The time for causal designs: Review and evaluation of empirical support for mechanisms of political radicalisation
Introduction
How individuals, often young people, come to accept the use of violence as a legitimate means to achieve political change has emerged as one of the most pertinent questions for policymakers and social scientists in the last decade. The consequences of this radicalisation are often devastating, both in terms of specific acts of violence and the fallout from these events. Our explicit and implicit theories of the mechanisms of this process matter, because interventions - also those targeting the community or societal level - work (or do not) through individual psychological mechanisms (Webber & Kruglanski, 2018). Interventions that explicitly target radicalisation to political violence include programmes as diverse as mentoring and coaching, dialogical workshops, exit programmes, community outreach and collaboration and punitive measures (Romaniuk, 2015). However, the proposed mechanisms through which these programmes are supposed to work are often vague or rest on untested assumptions (Horgan, 2016; Thomas, McGarty, & Louis, 2014) despite the fact that “getting it wrong” can have dramatic iatrogenic effects and possibly contribute to further radicalisation (Lindekilde, 2012). As models of radicalisation and the interventions based on these models make claims of relationships in the “real world”, we must evaluate these models based on their empirical support. In this paper, I review and evaluate the most prominent psychological theories of political radicalisation on their empirical merits. I argue that current evidence indicates support for a handful of central factors and mechanisms that should not be neglected when designing interventions targeting groups and individuals at risk of political radicalisation.
The following section presents and evaluates the empirical evidence for the most impactful psychological approaches of the last decade. As the goal of reviews should not merely be to create a list of relevant factors, but actively synthesize our current knowledge (Borum, 2015), the paper goes on to discuss similarities and disparities in the different theories with a synthesis and ranking of the supported mechanisms. These mechanisms are then used to evaluate central kinds of interventions that exist in current policies across the world, illustrating the usefulness of this kind of research. The paper concludes with a call for a new research focus, one that employs research designs that can arbitrate on matters of causality, not merely correlation. Pre-empting the following review, the central seven approaches presented below are summarised in Table 1, which provides an overview of the central tenets, conceptualisation of radicalisation, proposed explanatory factors, as well as a comparative evaluation of the empirical evidence in support of the internal validity (causal connection), external validity (generalisability) and measurement validity of the approaches.
Section snippets
Reviewing the literature
In a 2008 paper, Andrew Silke lamented the fact that only a fifth of all papers in the research field of the psychology of radicalisation presented new, original data; and that of the empirical papers that did exist, most were based on “pre-experimental research designs”, which are primarily useful for exploratory research (Silke, 2008). Almost a decade later, this has begun to change (Borum, 2014; Horgan, 2016), and the premise of this paper is that the field has matured to allow for a focus
Common and empirically supported factors
From the preceding, and with reference to Table 1 from the introduction, we can draw at least three general observations: First, the theories deal specifically with the question of the psychological mechanisms of radicalisation to political violence. Second, the theories conceptualise radicalisation in slightly different ways, which might lead us to doubt whether it is even possible to compare the theories or if they are fundamentally directed towards different phenomena and, therefore,
The state of the field: towards an evidence-based study of radicalisation
Seen in the perspective of the validity of the approaches, the central result of this review is that the external validity has improved during the past decade of research into radicalisation. This has happened in tandem with improved measurement validity, even if there is still a need for more standardised measurements and acknowledgement of the distinction between radicalisation of opinion and radicalisation of action. However, the internal validity of studies, despite being essential for
Implications for interventions
Having identified factors with empirical support, it is possible to attempt an evaluation of current interventions and their implicit or explicit mechanisms. After all, the practical implications for this research is the explicit goal of much of the research on radicalisation (Young, Rooze, & Holsappel, 2015). Here, it is important to distinguish between “upstream” early prevention meant to target vulnerable individuals before radicalisation as opposed to “downstream” counter-radicalisation
Conclusion
Seven years ago, in a review paper, King and Taylor (2011) concluded that the three factors of relative deprivation, identity conflicts and personality characteristics were central to radicalisation. Today, we are able to nuance these findings. This paper has attempted to create an overview of the newest empirical evidence for psychological mechanisms of radicalisation to political violence. The field has seen a move from case studies of radicals onto stronger designs, including large-n
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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