Socioeconomic hardships, religiosity, and radicalization: A non-linear exploration

Socioeconomic hardships are often advocated as the drivers of radicalization, but the existing research shows mixed evidence for this relationship. This study argues that socioeconomic hardships should increase the likelihood of radicalization only for sufficiently religious people, thereby implying a non-linear relationship. The study suggests that as a result of the lower opportunity costs of extreme acts during socioeconomic hardships, the likelihood of committing or supporting such acts for obtaining religiously inspired mental rewards should be the highest for the economically disadvantaged, religious individuals. The study tests this hypothesis through the non-linear threshold regression method developed by Hansen (2000), using survey data from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Results indicate that radicalization has a statistically significant positive relationship with indicators of the individual level socioeconomic conditions such as the perceptions of poor economic prospects, individual relative deprivation, injustice, and inequality only above the religiosity threshold. These findings support the hypothesis that socioeconomic hardships (or the perception of these) drive radicalization only in sufficiently religious people. This implies that apart from security-centric approaches, radicalization can also be deterred by increasing the opportunity costs of political violence through socioeconomic improvements. Moreover, promoting balanced/diverse religious views may also help check radicalization.