spending distributed according to legislative politics (pork), genuine, rationally calculated population vulnerability (risk), or public fear in the wake of particularly notorious terrorist attacks (reaction)? The results support and expand the existing literature in that risk remains an influential variable, though grant distribution is still affected by political incentives. Finally, states do tend to see an influx of funds in reaction to terrorist attacks, though the source of the group plays no role