Breaking the Waves: How the Phenomenon of European Jihadism Militates Against the Wave Theory of Terrorism

• Authors: Denys Proshyn
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

David Rapoport’s Wave theory of terrorism is one of the most oftencited theories in the literature on terrorist violence. Rapoport is praised for having provided researchers with a universal instrument which allows them to explain the origin and transformation of various historical types of terrorism by applying to them the concept of global waves of terrorist violence driven by universal political impulses. This article, testing the Wave theory against the recent phenomenon of homegrown jihadism in Europe, uncovers this theory’s fundamental weaknesses and questions its real academic and practical value.

Keywords

EN

the Wave theory of terrorism; the Fourth Wave terrorism; European homegrown jihadists; critique

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 17
• Pages: 91-107

Dates

published

2015-12-01

online

2015-12-30

Contributors

author

Denys Proshyn

• Department of Political Science, Dnipropetrovsk Alfred Nobel University, 18, Naberezhna Lenina, 49000, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ipcj-2015-0007