This chapter argues that throughout history many religions have proved themselves capable of sparking and fueling hostility toward outsiders and even toward people in the same faith who are viewed as unacceptable for one reason or another. We examine recent manifestations of extremism in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam, explaining that analysts often disagree about the extent to which religious beliefs and institutions are causally important. Key terms such as religious extremism, fundamentalism, radicalization, and terrorism are defined, noting the crucial importance of maintaining a distinction between the religious extremist and the extremely religious. Though we suggest researchers face many methodological challenges, we explore a broad range of empirical studies on related topics. The chapter also reviews theory and research on why and how people become religious extremists. We further draw on the psychology of radicalization, arguing that nowadays most scholars believe that there are cognitive and behavioral processes at work. Some people may move directly to carrying out terrorist deeds without acquiring much group ideology or religious belief.

Extremism of all types arises from a motivational imbalance wherein one need outweighs all other needs. When such a process occurs, more means to achieving the focal goal, including those considered extreme, become available to the individual. Presently, we focus on the need for significance, an existential social need. When the quest for significance is dominant, an individual may be willing to make extreme sacrifices in order to achieve their goal. The quest for significance can be activated through many different means, one of which is the loss of significance through exclusion. When one perceives that they have been excluded, their motivation to regain respect is activated. When this motivation to restore significance comes to suppress one’s other needs, the individual becomes willing to engage in activities they may have previously considered socially unacceptable, including joining extreme groups and participating in violence, in order to fulfill their quest for significance.

Feeling marginalized, silenced and excluded, as an individual or as a (sub)group within a collective, can make one feel uncertain about one’s self and identity and about “fitting in.” This feeling of uncertainty can be reduced by group identification – especially with a distinctive group that has a clearly defined, unambiguous, and homogenous social identity. Such groups and identities can sometimes be characterized as extremist. Excluded individuals may exit the larger group to identify with a different and possibly more extreme group, and the larger group may thus become less diverse and more homogeneous and extreme itself. Members of excluded subgroups can bond tightly together as a highly distinctive entity and identify strongly with it, a process that can fragment and polarize the larger group into oppositional or combative factions. In this chapter we draw upon an uncertainty identity theory framework to describe how exclusion can generate self and identity uncertainty, which is resolved by a process of identification that fragments groups and can produce extremist groups and identities.

The theoretical models propose that chronic social exclusion inevitably leads individuals into a state of psychological resignation and behavioral withdrawal. After reviewing the literature addressing chronic exclusion among general and marginalized populations, we propose that the chronic exclusion–resignation link might not be inevitable and that chronically excluded individuals remain sensitive to novel social affiliations. From here, we discuss how chronic exclusion and the resignation stage can sensitize individuals to the early stages of the radicalization process. We propose that the indomitable need for affiliation may drive chronically excluded individuals toward social resurrection when supported by prosocial sources of reconnection. However, without such avenues, radicalization may become an appealing path for reaffiliation, leading to extremist groups. This chapter elucidates the complex interplay between chronic exclusion, resignation, and radicalization, and it might inform the development of targeted strategies fostering social reintegration and preventing the allure of extremist ideologies among chronically excluded individuals.

Being left out by others is a painful experience that threatens basic needs. When people are excluded, they may merely distance themselves from those who have wronged them to avoid further rejection. However, some individuals may engage in compensatory actions to defend their self, their group, or the interplay between them in a way that could be a first step for radicalization leading to violence. How and when people opt for each strategy might vary depending on psychosocial mechanisms as well was macro-level cultural differences. Here, we focus on a mechanism useful for capturing who is more willing to fight or flee under social exclusion – identity fusion, a profound alignment between the personal self and a group, individual, value, or ideological conviction – and on a global cultural factor of relevance for the link between exclusion and extremism, as it is the distinction between WEIRD and non-WEIRD populations.

Can the experience of being ostracized – ignored and excluded – lead to people being more open to extremism? In this chapter we review the theoretical basis and experimental evidence for such a connection. According to the temporal need-threat model (Williams, 2009), ostracism is a painful experience that threatens fundamental social needs. Extreme groups have the potential to be powerful sources of inclusion and could therefore address these needs, thereby making them especially attractive to recent targets of ostracism. We also identify a set of factors that is theoretically likely to affect this link and review evidence for the opposite causal path: People are especially likely to ostracize others who belong to extreme groups. Together, this suggests a possible negative cycle in which ostracism may push people toward extreme groups, on which they become more reliant as social contacts outside the group further ostracize them.

Political extremists want to redefine and narrow who belongs and who does not in a society, often by trying to push groups such as immigrants, other ethnic groups, races, or religions out. This is what far-right extremists try to do. Redefinition can also mean trying to pull one’s own group out of society. This is what radical Islamists in Western societies try to do. Extremists of whatever variety have a common interest in fracturing the public sphere where broad-scale public deliberation is engaged. Non-deliberative approaches to extremism include bans and restrictions on extremist expression and consensus institutional designs to induce moderation. After noting their limitations, Chapter 5 turns to deliberative responses, beginning with the (limited) prospects for direct engagement with extremists. A multilayered approach involves starting with possibilities for reaching those who might be attracted to extremism (but also be attracted to other possibilities), deploying discursive psychology in the interests of building bridges. This approach then moves on to contemplation of the role that designed deliberative forums might play and finishes with a look at how performances by political leaders can try to set terms of discourse in the public sphere that can negate extremist appeals.

This chapter first demonstrates the significance of counterterrorism for China and international society and then reviews different narratives of China’s counterterrorism. It investigates China’s domestic and international counterterrorism lawmaking at the domestic and international levels. After the late 1990s, and especially after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the UN Security Council emerged at the forefront of international counterterrorism and adopted a lot of resolutions that imposed demanding obligations on UN members.The chapter examines how these UN counterterrorism resolutions are enforced in China. While many countries’ counterterrorism activities have been strongly criticized, China has encountered particularly strong criticism, and especially for its operations in Xinjiang. Finally, this chapter tries to recalibrate the relationship between counterterrorism and human rights protection, and to evaluate the implications of counterterrorism measures for human rights in China.

The Framers failed to anticipate universal suffrage and the American two-party system, let alone how these developments would change their system. Instead of letting Congress debate and decide policy, voters can now decide many issues directly. The chapter describes Americans grudging recognition that partisanship can lead to stable, responsible government. It then describes how 20th Century scholars developed rational voter models to formalize these ideas. It also asks how social voting, party leadership, identity politics, candidate charisma, and deep-pocketed donors change these results. Finally, it also argues that the existence of legislative deadlock lets comparatively small minorities take centrist compromises off the table. This forces the party system into presenting extreme choices that most voters oppose. The ensuing standoffs can last for years years and sometimes decades.

This chapter briefly reviews the books main arguments and offers limited reforms to improve the Framers design. The deepest challenges involve the characteristically 21st Century debates over COVID, global warming, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Given that even the experts disagree, neither side is likely to persuade the other any time soon. The challenge for the Constitution is to manage the debate for years and even decades. Here the best option is to promote a pragmatic politics that encourages politicians to try different solutions, and just as promptly discard them when they fail. Obvious reforms include safeguards to ensure that key research is never blocked to defend political arguments, and sunset laws that automatically eliminate statutes that fail to show results.

Gupta’s conviction indicates that Indian nationhood had earlier beginnings than has generally been supposed. The “Mutiny-Rebellion” of 1857, long regarded as a key transformative event, being hailed as the “first war of Indian independence” having “national” elements, was situated within a longer genealogy. This underscored the evolutionary process through which Indian nationhood developed. It also highlighted the multivalence of the revolt. It at once symbolized “power,” Indian agency, and collective identity: cutting across caste, class, and communal divisions. By connecting the revolt with the imperial glory of Mughal Delhi, Gupta mediated the many meanings of 1857, and linked it with a long patriotic past that evoked the idea of India despite endless fragmentation. His remarks hold the key to understanding how the many stories of Indian nationhood converged at complex levels.

This brief chapter introduces the topic of radical moderation and highlights the core beliefs at the heart of the book.

QAnon attracted considerable attention from politicians and the press during 2020. Headlines claimed that the group had exploded across social media platforms and was becoming mainstream; these claims were supported by instances of violence and studies of online activity. However, public opinion polls tell a different story. We examine polling data from 2018–2021 to understand the size and scope of QAnon support. Only 5–8 percent of the American public supports QAnon, making it one of the least supported conspiracy theories typically polled on. Moreover, support for the QAnon movement has remained stable over time, with no indication of becoming “mainstream.” We also find that QAnon support is less the product of left-right orientations, as often argued, than anti-establishment sentiments and anti-social personality traits. We argue that politicians strategically trafficked in QAnon rhetoric to expand their support, simultaneously activating a once irrelevant dimension of public opinion.

The Introduction lays out the book. It introduces the concept of democratic discontent, explaining how it differs from milder forms of political displeasure and how it can manifest in different forms like populism, ethnonationalism, conspiracism, and antipathy to democratic regimes. It then briefly describes the conflict between economic and cultural approaches to discontent, showing that both make valid findings, yet neither hypothesis is totally consistent with existing research. To overcome this impasse, the chapter introduces the affective political economy theory of economics, emotions, and culture, where emotions induced by economic troubles prime large groups of citizens to embrace culturally discontented narratives; cultural discontent then produces various forms of discontent, based on local conditions. Finally, it lays out the book’s empirical approach, discussing the use of mixed methods to test the theory, including experiments, observational surveys, and qualitative analysis and comparison of cases; this section also justifies the case selections. This section advises different kinds of readers about which sections they might find most interesting and which might be less relevant, especially regarding statistically dense sections of the book.

This chapter serves two primary purposes. First, it establishes the book’s conceptual schema of political discontent. It identifies three ways in which discontent can manifest: against regime institutions (low regime support/regime antipathy), against the political elite (anti-elitism and populism), or even against reality (conspiracism). This section addresses conceptual debates in the study of each type of discontent, selecting or developing definitions according to set criteria. It also discusses the two primary ways discontent can influence behavior: through support for political outsiders and through contentious politics. Second, the chapter summarizes existing approaches to the study of discontent. It discusses shared elements of the global political order, especially neoliberal capitalism, liberal democracy, and more recently multiculturalism. Political discontent varies in form from case to case but is generally shaped by a rejection of one or more elements of this order. Reviewing the scholarship on each subtype of discontent, the chapter finds a recurring debate between economic and cultural origins. Neither approach can fully explain discontent, but neither can be ignored or disproven. As a result, the chapter concludes that a comprehensive theory must synthesize these two approaches.