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hich have yet to bring about a universal legal basis gives a great deal of guidance and a strong start in the search for a definition, but has failed to create the sought after legal framework. It is also important to note that with a change in administration within the United States which has changed US foreign policy from unilateral action to that of multilateral approaches has also brought about a need for the hegemonic powers to define who the 'universal enemy is' as predicted by Jorg Friedrich (FRIEDRICHS, 2006) and that a floating and independent definition of who the enemy is no longer serves the purposes of the 'coalition of the willing', a group that were unable to even decide who the common enemy was. A definition that explains who the universal enemy to all states is (i.e. al Qaeda) will greatly enhance states ability to combat it (FRIEDRICHS, 2006), allow Terrorism researchers to focus their efforts on moving past the exploratory stage of research and allow all to generate theories on explaining and preventing further terror events.

As Silke states, 'What is terrorism? What makes a terrorist act? What makes a group a terrorist group? These are such basic questions; and yet satisfactory answers continue to elude the field' (SILKE, 2004a). Until we are able to answer these questions, terrorism research will be confined to the exploratory and descriptive stages of research.

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It is of no surprise that Schmid and Jongman identify 1968 as the year in which interest in terrorism grew in the academic and lay community and it is of little surprise that the level of interest has grown massively with continuous references to the 'events of 9/11' (GORDON, 2004). Many academics from other disciplines will have identified terrorism as an interesting field of study to begin to analyse from their own perspective and their own particular specialism. Andrew Silke identifies these individuals as 'transient authors' (SILKE, 2004a) and notes that over 80% of terrorism research articles were from one-timers (SILKE, 2004b), who applied their subject expertise to the new fashionable fad of terrorism studies. Avishag Gordon also discusses the issue of transient authors in great detail, stating that 'Terrorism as a research field lacks constancy and the commitment of researchers to the field' (GORDON, 2007), a sentiment shared by Silke who states that they are simply after a 'one-off' publication and have 'no real interest in the field' (SILKE, 2004a). Silke also writes about Ariel Merari who is particularly scathing towards contributors who are unfamiliar with terrorism research. It is said that 'usually a contribution of this kind is well-grounded in the empirical and theoretical findings of the writer's particular area of expertise, but lacking in knowledge in terrorisma€|' (MERARI, 1991).

It is perhaps understandable to see where these seasoned terrorism researchers are coming from; Silke's study in 2004 following on from Schmid and Jongman's study in 1988, shows that over 75% of works from 1990-1999 comes from authors whose backgrounds are political sciences, government departments, consultancy, sociology and psychology respectively (SILKE, 2004b). However, it is perhaps a little short sighted to simply write off one-time contributors to the field as people who simply felt that had something to contribute to 'the juicy' subject of terrorism (MERAR