The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terrorism

Abstract

There is an enormous social-scientific literature on the concepts of politicalviolence, internal war, and social conflict (e.g., Nieburg, 1969;Eckstein, 1964; Oberschall, 1973). These categories are intended toexclude conventional military conflicts between recognized states on theone hand and purely interpersonal violence on the other hand. But the theoretical treatment of one variety of violent social conflict is more limited, and it is this that I want to discuss: revolutionary terrorism. The use of terrorist tactics would seem to be more widespread today than in the past, if newspaper headlines are to be relied upon, and certainly public concern about it is greater. It is therefore incumbent upon social science to attempt to contribute to an understanding of it.