Providing a history of modern rebel or non-state terror, this impressive collection takes a chronological approach to the area, highlighting the fact that terrorism as a concept has developed in the form of four consecutive waves.

Each wave is characterized by distinctive features - most specifically purposes, organizational forms and tactics - which in turn shape the relationship between terrorist groups on national and international levels.

In addition to articles from academic journals, the collection also includes discussions by participants in each wave, statements from involved...

The academic field of peace studies emerged during the Cold War to address the nature and sources of interstate and internal conflict, as well as the methods to prevent this conflict and deal with its consequences.
Peace studies, much like political science itself, is an interdisciplinary field, built upon contributions from psychology, sociology, history and economics among others. It differs from related fields, such as strategic studies or security studies, in its implicit normative and teleological orientation: an expectation that scholarly research can contribute to reducing the...

Contrary to the optimistic predictions at the turn of the last century about the demise of major war, the War on Terror, major civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, and the continuing conflict in the Middle East suggest that the study of warfare has never been so urgent. War stubbornly remains the ulimate arbiter of international disputes and continues to be a prominent feature of contemporary life: over one hundred states currently have forces overseas in one form of operation or another, and the United States, Britain, and France collectively have over 200,000 soldiers deployed...

Why is the Middle East the only part of the world which has drawn the West into wars in the last thirty years? With a sequence of events since 1945, including the Six-Day War, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and the two Gulf wars, the Middle East has been the most important region of diplomacy, crisis, and controversy for the West. More recent events - notably the 2001 attack on the United States but also a number of other events (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, nuclear proliferation, oil) - have even further escalated both engagement and debate. This has been punctuated by...

In the fifty or so years since the Treaty of Rome, the European Union has evolved far beyond the scope of any other comparable entity. The EU is now a unique model of international cooperation and integration, and its reach extends into almost every sphere of the lives of its half a billion citizens. As well as the establishment of a single market, the Union has its own currency, is developing a foreign policy, and has a growing role in justice and cultural matters.

Scholarly work on the European Union has undergone a similarly rapid evolution. For example, with the major...

International Political Economy is a thriving interdisciplinary area of study and research based on the combined insights of international economics and international relations theory. It has become one of the fastest growing fields of study in the social sciences, and this new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Political Science, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject s already vast literature and the continuing expansion of research output. Edited by Benjamin J. Cohen, a prominent scholar in the field, it is a four-volume...

This new Routledge Major Work collection of the best scholarly research and serious writing on Al Qaeda will be welcomed by researchers, students, and counter-terrorism specialists as the go-to resource. The gathered materials are mainly drawn from scholarly journals of the first rank and chapters from the most authoritative books. Also included are a small number of newspaper and magazine articles which have already made an enduring impact on what is a very new field of research.

Al Qaeda is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the...