Defining and Theorizing Terrorism: A Global Actor-Centered Approach

Defining and Theorizing Terrorism: a Global Actor-centered Approach

Arriving at a consensual definition of the phenomenon of terrorism has been a particularly difficult undertaking. Some definitions are either too specific or too vague, concentrating on some essential “terrorist” aspect of the actions, strategies, or types of non-state organizations that engage in terrorism. In this paper I draw on global approaches from international relations and world system...

A Logic-Based Approach to Understanding Lone-Actor Terrorism

The need for systematic research into behavioural factors of individual terrorists has been highlighted by much recent work on terrorism. Many existing methods follow a hypothesistesting approach in which statistical modelling and analysis of existing data is conducted to either confirm or refute a hypothesis. However, the initial construction of hypotheses is not trivial, nor is the decision u...

A false dichotomy? Mental illness and lone-actor terrorism.

We test whether significant differences in mental illness exist in a matched sample of lone- and group-based terrorists. We then test whether there are distinct behavioral differences between lone-actor terrorists with and without mental illness. We then stratify our sample across a range of diagnoses and again test whether significant differences exist. We conduct a series of bivariate, multiv...

Terrorism- A Global Challenge

[The definition of Terrorism] Lately, a lot of military actions are claimed as acts of terrorism, as a result of the lack of a universal definition of terrorism. States and military organizations name each other terrorists, since states and military organizations have particular interests such as religious, economical and political power. There are two different ways of thinking, one believe th...

Remittances and terrorism: A global analysis