This book provides a multidisciplinary framework for identifying and interpreting the conditions that shape terrorist organisation formation, development, operational activity, decline and disbandment.

The work analyses the lifecycle profiling of terrorist organisations through six identified lifecycle stages: preformation, formation, evolution, disintegration, dark and disbandment, and covers a range of extreme right-wing, left-wing, Salafi jihadist and separatist terrorist organisations. The Triadic Theory of Terrorism complements this lifecycle by examining and positioning political, social, and geographical conditions as interconnected dimensions influencing terrorist mobilisation and organisational development, and reviewing these conditions across time and space. The case studies are transnational, transhistorical, cross-cultural and cross-ideological, contributing to a more holistic understanding of terrorist organisations. Using a mixed-methods approach, eight terrorist organisations are qualitatively analysed in terms of their ideologies, motivations, propaganda use, resource mobilisation, radicalisation and recruitment, resilience, and political and social developments, and quantitatively analysed in terms of their timeframes, targets, weapons and locations. Examined longitudinally, these interconnected indicators can reveal changing threat trajectories and strengthen preventative intelligence assessment, intervention and counter-terrorism decision-making.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, extremism studies, law and security studies.

Samantha Jones is a Lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, teaching terrorism, intelligence, criminology and policing. Prior to entering academia, she worked across local, state and federal levels of the Australian government. She has a Doctorate in Public Safety from Charles Sturt University, Canberra.