Kidnapping is universally regarded as a serious crime. Much kidnapping throughout history has no overt political motivation but, since the early 1970s, there have been many highly publicized kidnappings for political purposes around the world. This article seeks to demonstrate the relationship between kidnapping and politics by constructing a classificatory device to identify different types of kidnapping according to the motivations of the kidnappers. Also, a sequential model of the component parts of kidnapping episodes is established. This facilitates our understanding of how a kidnapping incident develops, especially how a kidnapping may change from one type to another. Of particular concern is to showthat what commences as a non-political kidnapping can become an event of considerable political significance.

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