How to engage with “terrorism” in academic research

Terrorism has become a key concept of security and international politics in the 21st century. At the same time, it has proven to be notoriously difficult to define in ways that would be widely accepted and adopted. Definitional debates have not been particularly productive in academic research either. Decades-long discussions have left many researchers frustrated and many try to avoid entering the definitional quagmire whenever they can. Yet other researchers have abandoned the concept entirely as not suitable for academic research. This paper maps the dividing lines, possibilities and pitfalls of the debate on the definition and meaning of terrorism (incl. first-person understandings of the term) with the purpose of constructing a more structured way to engage with the concept in academic research. It is argued that there will likely never be one widely accepted definition of terrorism that would be shared by academic researchers, policy-makers, politicians and general public. Instead of looking for that one definition, a more promising way towards definitional rigour is to start by identifying and differentiating between various uses of terrorism (political/normative, legal and descriptive) and then move on to build a more sophisticated understanding of how terrorism is conceptualised and defined in each of them (and how these relate to each other).