An Analysis of Terrorist Group Formation, 1860—1969

A number of new and exciting datasets on terrorist groups have been created in recent years. However, most data have limited temporal coverage. In this article, we explore a dataset of historical terrorist groups formed between 1860 and 1969 to determine which insights from the terrorism literature are generalizable over time. A cursory look into the dataset reveals several trends that have been overlooked by both the qualitative historical terrorism literature and the quantitative contemporary terrorism literature. We also perform an econometric analysis of terrorist group formation to test hypotheses derived from the extant research. Our results show limited support for existing hypotheses, although civil society participation appears consistently associated with terrorist group formation.