Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

We're talking a lot about terrorism, but what do we know about it?

This is probably one of the most widely studied recent topics in the Social Sciences.

You can see it by "Surveying the Surveys"

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I say "widely studied in the Social Sciences", because scholars in Economics, Political Science, Criminology, Sociology, and Psychology have all produced recent "surveys of the terrorism literature"

While much of the modern terrorism literature emerged following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, it was in psychology that we see one of the first 21st century review pieces (and it pre-dated 9/11).

Martha Crenshaw produced this review in @PolPsyISPP in 2000

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

Next up was Sociology, where Austin T. Turk produced this @AnnualReviews of Sociology piece in 2004

annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.11…

Then Economists got into the mix.

Fernanda Llusa & Jose Tavares produced a survey piece for The Economics of Peace and Security Journal in 2007

epsjournal.org.uk/index.php/EPSJ…

A year later, @ethanbdm produced a review piece on the "political economy of terrorism" literature

home.uchicago.edu/~bdm/PDF/pe-te…

Subsequently, Todd Sandler has written a number of review pieces, such as this 2011 one in @JPR_journal...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

... and this VERY RECENT (as in June) piece for the Journal of Economic Literature (@AEAjournals)

aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

What about International Relations? After all, it was transnational terrorism that really sparked this literature!

IR and conflict scholars been in the mix too!

@JosephKYoung & @mgfindley wrote a review for
@IntlStudiesRev in 2011 which actually used a database of publications to analyze trends in the terrorism research

academic.oup.com/isr/article-ab…

Most of all, the Annual Review of Political Science has produced a number of surveys over the past decade and a half by @EricaChenoweth, @mchorowitz, & more!

Here is the ARPS search results for "Terrorism" (one could write a review of the ARPS reviews)

annualreviews.org/action/doSearc…

But it would be a big mistake to leave out criminology. After all, terrorism is treated as a criminal activity (or involves actions that are criminal in nature, such as kidnapping).

And yes, I realize John Kerry got slammed for saying as much in 2004

cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITI…

@terpolv published a relatively recent symposium on criminology and terrorism research

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

And the Annual Review of Criminology just published in January this excellent review by @glafree & Joshua D. Freilich of research on government policies to counter extremism

annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Underlying all of this surveyed research is data...a LOT of data. I'll cover the terrorism data in another thread.

But for those of you hoping to read about the "state of the field" on terrorism research, this "survey of surveys" should help.

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