1. Who Supports Violent Extremism in Developing Countries?
Youssouf KIENDREBEOGO & Elena IANCHOVICHINA
The World Bank
IEA world congress
Mexico City, June 20, 2017

2. Table of Contents Motivations Data and definition Empirical strategy
Results and robustness
Conclusions

3. Motivations Widespread concerns about rising violent extremism
Extremism has important direct costs in terms of casualties...
...but also substantial indirect economic costs

4. Literature limited to country case studies
Emergence of sectarian organizations & proliferation of madrasas have led to sectarian radicalism (Zaman 1998; Silber & Bhatt 2007)
No single terrorist personality (Hudson, 1999)
Socioeconomic factors provide limited explanation for radicalization in Saudi Arabia (Hegghammer, 2006)
Terrorist recruits in the US tend to be young & relatively uneducated (Jenkins, 2011)
Radicalization occurs in a context of group identification or from the intergroup conflict dynamics (McCauley and Moskalenko, 2008)
Employment and wartime violence in Iraq (Shaver, 2016)
Poverty and support for militant politics (Blair et al. 2013)
Literature review from 8 Arab countries: extremism is a result of a mix of internal and external factors: resource dependence, tribalism, inequality, authoritarianism, and corruption (Walters et al., 2013)

5. This paper
Uses a unique dataset, the Gallup World Poll, to study the factors explaining radicalization at the individual level
Cross-country framework to address the external validity problem
Uses an empirical strategy accounting for simultaneity and endogeneity problems

6. A glance at the data
Overall, the incidence of radicalization is pretty low: 7.7% of respondents completely justify attacks targeting civilians ...

7. A glance at the data
…but varies widely across countries….

8. Radicalization rates across regions over time
Radicalization rates are higher in SSA and SA
Until recently the incidence of radicalization in MENA was low and comparable to the rates in other middle-income regions
Escalation in radicalization rates in MENA in recent years

9. …and prevalence tends to be higher in poorer countries

10. Methodology Simultaneity between economic welfare and radicalization:
𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋 1𝑖 𝛽 1 + 𝜀 1𝑖 (1)
𝑌 2𝑖 ∗ = 𝛾 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ +𝑋 2𝑖 𝛽 2 + 𝜀 2𝑖 (2)
Y1i and Y2i are economic welfare and radicalization, respectively
𝑋 1 and 𝑋 2 contain common covariates: income, age, employment, education, country, locality, and wave fixed effects
But each equation includes specific regressors as instruments:
In (1) we have Nb children under 15 (age dependence) and city economic conditions
In (2) we have strength of religious beliefs and sacrificing one’s life for beliefs
Additional controls: country-level incidence of conflict, as exposure to wartime violence; indexes for community attachment, community basics, civic engagement and satisfaction with freedom to choose

11. Empirical Strategy
Simultaneity between economic welfare and radicalization: Bivariate ordered probit
𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋 1𝑖 𝛽 1 + 𝜀 1𝑖 (1)
𝑌 2𝑖 ∗ = 𝛾 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ +𝑋 2𝑖 𝛽 2 + 𝜀 2𝑖 (2)
𝐸 𝑋 1𝑖 𝜀 1𝑖 =𝐸 𝑋 2𝑖 𝜀 2𝑖 =0, 𝐸 𝜀 1𝑖 𝜀 2𝑖 =𝜌
If 𝛾=𝜌=0, then (1) and (2) can be estimated separately using UOP
If 𝛾=0 and 𝜌≠0, then the system can be estimated using a SUR
If 𝛾≠0 and 𝜌≠0, then the system should be estimated using a FIML

12. Sample composition, 2006-2012 Region Country Sample size
East Asia & Pacific
Indonesia
Malaysia
1683
1431
Europe & Central Asia
Azerbaijan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
676
786
643
Middle East & North Africa
Algeria
Egypt
Iraq
Lebanon
Qatar
Tunisia
Yemen
950
960
628
634
730
749
678
South Asia
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
India
Pakistan
810
1411
3175
666
Sub-Saharan Africa
Burkina Faso
Chad
Comoros
Guinea
Mali
Mauritania
Niger
Nigeria
Senegal
Somaliland
Tanzania
920
1860
740
1765
902
1885
543
1817
958
1837
Total
30787

13. Bivariate Ordered Probit estimates
Coefficients SE
Income (#)
Age (#)
Age (#), squared
Female
Single, never married
-0.101***
1.061***
-0.151***
-0.024
1.09e-03
[0.036]
[0.314]
[0.046]
[0.032]
[0.027]
Employment status (ref. category ‘unemployed’)
Employed part time want full time
Employed part time do not want full time
Employed full time for self-employment
Employed full time for an employer
-0.022
-0.099***
-0.127***
-0.089***
[0.058]
[0.039]
[0.024]
Highest education level (ref. category ‘elementary or less’)
Secondary to 3 year of tertiary
4 years of tertiary and beyond
-0.126***
-0.306***
[0.037]
[0.055]
Instruments for radicalization
Religion is important (=1)
Sacrificing one's life for beliefs
-0.184**
1.317***
[0.074]
[0.111]

14. Robustness checks Region-specific estimates Alternative estimators:
Univariate Ordered Probit,
Bivariate SUR,
Fully Observed Recursive Mixed-Process
Endogeneity issues
Robustness to additional controls

15. Concluding remarks: Profile of the typical radicalized individual
Younger than average
Less educated than average
Unemployed
Less religious than average
Willing to sacrifice his/her life for beliefs
In some specification with reduced samples we find additionally:
Belongs to the bottom 20% of the income distribution
Not satisfied with the freedom to choose what to do with his/her life
Results may vary across regions and from country to country

16. Thank you for your attention
Questions?