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Research on terrorism is now in the midst of a period of rapid progress, much of which is embodied in the articles in this volume. Although our un derstanding of the phenomenon is still in its early stages, knowledge about the causes, conduct, and consequences of terrorism is accumulating. Impor tant methodological advances have helped to make this progress possible, and continuing to deepen and extend the marriage of social science and the study of terrorism can be expected to yield further advances in the future. Good theories about complex social and political phenomenon rarely emerge all at once from the efforts of individual scholars working in isolation. Instead, progress tends to occur over time as part of a broad commitment of intellectual resources, by numerous scholars and communities of scholars, to originate and analyze logics of the internal dynamics and casual linkages in theories, and to test theories about the real world with facts from the real world. This approach is sure to discover ambiguities and deficiencies in prior formulations and likely to bring forth improved or even wholly new theories that strengthen our knowledge. In recent decades, the field of international relations has witnessed this process working to enrich our knowledge about ethnic and civil war, international institutions, and the politics of unipolarity. This is now happening in the study of terrorism.