A Review of: “Joshua Alexander Geltzer. U.S. Counter-Terrorism Strategy and al-Qaeda: Signalling and the Terrorist World-View.”

Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1987. Pp. xxii + 238.

Leonard Weinberg and William Lee Eubank, The Rise and Fall of Italian Terrorism. London and Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987. Pp.155.

Robin Erica Wagner‐Pacifici, The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama. London and Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Pp.360.

Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair. London: Carcanet Press, 1987. Pp.175.     

A Review of: “Rogelio Alonso. The IRA and Armed Struggle.”

ABSTRACT

In the conceptual literature on terrorism, there is no shortage of answers to the question: “What is terrorism?” Indeed, the terrorism literature has been heavily criticized for a deluge of definitions. And yet the booming quantitative terrorism literature generally examines a narrow set of “what is terrorism?”: how country-level factors explain variation in the number of terrorist attacks. This article demonstrates the variety of ways in which scholars currently operationalize terrorism and compares them to the ways it could be operationalized. I replicate studies using alternative operationalizations of terrorism to examine the consequences of the terrorism literature’s collective bet to focus on attack counts at the country level. Finally, I discuss the implications of the narrow set of operational choices with an eye towards how a greater variety of approaches would produce a more robust research agenda.     

A Review of: “Michael Kenney. From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks,Government Bureaucracies,and Competitive Adaptation”

This article seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the early demise of Rode Jeugd's initiatives towards a terrorist campaign in the Netherlands. It is concluded that three contextual factors played a crucial role in the process: the openness of the political culture, the setbacks experienced by similar organizations elsewhere (RAF in particular), and the lack of overt repression, combined with effective covert operations carried out by the security forces against the Rode Jeugd. Overall, the case of Rode Jeugd is a prime example of a demonstration of state power not always being the most efficient or even suitable method to combat terrorism.