Terrorist Attacks on Western Civilization

This special issue of Public Choice is designed to afford leading scholars the opportunity to apply the principles of public choice, law and economics, and the economics of religion in analyzing the nature and consequences of the early twenty-first century assault by Islamic terrorist groups on Western civilization. These attacks are designed to wipe out all the religious, economic, legal and political advances of more than half a millennium that have occurred in the West following the awakening in the fifteenth century of a Renaissance that broke the religious yoke imposed by the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The terrorists are motivated by hatred, intermingled with envy, of Western civilization, and by a willingness to deploy wanton mayhem as a vengeful response to their own perceived helplessness before the ruthless autocracies that dominate their Middle Eastern environments. By their actions, these terrorist groups intend to restore a fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate across the Muslim world and to eliminate all links with the advanced democracies. By successfully analyzing the rational choice nature of this serious threat to modernity, the special issue demonstrates the continuing relevance of the public choice research program in an increasingly dangerous world. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006