Terrorism and Democracy

It has been predicted that terrorism will beset the newly emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. However, such political violence can be combatted. The David Davies Institute decided policy makers might benefit from a study of terrorism which had been successfully contained in contemporary First World democracies. It assembled a group of experts from government, diplomatic, legal, police, military, medical, business and academic circles to consider, in the light of their own experience, the lessons that might be drawn from confronting six contemporary terrorism campaigns. Those chosen were the separatists in Quebec and South Tyrol, the Moluccans in the Netherlands, and the ideologically motivated campaigns of the Japanese Red Army, the German Red Army Faction and the Italian Red Brigades. For each case scholars analyzed the response to the campaign, on the basis of which the core group drew its conclusions in the final section.