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Electoral Geography 2.0 Home About Elections Articles Links Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs Peter R Neumann, July 2013 Though widely used by academics and policy-makers in the context of the 'war on terror', the concept of radicalization lacks clarity. This article shows that while radicalization is not a myth, its meaning is ambiguous and the major controversies and debates that have sprung from it are linked to the same inherent ambiguity. The principal conceptual fault-line is between notions of radicalization that emphasize extremist beliefs ('cognitive radicalization') and those that focus on extremist behavior ('behavioural radicalization'). This ambiguity explains the differences between definitions of radicalization; it has driven the scholarly debate, which has revolved around the relationship between cognition and behavior; and it provides the backdrop for strikingly different policy approaches - loosely labeled 'European' and 'Anglo-Saxon' - which the article delineates and discusses in depth.

American Diplomacy American Diplomacy is published in cooperation with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and its Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense and with the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. EDITOR: Csaba T. Chikes The IR Theory Home Page American Footprints The IR Theory Home Page American Foreign Policy Council - Home