Who Supports Violent Extremism in Developing Countries? Youssouf KIENDREBEOGO & Elena IANCHOVICHINA The World Bank IEA world congress Mexico City, June 20, 2017

Table of Contents Motivations Data and definition Empirical strategy Results and robustness Conclusions

Motivations Widespread concerns about rising violent extremism Extremism has important direct costs in terms of casualties... ...but also substantial indirect economic costs

Literature limited to country case studies Emergence of sectarian organizations & proliferation of madrasas have led to sectarian radicalism (Zaman 1998; Silber & Bhatt 2007) No single terrorist personality (Hudson, 1999) Socioeconomic factors provide limited explanation for radicalization in Saudi Arabia (Hegghammer, 2006) Terrorist recruits in the US tend to be young & relatively uneducated (Jenkins, 2011) Radicalization occurs in a context of group identification or from the intergroup conflict dynamics (McCauley and Moskalenko, 2008) Employment and wartime violence in Iraq (Shaver, 2016) Poverty and support for militant politics (Blair et al. 2013) Literature review from 8 Arab countries: extremism is a result of a mix of internal and external factors: resource dependence, tribalism, inequality, authoritarianism, and corruption (Walters et al., 2013)

This paper Uses a unique dataset, the Gallup World Poll, to study the factors explaining radicalization at the individual level Cross-country framework to address the external validity problem Uses an empirical strategy accounting for simultaneity and endogeneity problems

A glance at the data Overall, the incidence of radicalization is pretty low: 7.7% of respondents completely justify attacks targeting civilians ...

A glance at the data …but varies widely across countries….

Radicalization rates across regions over time Radicalization rates are higher in SSA and SA Until recently the incidence of radicalization in MENA was low and comparable to the rates in other middle-income regions Escalation in radicalization rates in MENA in recent years

…and prevalence tends to be higher in poorer countries

Methodology Simultaneity between economic welfare and radicalization: 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋 1𝑖 𝛽 1 + 𝜀 1𝑖 (1) 𝑌 2𝑖 ∗ = 𝛾 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ +𝑋 2𝑖 𝛽 2 + 𝜀 2𝑖 (2) Y1i and Y2i are economic welfare and radicalization, respectively 𝑋 1 and 𝑋 2 contain common covariates: income, age, employment, education, country, locality, and wave fixed effects But each equation includes specific regressors as instruments: In (1) we have Nb children under 15 (age dependence) and city economic conditions In (2) we have strength of religious beliefs and sacrificing one’s life for beliefs Additional controls: country-level incidence of conflict, as exposure to wartime violence; indexes for community attachment, community basics, civic engagement and satisfaction with freedom to choose

Empirical Strategy Simultaneity between economic welfare and radicalization: Bivariate ordered probit 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋 1𝑖 𝛽 1 + 𝜀 1𝑖 (1) 𝑌 2𝑖 ∗ = 𝛾 𝑌 1𝑖 ∗ +𝑋 2𝑖 𝛽 2 + 𝜀 2𝑖 (2) 𝐸 𝑋 1𝑖 𝜀 1𝑖 =𝐸 𝑋 2𝑖 𝜀 2𝑖 =0, 𝐸 𝜀 1𝑖 𝜀 2𝑖 =𝜌 If 𝛾=𝜌=0, then (1) and (2) can be estimated separately using UOP If 𝛾=0 and 𝜌≠0, then the system can be estimated using a SUR If 𝛾≠0 and 𝜌≠0, then the system should be estimated using a FIML

Sample composition, 2006-2012 Region Country Sample size East Asia & Pacific Indonesia Malaysia 1683 1431 Europe & Central Asia Azerbaijan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan 676 786 643 Middle East & North Africa Algeria Egypt Iraq Lebanon Qatar Tunisia Yemen 950 960 628 634 730 749 678 South Asia Afghanistan Bangladesh India Pakistan 810 1411 3175 666 Sub-Saharan Africa Burkina Faso Chad Comoros Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Somaliland Tanzania 920 1860 740 1765 902 1885 543 1817 958 1837 Total 30787

Bivariate Ordered Probit estimates Coefficients SE Income (#) Age (#) Age (#), squared Female Single, never married -0.101*** 1.061*** -0.151*** -0.024 1.09e-03 [0.036] [0.314] [0.046] [0.032] [0.027] Employment status (ref. category ‘unemployed’) Employed part time want full time Employed part time do not want full time Employed full time for self-employment Employed full time for an employer -0.022 -0.099*** -0.127*** -0.089*** [0.058] [0.039] [0.024] Highest education level (ref. category ‘elementary or less’) Secondary to 3 year of tertiary 4 years of tertiary and beyond -0.126*** -0.306*** [0.037] [0.055] Instruments for radicalization Religion is important (=1) Sacrificing one's life for beliefs -0.184** 1.317*** [0.074] [0.111]

Robustness checks Region-specific estimates Alternative estimators: Univariate Ordered Probit, Bivariate SUR, Fully Observed Recursive Mixed-Process Endogeneity issues Robustness to additional controls

Concluding remarks: Profile of the typical radicalized individual Younger than average Less educated than average Unemployed Less religious than average Willing to sacrifice his/her life for beliefs In some specification with reduced samples we find additionally: Belongs to the bottom 20% of the income distribution Not satisfied with the freedom to choose what to do with his/her life Results may vary across regions and from country to country

Thank you for your attention Questions?