Based on biographical materials of armed militants of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Red Brigades, this article analyses variation within the micromobilization that leads to armed groups. Three general paths are singled out: the ideological path, the instrumental path and the solidaristic path. Each of these is characterized by complex interactions between the individual motivations for involvement (micro-level), the networks that facilitate the recruitment process (meso-level), and the effects of repression on individuals (macro-level). We discuss the discoveries we have made and conclude by describing the advantages of our approach.This article seeks to improve our understanding of how individuals join armed groups. In doing this we do not point at root causes, nor look at one simple profile or unitary pattern of any sort-features very typical of past terrorism studies literature, which "has been narrowed and distorted by the search for effective responses to terrorism" (Goodwin 2004, 260). Neither do we aim at providing a general model of micro-mobilization. Rather, we are interested in empirically singling out-without pretending to be exhaustive-some of the central paths followed by those individuals who join armed groups. We root this in a theoretical discussion of the reciprocal interplay between individuals, armed group dynamics and changing situational contexts. As we will see, all three levels of analysis-the micro, meso and macro-provide useful explanations, but it is their complex, repeated interactions that especially need to be studied in detail, since each compounds and complicates the others. To unpack the web of complex interactions between these levels we look specifically Qual Sociol
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 Cyprus (1950-1959), the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland (1969-1972), and the Fatah-Tanzim in Palestine (1995-2001).
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