IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v132y2007i3p257-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding the development of fundamentalism

Author

Listed:
  • Gil Epstein
  • Ira Gang

Abstract

Fundamentalist organizations and the terrorists they spawn do not arise of a vacuum. Combating terrorism requires understanding the principles of groups’ formation, development and growth. We use economic theory to explain the creation and development of fundamentalist groups. In this paper we develop a theory of fundamentalism and terrorism under which leaders compete to enhance the level of observance of their followers. Our model explains the existence of competing fundamentalist groups and the increase in their intensity over time. Competition among fundamentalists makes them more extreme and may lead to terrorist activity.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Gil Epstein & Ira Gang, 2007. "Understanding the development of fundamentalism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 257-271, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:132:y:2007:i:3:p:257-271
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-007-9150-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-007-9150-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-007-9150-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandler, Todd & Enders, Walter, 2004. "An economic perspective on transnational terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-316, June.
    2. Eli Berman, 2000. "Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice: An Economist's View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 905-953.
    3. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, March.
    4. Laurence R. Iannaccone, 1997. "Toward an Economic Theory of "Fundamentalism"," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 153(1), pages 100-100, March.
    5. Dwight Lee & Todd Sandler, 1989. "On the optimal retaliation against terrorists: The paid-rider option," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 141-152, May.
    6. Epstein, Gil S. & Gang, Ira N., 2002. "Government and Cities: Contests and the Decentralization of Decision Making," IZA Discussion Papers 547, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Daniel G. Arce M. & Todd Sandler, 2003. "An Evolutionary Game Approach to Fundamentalism and Conflict," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 159(1), pages 132-154, March.
    8. Jack Hirshleifer, 1989. "Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: Ratio vs. difference models of relative success," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 251-262, Springer.
    9. Timur Kuran, 1989. "Sparks and prairie fires: A theory of unanticipated political revolution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 41-74, April.
    10. Lapan, Harvey E. & Sandler, Todd, 1993. "Terrorism and signalling," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 383-397, August.
    11. Iannaccone, Laurence R, 1992. "Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 271-291, April.
    12. Todd Sandler & Keith Hartley (ed.), 2003. "The Economics of Conflict," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, volume 0, number 2497.
    13. Nitzan, Shmuel, 1994. "Modelling rent-seeking contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 41-60, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Correani, Luca & Di Dio, Fabio & Garofalo, Giuseppe, 2009. "The evolutionary dynamics of tolerance," MPRA Paper 18989, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Alam Khan, 2018. "How does terrorism measurement matter of state-level of a country? Evidence from Islamic countries," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 883-898, March.
    3. Fan, Jijian & Friedman, Daniel & Gair, Jonathan & Iyer, Sriya & Redlicki, Bartosz & Velu, Chander, 2021. "A simulation study of how religious fundamentalism takes root," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 465-481.
    4. Cerqueti, Roy & Correani, Luca & Garofalo, Giuseppe, 2013. "Economic interactions and social tolerance: A dynamic perspective," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 458-463.
    5. S. Brock Blomberg & Gregory D. Hess & Akila Weerapana, 2004. "An Economic Model of Terrorism," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(1), pages 17-28, February.
    6. Robbert Maseland & André Hoorn, 2011. "Why Muslims like democracy yet have so little of it," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 481-496, June.
    7. Arce, Daniel G. & Sandler, Todd, 2009. "Fitting in: Group effects and the evolution of fundamentalism," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 739-757, September.
    8. Thierry Deffarges, 2003. "Sur la nature et les causes du terrorisme. Une revue de la littérature économique," Revue Tiers Monde, Programme National Persée, vol. 44(174), pages 369-392.
    9. Friedman, Daniel. & Fan, Jijian. & Jonathan Gair & Sriya Iyer & Bartosz Redlicki & Chander Velu, 2016. "How Fundamentalism Takes Root: A Simulation Study," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1681, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Patrick Mardini, 2015. "The Endangered Classical Liberal Tradition in Lebanon: A General Description and Survey Results," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 12(2), pages 242–259-2, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gil Epstein & Ira Gang, 2007. "Who Is The Enemy?," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(6), pages 469-484.
    2. Sriya Iyer, 2016. "The New Economics of Religion," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(2), pages 395-441, June.
    3. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, 2005. "Measuring terrorism," Chapters, in: Alain Marciano & Jean-Michel Josselin (ed.), Law and the State, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Anderton,Charles H. & Carter,John R., 2009. "Principles of Conflict Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521875578, December.
    5. Garfinkel, Michelle R., 2004. "Global threats and the domestic struggle for power," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 495-508, June.
    6. Epstein, Gil S. & Gang, Ira N., 2019. "Taxation and social protection under governance decentralisation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    7. Gil S. Epstein & Ira N. Gang, 2016. "Taxation, social protection, and governance decentralization," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-101, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Fan, Jijian & Friedman, Daniel & Gair, Jonathan & Iyer, Sriya & Redlicki, Bartosz & Velu, Chander, 2021. "A simulation study of how religious fundamentalism takes root," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 465-481.
    9. Friedman, Daniel. & Fan, Jijian. & Jonathan Gair & Sriya Iyer & Bartosz Redlicki & Chander Velu, 2016. "How Fundamentalism Takes Root: A Simulation Study," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1681, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Gil S. Epstein & Ira N. Gang, 2016. "Taxation, social protection, and governance decentralization," WIDER Working Paper Series 101, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Gil S Epstein, 2012. "Employer’s information and promotion-seeking activities," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 1(4), pages 21-32.
    12. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    13. Makowsky, Michael, 2009. "Religious Extremism, Clubs, and Civil Liberties: A Model of Religious Populations," MPRA Paper 14358, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kyung Hwan Baik & Jong Hwa Lee, 2013. "Endogenous Timing In Contests With Delegation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2044-2055, October.
    15. Li Han & Tao Li, 2021. "Marketing Communist Party membership in China," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(1), pages 241-268, July.
    16. Baik, Kyung Hwan, 1998. "Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 685-701, November.
    17. J. Amegashie, 2006. "A contest success function with a tractable noise parameter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 135-144, January.
    18. Pelosse, Yohan, 2011. "Inter and intra-group conflicts as a foundation for contest success functions," MPRA Paper 31468, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Apolte, Thomas & Müller, Julia, 2022. "The persistence of political myths and ideologies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Luis Corchón & Matthias Dahm, 2010. "Foundations for contest success functions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 81-98, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fundamentalism; Rent-seeking; Religion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:132:y:2007:i:3:p:257-271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.