Until the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,...

Until the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism as an academic field was a marginal interest among social scientists. As a result, few theories attempted to explain the origins and reasons for terrorism. But Al Qaeda and suicide bombings in the Middle East have spawned new theories and revisions of older ones. Here are the more prominent ideas and their authors.

Ami Pedahzur

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Relative Deprivation

Ted Robert Gurr

Main argument: This 1970 theory aimed to explain individual and mass support for political violence. According to Gurr, a person’s sense of deprivation stems from the perceived discrepancy between what he thinks he rightfully deserves (value expectations) and what he is capable of achieving and keeping (value capabilities). This incongruity fuels frustration and leads to political violence directed at the person or group perceived to be responsible for the discrepancy. “The potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity.”

EXAMPLE: Marginalized Arabs in Israel.

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Religion and Terrorism

David Rapoport, Bruce Hoffman, Samuel Huntington, Mark Juergensmeyer, Jessica Stern

Main argument: Theories connecting religion and terrorism first gained prominence after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, yet the most famous of them is Huntington’s clash of civilizations, which owes its notoriety to the Sept. 11 attacks. Huntington assigns culture and religion as the main motivational roles in global politics. Each civilization has unique cultural and religious traits, and these can be irreconcilable with those of other civilizations. That incompatibility can breed resentment that produces terrorism. Juergensmeyer contends that terrorism stems from political elites exploiting religious institutions. Another theory gives religion the central role as a terror catalyst. By appealing to an authority higher than the state, by promising rewards in the afterlife and by separating believers and nonbelievers in a way that demonizes the latter, it can loosen a person’s inhibitions against violence or reduce fear of punishment.

Examples: Al Qaeda; attacks by Christian groups on U.S. abortion clinics; Muslim suicide bombers; Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist.

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Suicide Terrorism

Robert Pape, Bruce Hoffman, Mia Bloom, Scott Atran, Ariel Merari

Main argument: Suicide bombers are the most recent development in the history of terrorism. The phenomenon emerged in Lebanon in the 1980s and spread around the world, most notably the Middle East and South Asia. Two main schools of thought have emerged. The first stresses the organizational skills and rationality of the terrorist leaders who recruit and deploy suicide bombers to coerce a stronger enemy to make concessions, especially in territorial disputes, or to tear the fabric of trust that holds a victimized society together. There’s also a social dimension to this terror: Palestinian organizations that use suicide bombers are more popular than those that don’t, a fact that forced Fatah to take up this tactic. The second school focuses on suicide bombers’ psychological and sociological traits in explaining the rise of this form of terrorism.

Examples: Hezbollah in its successful campaign to drive U.S. and French forces out of Lebanon and the Israeli army out of the security zone in the southern part of the country; Hamas; Islamic Jihad.

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Theater of Terror

Brian Jenkins, Alex Schmid and Gabi Weimann

Main argument: This theory arose in the 1970s following a wave of passenger jet hijackings. It contends that terrorist acts are staged to gain attention from the media, especially television. By carrying out a high-profile event, terrorists draw attention to themselves and to their cause, gain sympathy and support from those they claim to represent (and sometimes from the international community) while intimidating their enemies to make concessions.

Example: Iraqi insurgents’ use of TV and websites to make demands and show the consequences of rejecting them -- beheadings.

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Social Network

Marc Sageman

Main argument: Suicide bombers and the emergence of global jihad have stirred interest in the individual motivations of terrorists. In analyzing the reasons why young Muslims from around the world become jihadis, Sageman stresses the importance of preexisting social bonds among young men committed to the same cause, and to each another, in producing candidates for terrorism. A typical case is the homesick, unsure young man who is drawn to familiar settings -- especially mosques -- to find friends who share common values and interests. These small clusters of friends often live together in apartments and undergo a long period of peer socialization. As they become closer, the more moderate members tend to adopt the beliefs of the more extreme, severing previous ties and deepening their involvement with each other. They are primed to join the jihad.

Examples: Recruitment of Westerners to Al Qaeda and of young Palestinians to be suicide bombers.