Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog
Princeton University Press (March 2016)
The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent.
Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism?
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism.
Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
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Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at LSE.
Purchase this book from the publishers
An interview with author Steffen Hertog, in which he discusses this book, can be found here.
The book will also be the subject of an event taking place in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building on Wednesday 16 March 2016.
Reviews
"This magnificent treatise combines a deep concern for one of the grave problems of our age - the recruitment of jihadists intent on terrorizing the world - with a Sherlock Holmes approach to a solution. Arthur Conan Doyle might have named the story - had this been fiction - ‘the case of the engineers who barked too loudly.' As readers discover ‘who dunnit' and why, they learn to separate popular myths about Islamic terrorism from what makes jihadists tick."
David D. Laitin, Stanford University
"This book offers a detailed analysis of the curious overrepresentation of engineers in militant Islamist groups and presents a line of inquiry that is new to the field - namely the study of the relationship between political inclinations and personality traits. The book’s originality, sharp focus, and analytical rigor set it apart, and it is likely to become a classic on radical political activism."
Thomas Hegghammer, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment
"Why do so many members of violent radical Islamic groups have an engineering background? This book offers new data, interpretations, and explanations of recruitment to violent radical Islamic groups. Engaging and informative, it makes a significant contribution to the study of terrorism."
Scott Gates, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and University of Oslo