SOCTerrorism used as a strategy by groups out of power to attain their goals has a long history, as old as warfare itself. Thomas Schelling in Arms and Influence documents how the use of violence to terrorize and intimidate is an ancient tactic. He notes examples of violence used in this way in the wars between the Greeks and the Persians.
(Schelling, 1966) The all too prevalent idea that terrorism is a totally novel phenomenon is a myth. However, while terrorism has a long history, the current wave of this form of violence has been given impetus by a series of new developments in the post-World War II period. Any analysis of terrorism in the contemporary world must begin with a discussion of these developments.
The great majority of the nations of the world are undergoing a process of drastic social, economic, and political change that in the language of social science may be called “modernization.” To understand the relationship of this process of modernization to terroristic violence, the concept of “relative deprivation” must be mentioned.
Ted Robert Gurr in Why Men Rebel has argued that political violence is a consequence of a significant gap developing between the value expectations of a given group of people and the value capabilities of the group. (Gurr, 1971) “Decremental deprivation” occurs when the value capabilities of a given population decline drastically due to one or several national disasters.
Gurr argues that the success of the Bolsheviks in seizing power in Russia in 1917 was due in large part to decremental deprivation: the enormous material and human sacrifices of the Russian people in World War I had created widespread discontent, and the failure of the Kerensky government to terminate Russian involvement in the war led to a swing in popular sentiment to the one..........
