As (violent) radicalization is challenging established social and political orders worldwide, governments began to introduce a range of policies to counter terrorism (CT) and violent extremism (P/CVE) well before but especially after the 9/11 attacks. The new PRIF working paper by Hande Abay Gaspar, Julian Junk, Manjana Sold and Clara-Auguste Süß shifts the attention to the dynamic interactions between protest and radicalization on the one hand, and counter-activities and prevention measures on the other. The authors set out to bring the dispersed knowledge together, systematize the many forms of these interactive dynamics and argue that mutual aggravation can lead to (spirals of) escalation. As these co- or de-escalation dynamics require more attention conceptually and empirically, the authors critically review the state of research and develop an analytical framework that allows tracing these dynamics. They make the case for a research program that includes multidirectional and multi-agent approaches and delineates a typology of co-escalation dynamics.
Co-escalation in Contentious Politics and Radicalization
Picture: flickr, Reinhard Dedecek | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0