The Constraints Hypothesis: Rethinking Causality in Deradicalisation, Disengagement and Reintegration Pathways. A Complex Systems Perspective

Abstract

This paper re-frames the concept of causality in deradicalisation, disengagement and reintegration pathways. Analysis of the theories and frameworks in counter-terrorism research indicate that prevalent causal models offer reductive explanations of human behavior, revealing the absence of a scientifically credible account of how agents undergo transformation in pathways out of terrorism. To address the problem of causality, I borrow from the thought bank of complexity theory and reconceptualise causality as the operation of “constraints.” The paper then goes on to operationalize the concept of constraints for counter-terrorism researchers and practitioners, laying down a new and preliminary conceptual framework for thinking about how people leave terrorism behind.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Tina Christensen for her invaluable feedback on an early version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The ideas expressed in this paper are those of the author. They do not reflect the views and position of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) where the author works. Any errors/omissions in this article are his alone.

Notes

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2 Rogelio Alonso, “Why do terrorists stop? Analyzing why ETA members abandon or continue with terrorism”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 34 (2011), 696–716; Ashour 2009; Mary Beth Altier, Emma Leonard Boyle, Neil D. Shortland & John G. Horgan, “Why they leave: An analysis of terrorist disengagement events from eighty-seven autobiographical accounts”, Security Studies, 26:2 (2017), 305–332; Bjorgo and Horgan 2009; Gordon Clubb, Social Movement De-Radicalisation and the Decline of Terrorism: The morphogenesis of the Irish Republican Movement (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Neil Ferguson, “Disengaging from Terrorism: A Norther Irish Experience”, The Journal for Deradicalisation, 6 (2016): 1–23; Julie Hwang, “The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists: Understanding the pathways”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 29:no. 2 (2017): 277–295; Fernando Reinares, “Exit from terrorism: A qualitative empirical study on disengagement and deradicalization among members of ETA”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 23 (2011): 780–803.

3 Adrian Cherney, “Evaluating interventions to disengage extremist offenders: A study of the proactive integrated support model (PRISM)”, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, (2018): 1–21; Daniel Koehler, Understanding Deradicalisation: Methods, Tools and Programmes for Countering Violent Extremism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Bart Schuurman and Edwin Bakker, “Reintegrating jihadist extremists: Evaluating a Dutch initiative, 2013–2014”, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 8 (2016): 66–85; Tinka Veldhuis, “Designing rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for violent extremist offenders: A realist approach”, ICCT Research Paper (2012); David Webber, Marina Chernikova, Arie W. Kruglanski, Michele J. Gelfand, Hettiarachchi, Rohan, Marc-Andre Lafreniere, Jocelyn J. Belanger, “Deradicalizing detained terrorists”, Political Psychology, 39, no. 3 (2017)” 539–556.

4 Kate Barrelle, “Pro-integration: disengagement from and life after extremism”, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 7, no. 2 (2015): 129–142.; Sarah Marsden, Reintegrating Extremists: Deradicalisation and Desistance. Basingstoke (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Daan Weggemans and Beatrice De Graaf, Reintegrating Jihadist extremist detainees: Helping extremist offenders back into society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).

5 Mary Beth Altier, Christian N Thoroughgood, John G Horgan, “Turning away from terrorism: Lessons from psychology, sociology and criminology”, Journal of Peace Research, 51 (2014): 647–666; Barrelle and Kira J. Harris Tina Christensen, A Question of Participation- Disengagement from the Extremist Right: A Case Study from Sweden, (PhD dissertation, Roskilde University, 2015);“E Gringart and D. Drake Leaving ideological groups behind: A model of disengagement”, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression,10, no. 2 (2018): 91–109.

6 Ashour 2009; Lorenzo Bosi and Donatella Della Porta, “Processes of Disengagement from PoliticalArmed Activism: A multilevel relational approach” in Researching Terrorism, Peace and Conflict Studies: Interaction, Synthesis and Opposition, ed. Tellidis, I. and Toros, H ((Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 81–99.

7 John Horgan, “Deradicalization or disengagement? A process in need of clarity and a counterterrorism initiative in need of evaluation”, Perspectives on Terrorism, 2, no. 4, (2008): 3–8; Alex P Schmid, Radicalisation, Deradicalisation, Counter-radicalisation: A Conceptual Discussion and Literature Review(Hague: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2013).

8 Anol Bhattacherjee, "Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices". Textbooks Collection. Book 3 (2012), 6.

9 Alexander Siegenfeld and Yaneer Bar-Yam, An Introduction to Complex Systems Science and its Applications, Physics and Society (New York: Cornell University, 2019), 1.

10 Ibid.

11 Bjorgo and Horgan 2009, 27.

12 Stig Hansen and Stian Lid, Routledge Handbook of Deradicalisation and Disengagement (Oxford: Routledge, 2020), 4.

13 James Khalil, John Horgan & Martine Zeuthen, “The Attitudes- Behaviors Corrective (ABC) Model of Violent Extremism”, Terrorism and Political Violence, (2019), 18.

14 Altier et al. 2014; 2017; Bjorgo 2009; Ferguson 2016; Hwang 2017.

15 Altier, et al. 2014, 5.

16 Ibid.

17 Bjorgo 2009, 36-40.

18 Altier et al. 2014, 9.

19 Tina Christensen and Tore Bjorgo, “How to manage returned foreign fighters and other Syria travellers? Measures for safeguarding and follow-up”, Center for Research on Extremism: The Extreme Right, Hate Crime and Political Violence (University of Oslo, 2017), 38.

20 Khalil et al 2019, 14.

21 Altier et al. 2014, 11.

22 Marsden 2017.

23 Barrelle 2015.

24 Koehler 2017.

25 Schuurman & Bakker 2016, 3

26 Horgan 2009.

27 Ashour 2009; Barrelle 2015; Bertelsen 2016; Bosi and Della Porta 2015; Christensen 2015; Clubb 2017.

28 Khalil et al, 2019, 3.

29 Ibid, 17.

30 Ibid, 18.

31 Ibid, 19.

32 Ashour 2009; Audrey Kurth Cronin, How terrorism ends: Understanding the decline and demise of terrorist campaigns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Bosi and Della Porta 2015; Martha Crenshaw, “How terrorism declines,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 3(1), (1991): 69–87; Clubb 2017; Veronique Dudouet, “Dynamics and factors of transition from armed struggle to nonviolent resistance”, Journal of Peace Research 50(3), (2013), 401–413.

33 Hansen and Lid 2020, 3.

34 Manuel Delinda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London: Continuum, 2006), 4.

35 Ashour 2009; Bosi and Della Porta 2015; Clubb 2017.

36 Dudouet 2013.

37 Noemie Bouhana, The Moral Ecology of Extremism, A systemic Perspective. Prepared for the UK Commission for Counter Extremism, 2019.

38 Barabara Befani, “Models of Causality and Causal Inference”, in Broadening the Range of Designs and Methods for Impact Evaluation, working paper 38, eds. E. Stern, E., N. Stame, J, Mayne, K. Forrs, R. Davies, B. Befani, Department for International Development, (2012).

39 Ibid, 2.

40 Ibid, 3.

41 Ibid, 4.

42 For more on the problem of induction, I refer you to the “Turkey Problem”, in Nassim Talib, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (London: Penguin, 2010), 41. For the traditional philosophical treatment of the problem of induction, see David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, Section VI, London: Penguin Classics, 1985.

43 Bhattacherjee 2012, 10–12,

44 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 32 and 67

45 Andrew Glazzard, Improving the Evaluation of Interventions to Counter and Prevent Terrorism and Violent Extremism. (CT Morse Counter-Terrorism, EU, 2020), 8–10.

46 Befani 2012, 5.

47 Ibid, 14.

48 Ray Pawson, Causality for beginners, In: NCRM Research Methods Festival 2008 (Unpublished 2008).

49 Amy-Jane Gielen, “Exit programmes for female jihadists: A proposal for conducting realistic evaluation of the Dutch approach”, International Sociology, 33(4), (2018): 454–472, 460.

50 Marsden 2017.

51 Christensen 2015; Bertelsen 2016.

52 Khalil et al 2019.

53 Diana Meadows & Donella Wright, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, 1st ed (London: Earthscan Ltd, 2009), 91–92.

54 Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999), 46.

55 Ibid, 6.

56 Ibid, 48.

57 Yaneer Bar-Yam, The Dynamics of Complex Systems, The Advanced Book Programme (Reading Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

58 John R. Turner and Rose M. Baker, Complexity Theory: An Overview with Potential Applications for the Social Sciences, Systems 2019, 7, 4; doi:10.3390/systems7010004

59 Kim Forss K, Mita Marra and Robert Schwartz (eds), Evaluating the complex: Attribution, contribution and beyond (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 10.

60 Esther Thelen and Linda Smith, “Dynamic Systems Theory”, in William Damon. and Richard Lerner, Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development (New Jersey: John Wiley &Sons, Inc, 2006), 259.

61 Meadows and Wright 2009, 188.

62 Bar-Yam 1997, 11.

63 Meadows and Wright 2009, 81.

64 Thelan and Smith 2006, 271.

65 Ibid, 21.

66 Siegenfield and Bar-Yam 2019, 4.

67 Meadows and Wright 2009, 18.

68 Ibid, 91.

69 Ibid, 92.

70 Ibid, 14.

71 Bar-Yam 1997, 528.

72 John Sterman, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modelling for a Complex World, (Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2000), 14.

73 Meadows & Wright 2009, 190.

74 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, Things that Gain from Disorder, (New York: Random House, 2012)

75 Juarrero 1999, 131.

76 Ibid, 3.

77 Ibid, 132.

78 Alicia Juarrero, “Causality As Constraint”, in Evolutionary Systems, eds. G. Van de Vijver et al. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 233.

79 Alicia Juarrero, “Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System”, in Emergence (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2020), 237.

80 Juarrero 1999, 133.

81 Juarrero 1998, 240.

82 Juarrero 2000, 234.

83 David Snowden and Alessandro Rancati, Managing Complexity (and chaos) in times of Crisis (Luxemberg: European Union, 2021).

84 Juarrero 1999, 137.

85 Juarrero 1999: 332

86 Juarrero, “Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behaviour as a Complex system”, EMERGENCE 2(2), 2000: 48.

87 Robert Tucker, “The Deradizalisation of Marxist Movements”, The American Political Science Review, 61, no. .2 (June 1967): 343–358.

88 Omar Ashour, ‘From Bullets to Ballots: Transformations from Armed to Unarmed Political Activism’, The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Doho: 2020), 10.

89 Stig Hansen, “Deradicalization or DDR? The challenges emerging from variations in forms of territorial control”, in Routledge Handbook of Deradicalisation and Disengagement, eds.Hansen, S. and Lid, S., (Oxford: Routledge, 2020), 82.

90 Hamed El-Said and Jane Harrigan, 2013, 270.

91 Ashour 2009, 106.

92 David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11,” Anthropoetics, 8, no. 1 (2002)

93 Alicia Juarrero, “Safe-Fail, Not Fail-Safe” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCXvGcHQ7w&t=169s, 2019)

94 Ashour 2009, 15-16.

95 Christensen 2015, 262.

96 Clubb 2017.

97 Ibid, 30.

98 Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qaida, (Santa Monica, RAND Corporation, 2008), viii- xi.

99 Marthaw Crenshaw, “How Terrorism Declines”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 3 (1), (1991): 69–87.

100 Bosi & Dell Porta 2015.

101 Veronique Dudouet 2013, 404.

102 Ibid.

103 Snowden and Rancati, 38.

104 Ibid.