03/08/2021
By Karen Mullins

School of Criminology and Justice Studies is proud to announce a Dissertation Proposal Defense by James M. Duggan: "Examining the Influence of Constraining Factors on Engagement in Violent Versus Nonviolent Political Extremism in the United States."

Tuesday, March 23 from 9 to 10:30 a.m.
Join Zoom Meeting.

Committee:

  • James Forest, Chair
  • Arie Perliger
  • Jason Rydberg
  • Neil Shortland

ABSTRACT
A renewed interest in terrorism since 2001 has resulted in a robust field of research focused on the identification of risk factors that would inform the development of countering violent extremism (CVE) programs. Advances in knowledge of risk factors have revealed a glaring weakness: false-positive results. Scholars cannot explain why so few of the multitudes exposed to risk factors for radicalization to terrorism become terrorists. This proposed dissertation contends that a better understanding of why the few engage in terrorism requires considering why most do not. A theoretical framework derived from Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of informal social control (AGT) is employed in the exploratory analyses to examine the constraining effects of prosocial relationships across the life course on engagement in terrorism versus nonviolent political extremism. The sample to be analyzed is culled from the Profiles of Individuals Radicalized in the United States (PIRUS) data set and consists of 2148 United States-based political extremists documented in open sources of information between the years of 1948 and 2018.[1] The results of this proposed dissertation will contribute to the understanding of radicalization to terrorism in a way that complements the extensive prior research of risk factors and may help to explain false-positive findings. The inclusion of a nonviolent comparison group and disaggregation of extremist beliefs and behaviors are among the methodological shortcomings addressed by this proposed dissertation that scholars have identified as contributing factors to false-positive results. The use of an established social science theory such as AGT will contribute to understanding how violent political extremism may be similar and dissimilar from other forms of violent crime, which will inform the development of CVE programs and provide structure for elaboration by future research.

[1] Methodological Note: All cases are political extremists. Cases are disaggregated into one of two groups: nonviolent (42.23%) or violent (57.77%). The issue of missing data is handled via Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations (MICE) in R. Three analytical models (Juvenile, Adult, and Life Course) are fitted using the pooled results of 100 multiply imputed data sets. A series of binomial logistic regression analyses first consider the influence of constraining influences in the social environment on juvenile offending, which is then included as a predictor in the Adult and Life Course models. The Adult model considers the effect of constraining influences on engagement in violent versus nonviolent political extremism. The Life Course model combines the two previous models and evaluates changes in the salience of factors compared to the stand-alone models. For the sake of interpretation, results will be converted and presented as odds ratios with delta standard errors.