Complex Systems Studies and Terrorism

Abstract

Although terrorism has been present in social life for decades, only after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, did the topic gain new significance as a sociopolitical phenomenon and as a method of warfare. Terrorism has been analyzed from a variety of viewpoints, ranging from security and military research to cultural studies and anthropological analyses. Scholars in the field of Complexity Science (Complex Adaptive Systems [CAS] Research and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Modeling) have recently been developing a number of models for the identification and prediction of terrorist activities (Bar-Yam, Carley, Clauset and Gleditsch, Fellman, Galam, etc.). It may even be argued that ideas are drawn from CAS research (the term complexity theory, or complexity science, is purposely avoided in this chapter), which could be applied not only in specialized research on how to deal with terrorism as a form of warfare, but also in a broader sense, for studying terrorism as a sociopolitical phenomenon.