The data set Terrorism in Western Europe: Events Data, TWEED, has been
constructed and collected by 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: Europeisk terrorisme: Vold,
stat og legitimitet, Oslo: Tano, 1994; Patterns of terrorism in Western
Europe, 1950-1995, Dr.polit. dissertation, Department of comparative politics,
University of Bergen, 1998; 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 (domestic) terrorism
in 18 countries in Western Europe. The time period covered is 1950 to 2004. By
focussing on internal terrorism, the TWEED data set only includes events
initiated by agents originating in the West European countries. In other
words, international terrorism, or terrorist acts “imported” from outside the
West European countries, has been excluded from the TWEED data set. The TWEED
data set is based on a single news source: Keesing’s Record of World Events
(Keesing’s Contemporary Archives).
