Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool

Abstract

Do radicalized individuals with no logistical assistance from opposition groups generate liabilities or advantages for opposition leaders? To address this question, we develop a theory that articulates a novel strategic channel connecting radicalization, defined as self‐motivation to dissent, to repression targeting an opposition group's operational capacity or its leadership. Our main result shows that targeted repression is strictly decreasing in the proportion of radicalized citizens. We endogenize opposition leaders' decision to radicalize citizens and show that opposition leaders, even absent any direct benefit to radicalize, nevertheless invest effort into radicalization. Thus, radicalization is a political tool to deter repression by decreasing its usefulness. To better understand this strategic consequence, we analyze two common policy interventions—economic and psychological—and show that improving economic conditions reduces both radicalization efforts and dissent, while making individuals psychologically less susceptible to radicalization can sometimes backfire and increase dissent because it increases leaders' radicalization efforts.

Identity Propaganda

“…These contributions (by design) cannot address propaganda about social identities – parameters for which no exogenous truth exists – such as what it means to be a social group member in a particular situation 4 . Second, the bulk of the theoretical work on endogenous social identities focuses either on the incentives of citizens to choose particular identities (Bénabou and Tirole 2011; Penn 2008; Sambanis and Shayo 2013; Schnakenberg 2014; Shayo 2009) or they assume propaganda is effective to study how propaganda affects leaders' other choices (for example, Dickson and Scheve 2006; Lehmann and Tyson 2022; Mukand and Rodrik 2018).…”