Political Extremism and Security: Rethinking a Bidirectional Relationship

The relationship between political extremism and national or individual security is bidirectional. Extensive research documents how extremism produces security threats such as terrorism, insurgency and social cohesion. Another strand of research indicate how security policies and state responses to extremism can generate grievances that fuel extremism. Despite substantial research on political extremism and security, there are at least three empirical gaps: the reinforcing mechanism between extremism and security has been rarely tested empirically as a dynamic process, individual-level extremism and security is underdeveloped in relation to national security outcomes, and the moderating roles of factors such as state legitimacy, institutional trust or political stability in shaping this relationship is underspecified. This panel invites papers that can address some of these gaps to shed new light about the relationship between political extremism and security in contemporary times. It accepts a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and type of evidence as long as they are rigorous and relevant for the topic.