Selling Violent Extremism

Danny Klinenberg

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series from Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California

Abstract: Why do people join domestic violent extremist organizations? This paper examines an understudied reason: organizational outreach. I study how the inflow of new members to the Oath Keepers, America’s largest paramilitary organization, is affected when the group’s leadership employs three tactics: showcasing their ideological zeal through armed standoffs with the government, membership discounts, and sports sponsorships. Using a variant of the synthetic control method, I find that standoffs increase new memberships by 150 percent, discounts increase new memberships by over 60 percent, and sports sponsorships decrease new memberships. Membership is less responsive in counties with higher income inequality, but is more responsive in politically conservative counties. The findings provide new insights into ways extremist groups attract potential recruits.

Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; Far-right extremism; recruitment; push-pull factors; causal inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2rj4t2rh.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:globco:qt2rj4t2rh

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series from Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().