The emergence of ‘radicalisation’ within terrorism studies: a bibliometric analysis

“Radicalisation” has become one of the central organising principles of both contemporary research on terrorism and counterterrorism policy. While existing reconstructions of its emergence largely focused on the role of political institutions – particularly the European Union – such accounts provide only a partial explanation, leaving the internal dynamics of terrorism studies largely unexamined. Drawing on Google Scholar data, this article aims at supplementing the existing literature by providing a bibliometric analysis of terrorism studies publications (2000–2020) to reconstruct the emergence of “radicalisation” within the field. The findings on when “radicalisation” first emerged, the composition of the field-specific debate, and the publications that played a crucial role in the emergence of this notion, offer several insights for future research to investigate the simultaneously political and scientific conditions that facilitated the rise of “radicalisation.”