A Framework for Analytical Treatment of Terrorist Problems

This paper classifies the various causes of terrorism into necessary, precipitating, facilitating and perpetuating factors. The presence of a leader is a necessary factor without which terrorism cannot be generated. Poverty and unemployment, however, might only be one out of many facilitating factors which might be rendered redundant without the necessary factor or precipitating factors. This explains the lack of significance of poverty as a cause of terrorism in some recent econometric studies