did not write as voluminously about terrorism as about many other issues that interested him during his long and distinguished career. However, collective political violence was one of his long-standing concerns, and he did produce a significant and interesting body of work on terrorism after the attacks of 9/11. Terrorism is a recurrent theme in his important 2003 book, The Politics of Collective Violence, which concludes with a discussion of the topic. And two of Tilly's last articles dealt with the subject: "Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists" which appeared in a special issue of Sociological Theory (2004) on terrorism, and "Terror as Strategy and Relational Process", which appeared in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology (2005). The title of this last article nicely captures Tilly's general approach to terrorism, as I will explain below. (Many of the ideas in Tilly's two articles on terrorism reappear in his 2006 book, Regimes and Repertoires.)
How did Tilly conceptualize and propose to explain terrorism? And how useful and persuasive are his ideas on this topic? After summarizing Tilly's main claims about terrorism, including his call for a "relational approach" to terrorism, I will discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of his ideas.
Tilly on Terror
Tilly makes six main claims, or sets of claims, about terrorism:
Terror is a political strategy that has been employed by a wide range of political actors with a variety of motives. "Terror is a strategy, 1.