This is an excerpt from Critical Terrorism Studies: A Dictionary by Lee Jarvis and Alice Martini. Available in all good book stores, and via free download from E-International Relations.

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The state is the most common unit of analysis in academic disciplines like political science that have been very influential in the formation of terrorism studies. Unfortunately – like so many other concepts – it is a deeply contested one, with little agreement over what ‘the state’ encompasses, how it works, or whose interests it serves (Hay et al 2022). A helpful shorthand, for our purposes, might be to think of the state as a bounded territory (a country) that is governed by an internal political entity (the executive) which discharges functions like security, border control, and welfare. States can be large or small; democratic or authoritarian; rich or poor; coherent or deeply divided; peaceful or violent.

First, is the way in which ‘the state’ is often taken for granted as the referent in discussions of terrorism. That is: why is it that we privilege the state – and national security – as the thing that is to be made safe from terrorism, rather than, say, human lives, communities, or peace? Second, is in how states respond to political violence in ways that are often harmful, counterproductive and far from emancipatory. The lives lost in the post-9/11 war on terror is one obvious example here. As is Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 attack, as well as colonial era violences against nationalist movements of self-determination. Third, critical terrorism studies is also concerned with the violences done by states for foreign policy or other objectives that might not be labelled ‘terrorist’ but perhaps fit this label (see state terrorism). Together, these concerns encourage us to question and perhaps move away from state-centric approaches to (counter-)terrorism.

Terrorism is typically associated – today at least – with acts of violence by non-state organisations such as the IRA, Boko Haram, or Al-Qaeda. The concept of ‘state terrorism’ helps to challenge this association by highlighting the ways in which states themselves commit actions we might think of as ‘terrorist’. Some of the earliest authors to pull attention to state terrorism include Noam Chomsky, Michael Stohl, and Nobel prize winner Thomas Schelling (1982, 66) who argued that it was ‘hard to think of any exploitation of nuclear weapons by a national government, other than one with a sufficient arsenal for battlefield use, that would not be terrorist’ given the emphasis of such weapons on intimidating and deterring opponents through fear.

Work on state terrorism has offered significant insight into the ways in which states and their representatives might use or threaten violence to communicate to relevant audiences. Stohl (1998) distinguishes five forms of ‘state terrorism as foreign policy behaviour’: coercive terrorist diplomacy; clandestine state terrorism; state sponsored terrorism; surrogate state terrorism; state acquiescence to terrorism. This typology is useful because it extends beyond very overt and direct involvement in violence to much more passive and indirect engagements (see also Byman 2005b). Work within critical........

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