This book explores the factors that influence violent rebellious political organisations to transform into other entities, such as political parties, criminal organisations and terrorist organisations.

From the end of the Second World War until 1990, many events in the world centred on the bipolar struggle between the United States and the USSR. Although there were numerous civil wars occurring during the Cold War era, many of these conflicts went virtually unnoticed unless they were linked to the Cold War struggle for ideological dominance. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet...

This volume examines the lone actor terrorist phenomenon, including the larger societal trends which may or may not have led to their acts of terrorism.

With lone actor terrorism becoming an increasingly common threat, the contributors to this volume aim to answer the following questions: What drives the actions of individuals who become lone actor terrorists? Are ideological and cultural issues key factors, or are personal psychological motives more useful in assessing the threat? Do lone actors evolve in a broader social context or are they primarily fixated loners? What response...

This book focuses on the crises facing Al Qaeda and how the mass killing of Muslims is challenging its credibility as a leader among Islamist jihadist organizations.

The book argues that these crises are directly related to Al Qaeda's affiliation with the extreme violence employed against Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the decade since 9/11. Al Qaeda's public and private responses to this violence differ greatly. While in public Al Qaeda has justified those attacks declaring that, for the establishment of a state of 'true believers', they are a necessary...

This book offers a guide to interpreting available statistical data on terrorism attacks around the world.

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) now includes more than 113,000 terrorist attacks, starting in 1970. By analyzing these data, researchers demonstrate how a very small number of terrorist attacks have had an outsized effect on attitudes and policies toward terrorism. These attacks, referred to as 'black swan' events, are difficult to predict but have an enormous impact on human affairs for years to come. The book discusses terrorist attacks, such as 9/11, possibly the...

This book examines two key themes in terrorism studies, the radicalization process and counter-terrorism policies, through the lens of social networks.

The book aims to show that networks should be at the forefront not only when analysing terrorists, but also when assessing the responses to their actions. The volume makes a unique contribution by addressing two relatively new themes for terrorism studies. First it puts social relations and cooperation issues at the forefront - an approach often identified as crucial to future breakthroughs in the field. Second, many contributions...

This book explores a cross-cultural worldview called 'radical apocalypticism' that underlies the majority of terrorist movements in the twenty-first century.

Although not all apocalypticism is violent, in its extreme forms radical apocalypticism gives rise to terrorists as varied as members of Al Qaeda, Anders Behring Breivik, or Timothy McVeigh. In its secular variations, it also motivates ideological terrorists, such as the eco-terrorists Earth Liberation Front or The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. This book provides an original paradigm for distinguishing between peaceful and violent...

By drawing on social movement theories, this book explains how terrorist movements decline, using the case of Irish Republicanism.

The continuity of terrorism and political violence from generation to generation demonstrates the need to go beyond a focus on groups or individuals in order to explain how terrorism ends. The concept of de-radicalisation has been critiqued for its lack of explanatory value in accounting for disengagement from terrorism or how the risk of terrorism re-emerging is reduced. However, building on the morphogenetic approach, this book distinguishes between...

This volume is a collection of articles that critically examine the efficacy, ethics, and impact of the War on Terror as it has evolved since 9/11.

During the decade and a half of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), numerous books have considered the political, psychosocial, and economic impacts of terrorism. However, there has been little systematic effort to examine the effectiveness of the GWOT in achieving its goals. Furthermore, there is virtually nothing that presents a comparative analysis of the GWOT by the people most directly affected by it citizens and scholars from...