English, Richard. "The Future Study of Terrorism". European Journal of International Security, Vol.1, No.2 (2016): 135-149.

English, Richard. "The Future Study of Terrorism". European Journal of International Security, Vol.1, No.2 (2016): 135-149.

• There is no uniform and agreed-upon definition of 'terrorism', nor a general consensus on whether states can commit terrorism, or whether terrorism is, by definition, only committed by non-state actors (136).
• The author agrees that this problem does not matter in the big picture. As long as scholars have defined their own meanings of terrorism, it is totally possible to have productive research with multiple contested definitions of terrorism (136-137).
• The field of terrorism studies has been fractured between critical terrorism studies and orthodox terrorism studies. The critical scholars argue that orthodox terrorism studies needs to focus more on state terrorism, dedicate more resources to understanding terrorism, and be more critical of government approaches (137).
• This division is not really that big of a deal, as many scholars produce both orthodox and critical scholarship on terrorism. In fact, much orthodox scholarship has incorporate the critiques of critical scholars and stands up to their tests (137).
• The author contests that the stagnation in terrorism studies identified by Marc Sageman has only applied to the question of what causes people to become terrorists, and that the rest of the field has been unaffected; knowledge on the effects of terrorism, historical instances of terrorism, and how to conduct counter-terrorism have improved greatly during the 21st Century (138-140).
• The authors argues that these areas are important to solving contemporary issues regarding terrorism. Historical examples, especially, can inform policy-makers about how past terrorist groups have formed and operated, and what types of counter-terrorist strategies were most effective (138-139).
• The author argues that the issues of defining 'terrorism', the critical versus orthodox divide in research, and general stagnation are not major impediments to research on terrorism. Instead, the major hurdles facing future research are five dichotomies within the field (140).
• The first is between research prior to the 9/11 attacks versus that conducted after the attacks. The 9/11 attacks majorly influence research produced after 2001, but they have not fundamentally changed the field. Too often, scholars after 2001 do not reference or engage with works from before the 9/11 attacks (141-142).
• The second divide is between American and non-American scholars. Americans tend to focus on the 9/11 attacks and Al-Qaeda, whereas other scholars tend to look at historical terrorism, especially non-Islamic terrorism, and a wider scope of attacks. The two groups do not generally interact with each other (142).
• The third splits is between statistical research and specific, case-study research. Both kinds of research are necessary, as statistics cannot answer questions about intent, rationale, and causation, and case-studies cannot inform us about major trends. These two kinds of research reinforce and improve each others' scholarship, but too often do not communicate or read each others' work (142-144).
• The fourth divide is between those scholars who conduct extensive field work versus scholars who rarely, if ever, visit the areas in which terrorism occurs and use non-local and impersonal research techniques (144).
• The fifth split is between those academics who view terrorism as a symptom of larger problems versus those who see terrorism as its own problem. The former tend to examine the broader factors that breed terrorism and recommend wider solutions that indirectly affect terrorism, whereas the later do not generally engage with these broader factors or the other group of scholars (144).
• These divides are often clustered together, with all scholars on the same end of each spectrum. Most American scholars tend to write after the 9/11 attacks, use statistics-heavy research, not employ field work, and view terrorism as its own problem. Most non-Americans wrote after terrorism before the 9/11 attacks, use field work and case studies in their research, and focus on the broader issues surrounding and related to terrorism (145).
• The author suggests that the best method of improving research on terrorism is to increase the levels at which people read across the dichotomies that he has outlined and engage with different kinds of scholarship (146-149).
• The vast majority of scholarship on terrorism comes from countries with very low rates of terrorism, with the exception of Israel, which produces a large amount of scholarship and has a significant amount of terrorism. The countries most effected by terrorism -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan -- produce a tiny minority of research on terrorism (145-146).