From Ressentiment to Radicalisation: Towards an Integrative Framework.

Department seminar with Mikko Salmela, Senior Researcher in Political Science and Practical Philosophy, University of Helsinki.

In a recent review of existing studies on radicalization, Knorr et al. (2025) argue that radicalization research is fragmented across disciplines, emphasizing the need for a cohesive framework.

In this presentation, I suggest that the emotional mechanism of ressentiment (Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Salmela, von Scheve, & Sharafutdinova, in press) can provide such a framework. I start with a critical review of existing theories of radicalization. These include the staircase model of Moghaddam (2005), the quest for significance theory of et al. (2022), the uncertainty identity theory of Hogg (2016), the unfairness judgments model of van den Bos (2018), and the integrative model of Borum (2014).

I argue that while these theories lay out several potentially relevant factors of radicalization, they fail to provide evidence on the combination of relevant factors and their causal order in the process of radicalization (Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2018; Knorr et al., 2025). Then I introduce existing research that has identified ressentiment as a driver of radicalisation.

This includes studies on Islamic and other forms of fundamentalism, fanaticism, extremism, and radicalism (Abraham & Barreto, 2024; Capelos et al. 2024a,b; Griffin, 2012; Katsafanas, 2022; Kaya, 2026; Langman & Morris, 2003; Lewis, 2003; Mishra, 2017; Posłuszna & Posłuszny, 2015). Finally, I show that a new understanding of ressentiment as an emotional mechanism that explains dynamic interactions between emotions, values, and identities of individuals and groups can integrate existing theories of radicalization under a cohesive framework that also provides a causal model to the process of radicalization.