University of Bergen Department of Comparative
Politics
TWEED
project home page
Terrorism in
Western Europe: Events Data (TWEED)
by
Dr. Jan
Oskar Engene
Associate
professor
Department of
Comparative Politics
University of Bergen
The TWEED data set
contains information on events related to internal (or domestic) terrorism in
18 West European countries for the 1950 through 2004 period. Below you can read
more about TWEED and download the code book
and data file.
Short guide
to the TWEED data set
The data set Terrorism in Western Europe: Events Data,
or TWEED for short, was constructed and collected by Dr. Jan Oskar Engene for the
purpose of analysing patterns of terrorism in Western Europe as related to
historical and structural preconditions - see Jan Oskar Engene: Terrorism
in Western Europe: Explaining the trends since 1950, Cheltenham
UK/Northampton MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2004.
TWEED
contains information on events related to internal (or domestic) terrorism in
18 West European countries. The countries covered are: Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
By limiting itself to internal terrorism, the TWEED data set only includes events initiated by agents
originating in the West European countries. Mostly, the acts of terrorism
recorded in the TWEED data set originated in
the political systems of the West European countries and were directed against
other agents internal to these political systems. In other words, terrorist
acts Aimported@
from outside the West European countries are excluded from the data set. This
means that most of what is known as international terrorism is not covered by
the TWEED data set. TWEED
does contain, however, cases where an agent from one West European country
carries out attacks in a different country within the region.
In the context of the TWEED
data set, terrorism is understood theoretically as a form of violence that uses
targets of violence in an indirect way in order to influence third parties,
audiences. However, when turning to news sources used to construct data sets,
such an abstract definition would be difficult to apply. For selection
purposes, this general definition is applied in conjunction with a list of
specific kinds of events that may typically be considered potential acts of
terrorism, such as bombings, explosions, rocket attacks, abductions, shootings,
sieges, armed attacks, arson, and similar violent actions. When such actions
are judged to be cases of indirect violence employed to influence third
parties, they have been selected for inclusion in the TWEED
data set.
In the TWEED data
set, data has been collected for the period from 1950 to 2004. Originally the
data set covered the period from 1950 up till 1990. After the initial round of
data collection, the TWEED data set has been
updated several times so that it now covers the period through to the end of
2004.
In total, 11.026 events are recorded in the TWEED data set. Of these, 9542 events (86.5%) are actions
initiated by terrorist groups or non-state agents. The remaining events are
government actions directed mainly against terrorists. The total number of
deaths resulting from actions by terrorist agents recorded in the TWEED data set is 2959. The data set records activities
by around 200 terrorist groups identified by name. You can learn more about the
TWEED data set and the variables included in
it from the code book.
Downloads
Conditions
for use
The TWEED data file may
be downloaded and used for educational and research purposes by students and
researchers provided proper acknowledgement and references (citations referring
to this page and to Jan Oskar Engene: “Five Decades of Terrorism in Europe:
The TWEED Dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 44, no. 1, 2007, pp. 109–121)
are given. The data set may not be passed on or sold to third parties. Copyright
2006: Dr. Jan Oskar Engene.
Disclaimer: The data is provided as is. The compiler
of the TWEED data set bears no responsibility
for uses of the data set or for analyses, interpretations or inferences
resulting from the use of the data set.
Further
references
Jan Oskar Engene: "Five Decades of Terrorism in Europe: The TWEED Dataset",
Journal of Peace Research, vol. 44, no. 1, 2007, pp. 109–121
Jan Oskar Engene: Europeisk terrorisme: Vold, stat og legitimitet,
Oslo: Tano, 1994
Jan Oskar Engene: Patterns of terrorism in Western
Europe, 1950-1995, Dr.polit. dissertation, Department of comparative
politics, University
of Bergen, 1998
Contact
information
Dr. Jan
Oskar Engene, e-mail < jan.engene@isp.uib.no >
Department of Comparative
Politics
University
of Bergen
Christiesgt.15
NO-5007 Bergen
Norway