Abstract
The idea of democracy is being championed across the world, with some fifty new countries embracing this type of political system between 1974 and 2011 (Freedom House Anxious dictators, wavering democracies: global freedom under pressure, Freedom House, Washington, 2016). Simultaneously, however, dissatisfaction has grown due to the perceived incapacity of democracy to deal with collective problems, hence the necessity to reconfigure it and redraw some of its principles. This paper links the analysis of the recent evolution of democratic systems with the trajectory of socio-political conflicts and the changing features of contemporary terrorism. It examines, therefore, two intertwined phenomena, namely the radicalization of democracy and the radicalization of the other. It concludes by stressing that encouraging dissent and heeding contentious claims made by social movements may be one way of mitigating both types of radicalization. Embedded in the tradition of critical criminology, this paper attempts to demonstrate that only by outflanking conventional categories of analysis can the criminological community aspire to grasp such thorny contemporary phenomena.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adonis, (2016). Violence and islam. Cambridge: Polity.
Badiou, A. (2016). Our wound is not so recent. Cambridge: Polity.
Balibar, E. (2016). Critique in the 21st century. Radical Philosophy, 200, 11–21.
Barlow, H. D. (2016). Dead for good: Martyrdom and the rise of the suicide bomber. London: Routledge.
Beck, C. J. (2015). Radicals, revolutionaries and terrorists. Cambridge: Polity.
Black, D. (2004). The geometry of terrorism. Sociological Theory, 22, 14–25.
Blum, G., & Heymann, P. B. (2010). Laws, outlaws and terrorists. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Blumer, H. (1998). Symbolic interactionism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Buc, P. (2015). Holy wars, martyrdom and terror. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bull, M. (2016). Softening up the state. New Left Review, 100, 33–51.
Camus, A. (1965). ‘L’homme revolté’, in essais. Paris: Gallimard.
Combs, L. (2013). Terrorism in the twenty-first century. London: Pearson.
Della Porta, D. (2013). Can democracy be saved?. Cambridge: Polity.
Derrida, J. (2002). Faith and knowledge: Two sources of “religion” at the limits of reason alone. In G. Anidjar (Ed.), Acts of religion. London: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (2003). Autoimmunity: Real and symbolic suicides. In G. Borradori (Ed.), Philosophy in a time of terror: Dialogues with Habermas and Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1954). The public and its problems. Columbus: Ohio University Press.
Fanon, F. (1965). Studies in a dying colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Freedom House. (2016). Anxious dictators, wavering democracies: Global freedom under pressure. Washington: Freedom House.
Freilich, J. D., & LaFree, G. (2015). Criminological theory and terrorism: Introduction to the special issue. Terrorism and Political Violence, 27, 1–8.
Gerges, F. A. (2015). ISIS: A history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Graeber, D. (2013). The democracy project. London: Penguin.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–1380.
Granovetter, M. S. (1982). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. In P. Marsden & N. Lin (Eds.), Social structure and network analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hassner, R. E. (2016). Religion on the battlefield. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Held, D. (2006). Models of democracy (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
Horkuc, H. (2009). Said nursi: Makers of islamic civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jessop, B. (2016). The state. Past present future. Cambridge: Polity.
Kennedy, H. (2016). The caliphate. Harmondsworth: Pelican.
Lynch, M. (2015). The new Arab wars: Uprising and anarchy in the middle east. New York: Public Affairs.
Machiavelli, N. (1970). The discourses. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Martin, G. (2010). Understanding terrorism. Challenges, perspectives and issues. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McDonald, K. (2013). Our violent world. Terrorism in society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The staircase to terrorism. A psychological exploration. American Psychologist, 60(2), 161–169.
Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London: Verso.
Piazza, J. A. (2017). Repression and terrorism: A cross-national empirical analysis of types of repression and domestic terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 29, 102–118.
Rawls, J. (1972). A theory of justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ruggiero, V. (2006). Understanding political violence. A criminological analysis. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Ruggiero, V. (2010). Armed struggle in Italy: The limits to criminology in the analysis of political violence. British Journal of Criminology, 50(4), 708–724.
Ruggiero, V. (2017). Dirty money. On financial delinquency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ruggiero, V., & Montagna, N. (Eds.). (2008). Social movements: A reader. London: Routledge.
Sacks, J. (2015). Not in god’s name. Confronting religious violence. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sen, A. (2015). The country of first boys and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Small, T. (2016). Wars of religion. Times Literary Supplement, 23 September, Middle East Special Feature, pp. 1–12.
Tilly, C. (2004). Social movements. Boulder: Paradigm.
Tilly, C. (2007). Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Todorov, T. (2014). The inner enemies of democracy. Cambridge: Polity.
Toscano, R. (2016). Il tempo della paura. Micro Mega, 2, 119–128.
Urry, J. (2014). Offshoring. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Victoroff, J., & Kruglanski, A. W. (Eds.). (2009). Psychology of terrorism: Classic and contemporary insights. London: Psychology Press.
Walklate, S., & Mythen, G. (2016). Fractured lives, splintered knowledge: Making criminological sense of the january, 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. Critical Criminology, 24, 333–346.
Walzer, M. (2015). The paradox of liberation. Secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions. London: Yale University Press.
Weisbrod, B. (2002). Fundamentalist violence: Political violence and political religion in modern conflict. International Social Science Journal, 54, 499–508.
Whiteside, C. (2016). New masters of revolutionary warfare: The islamic state movement (2002–2016). Perspectives on Terrorism, 10, 6–20.
Wills, G. (2016). My koran problem. New York Review of Books, pp. 16–19.
Witte, R. (1996). Racist violence and the state. London: Longman.
Acknowledgements
Funding has been received from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 700688.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ruggiero, V. The Radicalization of Democracy: Conflict, Social Movements and Terrorism. Crit Crim 25, 593–607 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9373-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9373-8