INTRODUCTION

Political extremism is a multi-faceted, perplexing phenomenon. To gain some understanding, a useful first approach is to look at it dispassionately from a positive, as opposed to normative, standpoint: before asking whether extremism is good or bad for society, a preliminary question is whether and why it is good or bad for the extremists themselves. In this vein, this chapter views political extremism as a policy choice that a political organization, given appropriate circumstances, may find rational to make in the pursuit of its self-interested aims. This working definition' carries a number of implications that are worth stressing. First, the focus of analysis is not on individuals but on a particular kind of organization which, within the existing institutional framework, pursues political goals, and which will be called a political enterprise. Secondly, extremism is viewed as an observable form of behavior that is instrumental to some ends, not as a personality trait or a description of special individual preferences. Thirdly, no attempt is made at identifying a substantive content of extremism, or classifying policies (or platforms, or goals) into extreme and moderate categories. Rather, a turn to extremism may be thought of as redefining the (vector of) characteristic(s) of political activity in the direction of increasing its disutility to those engaged in it – by making its ends more difficult to achieve, or more distant in time, or by making the effort required more risky or more disagreeable.