The Rise and Fall of Terrorism

Abstract

This chapter examines the rise and fall of terrorism, beginning with consideration of the challenges of effectively measuring the dynamics of terrorism. This includes commonly used sources of information about terrorism, the use of technology for disseminating and processing these sources, and links between terrorism and other forms of political violence. The authors then discuss literature relevant to the empirical understanding of individual, group, country, and region-level mechanisms by which terrorism increases and decreases. The chapter concludes with descriptive analysis of patterns of terrorism over time in selected countries as illustrative examples, including the United Kingdom and Spain; Colombia, Peru and El Salvador; and Afghanistan and Iraq.