New frontiers of terrorism research: An introduction

This article opens the special issue by identifying the main contributions to date of the empirical and theoretical literature on terrorism. Important past theoretical articles investigated the application of game theory to study interactions among adversaries (e.g. terrorists and governments) and allies (e.g. commonly targeted governments). Past empirical articles examined the effectiveness of counter-terrorism policies, the root causes of terrorism, the dynamics of terrorist attacks, and other topics. This introduction also indicates new areas of research emphasis – e.g. the study of suicide terrorism and foreign aid as a counter-terrorism tool. Next, the introduction highlights some key definitions – e.g. domestic and transnational terrorism – that are applied throughout the special issue. Each article of the special issue is then introduced and briefly discussed. These articles display a rich diversity of topics and methods; nevertheless, they enlighten the reader on the consequences of terrorism. Topics in the special issue include the social impact of interrogation methods; the consequences of aid-assisted counter-terrorism; the roots of domestic terrorism; the adverse effect of terrorism on growth; the use of experiments to study counter-terrorism; the relationship among terrorism, trust, and income; and legislative responses to transnational terrorism. The two main event datasets – International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorism Events (ITERATE) and Global Terrorism Database (GTD) – are also compared.