Relational Dynamics and Processes of Radicalization: a Comparative Framework (original) (raw)

We propose an explanatory framework for the comparative study of radicalization that focuses on its "how" and "when" questions. We build on the relational tradition in the study of social movements and contentious politics by expanding on a mechanism-process research strategy. Attentive to similarities as well as to dissimilarities, our comparative framework traces processes of radicalization by delineating four key arenas of interaction-between movement and political environment, among movement actors, between movement activists and state security forces, and between the movement and a countermovement. Then, we analyze how four similar corresponding general mechanisms-opportunity/threat spirals, competition for power, outbidding, and object shift-combine differently to drive the process. Last, we identify a set of submechanisms for each general mechanism. The explanatory utility of our framework is demonstrated through the analysis of three ethnonational episodes of radicalization: the enosis-EOKA movement in Radicalization-the development of extreme ideology and/or the adoption of violent forms of contention, including categorical indiscriminate violence (or terrorism) by a challenging group-has recently been the subject of growing research interest. Drawing on insights from the field of social movements and contentious politics, we propose an explanatory framework for the comparative study of radicalization that focuses on the "how" and "when" of the process. Such insights tend to reject the notion that radicalization is attributable to a distinct class of people, recognizing that radical groups usually evolve out of splinter factions of broader opposition movements. They disallow the notion that radicalization is deterministic or a simple expression of a group's ideology, holding, instead, that factors affecting radicalization are context-sensitive and interactive. The emerging consensus in the field of social movements and contentious politics considers its subject matter to be comprised, above all else, by complicated and contingent sets of interaction among individuals, groups, and institutional actors (della Porta Zwerman and Steinhoff 2005).