Ingenieure neigen zu extremen politischen Ansichten. Nur wenn sie Muslime sind? Weshalb finden sich so viele Ingenieure unter der Islamisten? Eine Antwort auf diese Frage stellten sich Diego Gambetta und Steffen Hertog bereits 2007.

We consider four hypotheses that could explain this pattern. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible explanation of our findings, casting a new light on the sources of Islamic extremism and grounding macro theories of radicalization in a micro-level perspective.

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