Terrorism succeeds mainly by provoking costly state surveillance, not by toppling regimes

Evidence

Terrorists rarely achieve their goal of bringing down the social order. … However, they succeed in other ways. They instill fear in the general population. Authorities must subject the public to costly surveillance and safety procedures. Terrorist threats result in laws that implement scrutiny of people’s private lives. These outcomes detract from the quality of life. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2193

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how moral panics and security threats justify rights-restricting policy — echoes Cooper’s social-conservatism mechanism where fear drives authoritarian response.
• SEED: Angle: terrorists and states are co-producers of surveillance society — the provocation succeeds precisely because the retaliatory response is predictable and disproportionate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2193