How different are ideologically-driven types of international terrorism? Do different ideological forms of terrorism arise from different social causes? Do methods and targets differ as well? Applying major theories of political violence to large, preexisting datasets on international terrorism, this research will explore Leftist, Islamic, Rightist and Ethnonationalist terrorism in terms of: 1) their relative prevalence over the last 30 years, and 2) their differences in terms of social causation, with in-depth investigation of differences in the number of attacks, lethality, attack location, and specific targets. Using the ITERATE dataset and, for comparative purposes, the RAND dataset, we address these questions by conducting three major analyses: (1) global time-series analyses where we investigate the influence of world conditions (e.g., economic cycles) on total and ideological types of international terrorism; (2) cross-sectional pooled time-series analyses where we investigate the national production of different forms of terrorist attacks, their lethality, their regional targets, and the national locations of these attacks; and (3) (using RAND data for comparative purposes) an assessment of bias in news reporting given national levels of press freedom, the presence of international media bureaus, and economic development. The main goal from a social scientific point of view is to evaluate the usefulness of major theoretical perspectives (e.g., social disorganization, the clash of civilizations) in studying international terrorism, with the ultimate aim of producing a more comprehensive theory of political violence. At a broader level, this research project should inform public policies in a number of ways. Foremost, any increase in our ability to predict general patterns of international terrorism aids in deterrence and preparedness. Further, a more detailed understanding of the social forces that shape unconventional political violence will improve the targeting and efficacy of both public and private interventions.
