An Economic Theory of Violent Extremist Religious Sects

In contrast to the extant club-theoretic literature on religiously motivated terrorism, this paper articulates a theory of violent extremist religious sects (VERSs) that explicitly incorporates a supernatural motive for religiosity. This approach is in deference to the widely acknowledged primacy of the desire to procure supernatural rewards as a motive for religiosity and is motivated by the need for a more fulsome explanation of the marginal impact of religiosity on the efficacy of VERSs than is available in the extant club-theoretic literature. The explicit incorporation of a supernatural motive in this paper dictates that VERSs should be treated as faith intermediaries and the resulting theoretical analysis explains a trifecta of observations about VERSs and religiously motivated terrorism that hitherto have not been explained within a single unifying framework. In particular, the theory yields internally compatible explanations for: the location of any given religious sect in violence space and thereby the evolution of religious sects from benign to violently extreme; the mechanisms via which the commitment enhancement technologies VERSs deploy enhance commitment of their operatives; and the marginal impact of religiosity on VERSs’ efficacy which explains their high lethality relative to that of their secular counterparts