book project

Varieties of Radicalism: The Colonial Origins of State-Opposition Conflict

Why do some opposition movements radicalize while others do not, even under similar conditions? Existing explanations emphasize proximate factors such as political inclusion, repression, or ideology, yet they produce contradictory predictions and struggle to account for persistent variation across cases. This book advances a different explanation. It argues that patterns of radicalism are shaped by structures of state-opposition conflict that originate in the colonial period. It develops a theory linking two colonial inheritances – the structure of opposition movements and the authority configurations of postcolonial states – to distinct trajectories of political competition. Social restructuring policies during the colonial era shaped whether opposition emerged in the form of disciplined or fragmented movements, while colonial military institutions and modes of sovereignty transfer produced different configurations of coercive and sovereign authority. The interaction of these inheritances after independence generates persistent misalignment between states and opposition actors, which consolidates into stable patterns of conflict over time that explain variation in the form and durability of radicalism. Drawing on a paired comparison of Egypt and Iraq and comparative historical analysis spanning the late colonial and postcolonial periods, the book shows how movements adopt divergent strategies under different structural conditions and offers a new framework for understanding radicalism across ideological and regional contexts.