Radicalization phenomena: Phase transitions, extinction processes and control of violent activities

TL;DR

This paper presents a mathematical model analyzing radicalization dynamics, showing how time-dependent interactions can suppress phase transitions and eliminate radical agents in population states.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized model with time-dependent transition rates to study radicalization, extending previous models with constant couplings.

Findings

Time dependence can suppress phase transitions.

Absorbing phase where radicals disappear can be destroyed.

Model reveals critical behavior changes due to temporal factors.

Abstract

In this work we study a simple mathematical model to analyze the emergence and control of radicalization phenomena. The population consisits of core and sensitive subpopulations, and their ways of life may be at least partially incompatible. In such a case, if a conflict exist, core agents act as inflexible individuals about the issue. On the other hand, the sensitive agents choose between two options: live peacefully with core population, or oppose it. This kind of modeling was recently considered by Galam and Javarone (2016) with constant pairwise couplings. Here, we consider the more general case with time-dependent transition rates, with the aim of study the impact of such time dependence on the critical behavior of the model. The analytical and numerical results show that the nonequilibrium active-absorbing phase transition can be suppressed in some cases, with the destruction of the absorbing phase where the radical agents disappear of the population in the stationary states.