1, Scenario:
(1) as regards the impact of democracy upon terrorism, there are two contrasting viewpoints. One group of scholar argues that democracy incurs terrorist attacks because a open society creates far more opportunities (#positive effect). The other suggests that democratic institutions release pent up grievancees, which in turn reduce the incentives for terrorists (# negative effect). (2) we conduct a panel data analysis, testing the above two hypotheses. our findings are as follows: (3) The IV coefficient (democracy, an ordered or dummy variable) is insignificant; (4) The IV coefficient is both insignificant and positive.

2, Questions:
#1: some author interprets (3) as follows: the positive effect and the negative effect cancels each other out so that the predictor loses its statistical significance. Is this an appropriate interpretation? A different way to ask the question is whether no-significance carries any substantive connotation.
#2: some other author interprets (4) as follows: the positive effect overwhelms the negative effect. I was taught to ignore insignificant covariates, but more and more political science research begins to say more about insignificant control variables. In the above case, given that the predictor is insignificant, does it make sense to tell which effect is larger than the other?

Thanks a lot!