Introduction

Abstract

This book examines terrorism, state terrorism, and genocide as types of political violence. Political violence refers to a situation associated with politics in some way in which force is used as a means of inflicting harm on others. Terrorism is a subset of political violence. In the late 1980s, a research study by Schmid and Jongman uncovered 109 scholarly definitions of terrorism (Hoffman, 2006; Laqueur, 1977; Schimd & Jongman, 1988). Arguably the landscape of terrorism has become more complex since then, thus, like other scholars, we admit that no one definition of terrorism encapsulates the violent phenomena of which we are interested. Terrorism is difficult to define because it is discussed synonymously with terror as a political strategy, it is both a state and non-state strategy, and it implies normative assumptions. Many political acts, such as gang violence, war, and guerrilla tactics, produce terror as an emotional response in a population (Griset & Mahan, 2003); thus, terrorism’s main impact is not exclusive to it as a strategy. Definitions of terrorism, therefore, must distinguish what terrorism is not (e.g., it is not the combat actions of guerillas who engage regular, trained armed forces, although guerillas may use terrorism as a strategy at times).