NCJ Number
92618
Editor(s)
M Stohl
Date Published
1983
Length
477 pages
Annotation
Political terrorism occurs in a variety of settings and takes a wide variety of forms, but its central features are the emotional reactions it produces and the resulting social effects.
Abstract
These features are more important than the nature of the act or threat of violence involved. These 14 articles examine the nature, scope, and effects of political terrorism throughout the world, with emphasis on both the theory and practice of terrorism. An overview of terrorism notes that its strategic purposes are to maintain a regime or to create the conditions for a new one. Its immediate tactical purposes are to advertise a cause, to win specific concessions through coercive bargaining, to enforce obedience in a population or a ruling party, and to provoke indiscriminate reactions or repression which will further the strategic goals. However, numerous myths surround thinking about terrorism. Among these are the beliefs that terrorism is practiced only by antigovernmental forces and that political terrorism aims to produce chaos. Analyses of specific aspects of terrorism of the 1960's, terrorism in urban areas, latent terrorism and the fear of anarchy, revolutionary terrorism, terrorism in the United States, and terrorism as practiced by governments against broad or narrow target populations. Additional chapters focus on international terrorism, ethnic and ideological terrorism in Western Europe, terrorism in sub-Sahara Africa, terrorism in Latin America, the Palestinian movement, and terrorism in Bengal. A discussion of contemporary political terrorism focuses on three issues which are currently controversial: the role of the media, the potential for nuclear terrorism, and the role of the Soviet Union in terrorism elsewhere. Figures, tables, chapter notes and reference lists, and an index are provided.