Researching the Terrorist Constituency: A theoretical reflection

In the last decade or so the societal surround of what are labelled terrorist movements has received growing attention. This has been based on the realizations that ‘to thrive and survive terrorists need a societal surround sympathetic to their aspirations’ (Louise Richardson, 2006), and that organised violence is often rooted in broader generally non-violent social movements. The crucial importance of the attitude of the population during terrorism crises, has led terrorism researchers to move from etiological issues, concerning the lives and ideologies of terrorists and their escalatory interactions with the state, to questions regarding the societal and cultural dynamics set in motion by the terrorists’ acts and threats. Nevertheless, the research into the relationships between potential supporters and militant groups has retained a focus on people directly linked to the terrorists, sometimes referred to as the ‘radical milieu’, while the wider community of potential supporters of terrorists has generally been treated as a homogenous mass. This wider community or terrorist constituency here defined as "that section of society that shares certain views about the ideal structure of society with a terrorist organisation and which is potentially receptive to its ideology and the messages implicit in its acts" is the subject of this paper. However, the terrorist constituency is, of course, not an association of which one can become a registered member, but is, in fact, a social construction, negotiated through ongoing public debate. Who constitutes its membership is therefore highly dependent on who defines it, may that be the government, the terrorist organisation, the media, the general public or the constituency itself. This paper will explore the role the terrorist constituency plays in the development of terrorist organisations and in particular the methodological problems arising out of the difficulties surrounding the definition of the constituency. Discussing and suggesting ways on how to study such a fluid group which is constituted on basis of who is perceiving it.