Higher education and violent revolutionary activism under authoritarianism: Subnational evidence from Iran

Abstract

Existing research shows that education reduces the likelihood of individuals’ participation in political violence and increases conventional political participation, such as voting. However, how does education affect political behavior in authoritarian contexts where opportunities for conventional political participation are limited or non-existent? Focusing on higher education, I argue that college education is likely to encourage violent revolutionary activism in authoritarian contexts because of two mechanisms. First, higher educational institutions facilitate social network-building and, as a result, make recruitment easier. Second, higher education increases expectations for political participation in authoritarian contexts where opportunities for institutionalized activity are often limited. The absence of peaceful paths for political engagement makes violent activism an appealing choice under authoritarianism. I use an original dataset of Iranian armed revolutionary activists in the 1960s and the 1970s to test the argument. I utilize quantitative and qualitative sources such as census data, biographical information, primary archival documents, and interviews with former revolutionary activists to explore why individuals engage in violent activism under authoritarianism and how education contributes to their decision to join armed anti-government groups. The findings suggest that higher education significantly increases the probability of individuals’ participation in armed revolutionary activism against authoritarianism.

Keywords

Education insurgency political violence Middle East violent revolutionary activism

Introduction

The relationship between education and political behavior is well established in the existing literature. The current literature on education and political violence mainly emphasizes the negative relationship between education and participation in insurgency. Previous research suggests that education reduces the likelihood of individuals’ participation in civil war because it affects the opportunity cost of conflict, promotes peaceful political participation, and creates a culture of tolerance (Østby et al., 2019; Thyne, 2006). Also, a vast literature demonstrates that education increases conventional political participation (e.g. voting) in democratic contexts (Hillygus, 2005; Nie et al., 1996; Verba et al., 1995; Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980). Yet how does education affect political behavior in authoritarian contexts where opportunities for conventional political participation are limited or non-existent?

This article aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by specifically focusing on the effect of higher education on violent revolutionary activism under authoritarianism where armed struggle has been an attractive method of resistance for dissidents (Blaydes, 2018; Laqueur, 2017; Wickham-Crowley, 1992; Wood, 2003). In this article, violent revolutionary activism refers to all types of armed activities (e.g. bombing governmental institutions or assassinating officials) conducted by anti-government groups in order to overthrow the existing political system. Revolutionary activists are those who join revolutionary groups and use violent methods to achieve their political goals.

The main argument of this study is that higher education is more likely to influence individuals’ decisions to join violent revolutionary groups owing to the presence of two concurrent mechanisms. First, educational institutions provide social networks for students and connect them to each other. These networks increase trust and facilitate information exchange, and help the formation of associations on the basis of shared beliefs. The existence of student networks facilitates recruitment for anti-regime organizations. Second, higher education exposes individuals to new ideas and increases their political knowledge. Exposure to new ideas can improve individuals’ knowledge of politics, change individuals’ beliefs or enable them to critically evaluate the government’s performance. Moreover, rising political knowledge encourages political agency and increases expectations for political participation. However, opportunities for political participation are often limited or non-existent in authoritarian contexts. Since institutionalized and peaceful paths for political engagement are blocked, violent activism against the government becomes an appealing choice under authoritarianism. As a result, higher education increases the likelihood of individuals’ participation in violent activism against autocratic regimes.

I use an original dataset of armed revolutionary activists in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s and utilize quantitative and qualitative sources such as census data, biographical information, primary archival documents, and interviews with former revolutionary activists, to explore the relationship between higher education and violent political activity. The findings show that higher education is significantly associated with participation in violent anti-regime activism.

This study contributes to the existing literature on education and political violence in three ways. First, existing research on education and civil conflict relies mainly on macro-level data (Østby et al., 2019). While previous studies have substantially contributed to our understanding of the education–violence nexus, country-level analyses face the problem of ecological inference. Cross-country analysis provides empirical evidence on the macro-level patterns but its aggregate nature limits its ability to capture the micro-level processes of participation in political violence. In this article, I use a combination of county and individual data on education and participation in political violence. Individual-level information attenuates the ecological inference problem. Second, I use archival research and also interview former revolutionary activists to gain a better understanding of participation in armed groups. Archival evidence provides detailed information on why and how revolutionary activists engage in armed resistance and sheds light on the micro-processes of violent mobilization in authoritarian contexts. Qualitative evidence also helps eliminate alternative explanations for the relationship between higher education and violent revolutionary activism. Third, I use three different education variables (literacy rate, high school, college education) to assess each variable’s independent impact on violent political activism. This is not new by itself as previous studies have used and compared different measures (Thyne, 2006); however, using different levels of education alongside archival documents and micro-level data further contributes to our knowledge of why higher education is central to the understanding of violent political action in authoritarian governments. Furthermore, I propose some new mechanisms to explain why higher education is more politically significant than other types of education.

Education and participation in political violence

Empirical macro- and meso-level studies generally suggest a negative relationship between education and civil conflict. These studies show that countries with higher levels of education are expected to be less likely to experience civil war (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Collier et al., 2004; Ishiyama and Breuning, 2012; Shayo, 2007; Thyne, 2006). Also, sub-national studies on civil conflict in El Salvador (Byrne, 1996; Hammond, 1996; Paige, 1998; Wickham-Crowley, 1992), Sierra Leone (Humphreys and Weinstein, 2008) and Turkey (Tezcür, 2016) suggest that lower levels of education are associated with participation in rebellion.

The literature offers four major explanations for the pacifying effect of education. First, education increases economic opportunities for individuals. As a result, participation in insurgency raises the opportunity cost and consequently reduces individuals’ interests in violence (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). Second, some scholars, especially among modernization theorists (Lerner, 1958; Lipset, 1959), argue that education encourages peaceful political participation and democratic stability. This is one of the reasons why the USA invested in building educational infrastructures in developing countries. Education was perceived to ward off the appeal of radical communist ideas (Gilman, 2003; Latham, 2010; Offiler, 2015). Third, investment in education for a large segment of population means inclusive investment in human capital. For example, if a government invests in literacy, it signals that it cares about the public’s interests. This could reduce grievances over exclusion and, as a result, discourage individuals from joining radical groups (Østby et al., 2019; Thyne, 2006). Finally, it is also argued that education promotes social tolerance and creates a culture of peace through teaching social principles that underlie good citizenship (Thyne, 2006).¹

In this article, I focus on the level of education and socioeconomic modernization under authoritarianism to explore the relationship between education and participation in armed revolutionary activism in authoritarian contexts. I explain why higher education, compared with the literacy rate and high school education, should be expected to affect individuals’ high-risk political behavior in authoritarian contexts. The discussion on the college experience in authoritarian regimes involves two major components: social networks and rising political expectations.

The impact of social networks on collective action has widely been discussed by social scientists (Krinsky and Crossley, 2014; Marwell et al., 1988). Educational institutions connect individuals to each other and increase the level of trust and cooperation. These networks provide information on the political attitude of individuals and pave the way for the formation of groups and associations based on shared beliefs and values. The establishment of groups that include like-minded people facilitates recruitment and mobilization for political organizations (Dahlum and Wig, 2019; Tilly, 1978).

While the role of educational institutions in network building is well known, the quality of educational social networks depends on how we measure education. If education is measured by the literacy rate, it is hard to argue that social networks affect participation in violent revolutionary groups. People can learn to read and write in primary schools or by attending government literacy initiatives that aim to increase basic literacy. Given the fact that individuals attend primary school in their childhood when they have no or little understanding of politics, it cannot serve as a network that promotes political mobilization. High schools as well as universities could provide students with diverse social networks. However, parental monitoring of social life is more likely to affect high school students, especially, in authoritarian countries where oppositional political activism could be extremely costly. Parental control is significantly reduced for college students for two reasons. First, the level of parental control decreases as the adolescent develops as an autonomous person (León-del Barco et al., 2019). Second, geographical mobility is an inseparable component of college life. Many individuals move away from home to attend university in a different city. This also diminishes the role of parents in students’ lives. As a result, social networks that are provided by university are more likely to affect the political behavior of individuals.

In addition to facilitating social networking, higher education produces higher levels of knowledge. There is a well-accepted idea that, in general, education increases individuals’ political knowledge (UNESCO, 2014). Educated individuals can evaluate governments’ performance and identify weaknesses and shortcomings. Furthermore, gaining a better understanding of politics increases individuals’ expectations of political participation. In fact, as people’s knowledge of politics increases, they become more likely to demand involvement in political decision-making processes (Dahlum and Wig, 2019). This is also consistent with the literature on voting behavior that explains education as a strong predictor of electoral turnout and political engagement (Milner, 2002; Stockemer and Rocher, 2017; Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980).

While the impact of knowledge on political awareness and rising expectations is well known, its link to the type of education requires further attention. If education is measured by the literacy rate, it is difficult to link it to political knowledge. The literacy rate, defined as the percentage of the population who can read and write, cannot necessarily be related to political knowledge. Knowledge of political issues should be conceptualized beyond the ability to read and write. In order to conceptualize political knowledge, we need to take into account the ability of individuals to read and understand sophisticated texts on different topics related to sociopolitical issues. If education is measured by secondary education, the causal link between education and violent activism is still difficult to establish for two reasons. First, reports show that high school students have little knowledge of politics (Lutkus et al., 1999). Second, in authoritarian contexts, where high-risk political behavior usually takes place, governments regulate national education to validate their world view and legitimize their rule (Abens, 2015; Korostelina, 2014). Thus, political knowledge at the high school level in authoritarian countries should not be expected to be translated into political awareness.

Political knowledge is mostly and usually acquired through higher education. While universities are often subject to constant scrutiny in authoritarian regimes, they still enjoy some degree of institutional autonomy. Teachers are usually able to introduce a wide range of reading materials to their students. For example, in South Korea, universities remained relatively autonomous and did not include government-sanctioned courses such as national ethics until 1970. When national ethnics was established as a required course in 1970, professors avoided teaching it as they found it incompatible with the pluralistic nature of university (Suh, 1988: 106–107). Also, students are more likely to obtain new political ideas during their college years as they socialize with individuals—such as college professors—who are likely to be well connected to the outside world. Therefore, universities are more effective environments for individuals to increase their knowledge of sociopolitical issues. This could significantly increase the political awareness of students and empower them to effectively evaluate their governments’ performance.

Relatedly, rising political knowledge in higher education creates expectations and increases individuals’ interest in political activity. However, if political expectations are not met, radicalization becomes a possibility (Gurr, 1970; Huntington, 1968). Empirical studies (Brockhoff et al., 2015) on terrorism show that education fuels terrorism only in countries where socioeconomic conditions are poor. The literacy rate, secondary school, and higher education all can increase individuals’ expectations. Yet it is reasonable to believe that when the level of education increases, the level of expectations should increase as well. Thus, an individual with a secondary school education should have higher expectations than those with only primary school education. Similarly, individuals with a college degree should have greater expectations than those with high school education. Given the limited number of higher education institutions and intense competition to advance to college education in many authoritarian countries, who often happen to be developing countries as well, higher education is significantly associated with greater expectations in these countries.

However, the institutional settings of authoritarian governments are often unable to meet the political expectations. Authoritarian governments usually suffer from the presence of simple and rigid institutions. These institutions are usually not able to adapt themselves as new conditions emerge after structural changes (e.g. a significant increase in the number of the educated class). In other words, when education levels rise, but opportunities for political participation do not expand accordingly, it creates tension between the growing educated class and the authoritarian government. When authoritarian rulers fail to effectively integrate the educated population into the political system or provide institutionalized forms of participation in politics, the likelihood of anti-government activism increases. As noted by Deutsch (1961), the inability of the government to sanction political participation could have destabilizing effects. Since institutionalized forms of political participation (e.g. voting in free and fair elections) are absent or very limited in authoritarian regimes, many individuals from the educated class turn to non-institutionalized forms of involvement in politics such as joining violent revolutionary groups in order to fight for a new political order. In fact, if authoritarian institutional arrangements do not meet the emerging and increasing political expectations of educated individuals and block all of the institutionalized forms of political participation, violent anti-regime activism becomes an appealing option.

Overall, college education provides diverse social networks and raises expectations for political participation. Consequently, in the absence of participatory political institutions in authoritarian systems to meet the political expectations of the educated class, individuals with higher education become more likely to turn to violent revolutionary activism.

Hypothesis. Higher education is expected to significantly increase the probability of violent revolutionary activism.

A question that arises here is that given the destabilizing effects of higher education, why would authoritarian governments not foresee how higher education might increase demand for political participation and activism ahead of time and limit college education to avoid that outcome? While some authoritarian governments might understand that higher education could have side effects such as anti-government activism, they are also aware that they need an educated population to build the human capital which is necessary for sustainable economic development. In other words, the benefits of higher education outweigh its drawbacks. For instance, the authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan highlights the need to invest in higher education for economic development (Hanson and Sokhey, 2020). Authoritarian governments might also hope to use different social control mechanisms such as repression and co-optation to deal with opposition activists that emerge from universities. For example, in China, the government has been able to effectively monitor university campuses to restrain student behavior (Perry, 2020). Therefore, in general, despite all of the potential political costs, many authoritarian governments prefer investment in higher education since they believe that its benefits outweigh its risks and that its disruptive effects are controllable.

Iran: authoritarian modernization and revolutionary activism

This section presents contextual information on the socioeconomic development of Iran during the 1960s and 1970s. It also discusses the reasons that make Iran a suitable case in studying the relationship between education and participation in violent political activism. This study takes a typical-case approach to case selection. In the typical-case approach, the researcher should select the case based on a set of descriptive characteristics and then explore causal relationships (Gerring, 2007). This article identifies Iran in the 1960s and 1970s as a country that exemplifies rapid economic growth and social change. These changes significantly increased the number of educated citizens under an authoritarian regime and in a short period of time.

The Shah ruled Iran as an “authoritarian modernizer” for 37 years, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. He made basic decisions on domestic and foreign policies in consultation with a small circle of trusted elites. Political authoritarianism, however, went hand in hand with economic development. Since 1949 the Shah’s government had started a comprehensive development plan to modernize the country. A crucial modernization plan was the White Revolution, initiated in 1963, that included a series of progressive social reforms including land distribution among peasants, workers’ profit-sharing, the enfranchisement of women, the fight against illiteracy and investment in public health, among others (Bill, 1970). In order to fight illiteracy, the government established the Literacy Corps, which mainly consisted of educated urban middle-class youth. It sent the Literacy Corps to the countryside to teach writing and reading to the peasantry. As Table 1 suggests, the literacy rate significantly increased over the 1956–1976 period. Whereas only 15% of the population was literate in 1956, the literacy rate increased to 47.1% by 1976.

Table 1.

The literacy rate in Iran: 1956–1976.

Year	Literacy rate (%)
1956	15.4
1966	29.4
1976	47.1

Figure 1 presents the annual number of different levels of educational attainment per 100,000 population from 1963 to 1974. The number of elementary school graduates went from 577 in 1963 to 1482 (per 100,000) in 1974. The number of high school graduates increased from 125 to 318 (per 100,000). Finally, the number of college graduates jumped from 18 to 96 (per 100,000), showing a 433% increase in a decade. All combined, the graduates of elementary school, high school, and universities went from 720 in 1963 to 1959 (per 100,000) in 1974.

Figure 1.

Number of graduates at different educational levels per 100,000 population: 1963–1974.

The data on the literacy rate and educational attainment suggests that Iran under the Shah underwent fundamental social changes. Just prior to the 1979 revolution, the country had completed rapid economic growth and fundamental social changes—what a historian (Abrahamian, 1982: 430) calls a “minor industrial revolution.” Yet political institutions remained fundamentally unchanged. While the new educated class asked for genuine political participation, the government failed to initiate a significant political modernization plan to increase its absorptive capacity (Abrahamian, 1982; Bill, 1970; Green, 1980). The significant increase in literacy rate and education enrollments resulted in upward social mobility and raised expectations of the educated class for political participation. At the same time, higher education institutions connected these politically aware individuals to each other. While the government implemented structural socioeconomic reforms, it failed to modernize its political institutions in order to integrate the new educated middle class into the political system. In fact, after the 1953 coup, the government increased the level of repression on non-violent activists and left little room for peaceful political activity. As Lichbach (1987) argues, when the level of repression on non-violence increases, the probability of peaceful political activism decreases. However, at the same time, it increases violent activism of opposition groups. Although the Shah established a one-party system in 1975 in order to generate popular support for his government through pseudoparticipation (Green, 1980), he barely changed the institutional arrangements and his regime’s actual integrative capacity. In other words, the one-party system did not change the personalist nature of the government. It was under these conditions that several underground armed organizations emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with the aim of toppling the government.

Data

The dataset includes two types of data. First, it provides biographical information on Iranian violent revolutionary activists (IVRA) at the individual level. Second, it contains socioeconomic indicators at the county level. I collected the data mainly from primary Persian sources. Below I briefly discuss data collection for both types of data and present more information on armed revolutionary groups.

The IVRA contains biographical information on 418 armed activists who joined three major violent revolutionary organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. The information includes individuals’ birth date, birth place, gender, age, organization, education, occupation, death date, and death place.

The first group is the Organization of Iranian People’s Self-Sacrificing Guerrillas (Sāzmān-e Cherikhāy-e Fadāyi Khalq-e Iran: FK), founded in 1971. The FK was formed by two leftist groups which had been founded in the 1960s. It was an underground Marxist–Leninist organization that launched an armed campaign against the Shah’s government in the 1970s. The organization engaged in a series of violent operations during the 1970s. It robbed banks, assassinated military leaders, bombed foreign interests in Iran, and killed members of the bourgeoisie (Behrooz, 2000). I collected information on the deceased members of the organization from an obituary called Memories: The Organizations’ Self-sacrificers from March of 1970 to 2016 [Yād-hā: Jān-feshānān-e Sāzmān az Esfand-e 1349 ta Sāl-e 1395], which was published by the organization (FK, n.d.-b).

The second organization is People’s Mojahedin of Iran (Sāzmān-e Mojāhedin-e Khalq-e Irān: MEK), established in 1965. Its ideology was a combination of Islam and Marxism (Abrahamian, 1992). The organization saw Islam and Marxism as compatible and employed revolutionary Marxist concepts to interpret the Quran and Islamic principles. MEK’s violent activities included the assassination of American military personnel in Iran.

The third group is Marxist Mojahedin, later called the Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class or Peykar. The group split from MEK over ideological disputes. Disappointed in religion’s potentials for revolutionary liberation, a group of MEK members left Islam for a secular leftist ideology and established an independent organization that later was called Peykar (Struggle). I gathered information on the members of MEK and Peykar from two sources. First, some data on the MEK was collected from an obituary called Those Who Chose Martyrdom [Ānha ke Shahādat ra Bargozidand], which was published by the organization (MEK, n.d.). Parts of the data on Peykar and the MEK were obtained from Ervand Abrahamian’s book, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin (1992).

Two potential biases on the revolutionary activists data need to be addressed. First, the data only includes individuals who joined major revolutionary groups. Given the scarcity of available biographical information, this study does not include small revolutionary groups who were active during the 1970s. However, it needs to be pointed out that the majority of revolutionary activists were recruited by these three organizations. Second, recording bias and selected revealing of information have long been a concern for conflict scholars (Drakos, 2007). Armed groups usually tend to underestimate their casualties and overestimate the government’s fatalities. However, in the context of the Iranian revolution, this should not be a concern. The revolutionary groups have strong incentives to highlight their sacrifices for the revolution in order to get credit for the fall of the Shah’s government. In fact, the discussion over who played the most crucial role in initiating the revolutionary movement and paying the price for the revolution has been subject to debate for decades among ex-revolutionaries. Thus, the armed groups’ strong incentives to highlight their role in the revolutionary movement is very likely to eliminate this source of bias.

The county-level dataset includes population, literacy rate, percentage of the population with high school education, percentage of college-educated individuals, the share of each sector of the economy (agriculture, services, and industry), and unemployment rate per county (Shehrestan). Socioeconomic data at the county level is collected from the 1976 Census [Sarshomāriy-e Omumiy-e Nofus va Maskan: Āban māh-e 1355] conducted by the Statistical Center of Iran. The dataset includes 160 out of 162 counties since information on two of the counties was unavailable.

Research design

This article examines the impact of education on participation in violent revolutionary activism. The dependent variable is participation in armed revolutionary groups. Violent revolutionary activism refers to all types of armed activities (e.g. bombing governmental buildings or assassinating individuals affiliated with the government) conducted by anti-government groups whose goal is to overthrow the government. Revolutionary activists are those who join revolutionary groups and use violence to achieve their political goals.² Participation in armed revolutionary activism is measured by the number of individuals in each county who joined an armed revolutionary group. The unit of analysis is county.

There are three independent variables: the literacy rate, high school education, and college education at the county level. These variables are measured by the percentage of individuals per county: percentage of literate individuals, percentage of individuals with a high school degree in the literate population, and percentage of individuals with a college degree in the literate population.

I also control for several variables that could affect political violence. The first control variable is population size. Existing research shows that large populations are associated with rebel recruitment and insurgency (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Fearon and Laitin, 2003). Population is the number of individuals living in a county in 1976. I used the natural log of population in the models. I also control for counties’ distance from the capital city. The literature suggests that rebels have an easier time for recruitment in remote areas since it is difficult for the central government to monitor and control those areas (Holtermann, 2016; Jones, 2017; Kalyvas, 2006). According to this perspective, individuals from counties in more remote areas are expected to join insurgent groups in greater numbers. Another control variable is the unemployment rate (logged for the analysis). Several scholars have found unemployment as a strong determinant of violence (Baglioni et al., 2008; Gould et al., 2002; Grogger 1998). Industrialization is also included in the model. From a Marxist perspective, the industrial working class is the main revolutionary force. For leftist revolutionary organizations, industrial workers are perceived to have significant revolutionary capacities. Hence, it is reasonable to expect insurgent groups to allocate their resources to revolutionary activism in localities with higher rates of industrialization in order to exploit what they perceive as the revolutionary capabilities of the working class. Industrialization is measured by the share of the industry sector in the economy of each county. The share of agriculture and services per county is also incorporated into the model. Finally, the presence of ethnic groups with prior experience of ethnic rebellion is included in the model since previous studies show that past political violence leaves a lasting legacy on identities and attitudes (Lupu and Peisakhin, 2017).

Statistical analysis

This section provides descriptive statistics at the individual level on the sociodemographic characteristics of activists and inferential statistics at the county level to test the hypothesis (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Demographic characteristics: total population vs. revolutionary groups.

Figure 3 compares the percentage of gender distribution, rural and urban population, and college education of the total population to members of revolutionary organizations. The most striking difference between the two population groups is the percentage of people who had college experience. While 80% of revolutionaries had college experience (they had a college degree or were studying in college), only less than 2% of the total population had earned a college degree in 1976. The difference in the percentage of urban and rural populations is also meaningful. Whereas 48% of the total population lived in cities in the mid-1970s, 93% of the revolutionaries came from urban backgrounds. In terms of gender distribution, female members made up 12% of armed revolutionary organizations. I conducted a difference in proportions test (reported in the Online Appendix) to see if the differences are meaningful. The results show that the differences in all demographic categories are statistically significant.

Figure 3.

Occupational status of revolutionary activists.

Figure 3 presents the occupational status of revolutionary forces, compiled from available information for 319 revolutionary activists. Almost 50% of violent activists were students when they joined their respective organizations. Teachers and engineers together account for 18% of revolutionaries. Other high-prestige jobs such as university professors and physicians could also be found among revolutionary activists. While the revolutionary groups claimed to fight for the working class, they failed to appeal to workers. The data shows that workers make up only 5.3% of the activists. Also, people with low-prestige occupations such as blacksmiths, shop assistants, chauffeurs, and tailors compose 2.1% of revolutionaries. In general, the occupational status demonstrates that revolutionaries mainly were individuals with middle-class backgrounds.

To test the hypothesis, I use a negative binomial regression model. The negative binomial regression is used to model overdispersed count data when the mean is smaller than the variance. Since the mean of the dependent variable is smaller than its variance, the negative binomial is the most appropriate model for the data (see the Online Appendix for the distribution of the dependent variable).

Table 2 presents negative binomial regression results. Model 1 includes all three education variables as well as all control variables. The higher education variable is positive and significant. It suggests that higher education is a strong predictor of participation in violent revolutionary activism. Neither high school education nor the literacy rate is significantly associated with participation in political violence. Since three education variables are correlated, I ran Models 2–4 by including only one of the education variables in each of them in order to avoid multicollinearity. According to Models 2 and 3, the literacy rate and high school variables do not affect participation in armed political activism. Model 4 supports the hypothesis of the study that expects a meaningful relationship between higher education and participation in violent revolutionary groups. In addition to higher education, population is positively and strongly associated with the number of activists. Counties with larger population size show larger numbers of armed activists recruitment.

Table 2.

Regression results.

	Dependent variable:
	Recruitment
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
Higher education	0.34^**			0.19^*	0.32^**	0.20^*
Higher education	(0.13)			(0.10)	(0.11)	(0.08)
High school	–0.06		–0.003		–0.05
High school	(0.03)		(0.02)		(0.03)
Literacy rate	–0.01	0.01			–0.01
Literacy rate	(0.02)	(0.02)			(0.02)
Population (log)	2.20^***	2.80^***	2.80^***	2.40^***
Population (log)	(0.42)	(0.36)	(0.37)	(0.42)
Unemployment (log)	0.04	0.09	0.05	0.10	0.05	0.10
Unemployment (log)	(0.35)	(0.36)	(0.36)	(0.35)	(0.35)	(0.35)
Agriculture	0.02	0.03	0.04	0.05	0.01	0.05
Agriculture	(0.21)	(0.22)	(0.23)	(0.21)	(0.21)	(0.21)
Industry	0.02	0.03	0.04	0.05	0.01	0.06
Industry	(0.21)	(0.23)	(0.23)	(0.22)	(0.21)	(0.21)
Services	0.07	0.07	0.09	0.09	0.06	0.09
Services	(0.21)	(0.23)	(0.23)	(0.22)	(0.21)	(0.22)
Remoteness	–0.0004	–0.0004	–0.0004	–0.001	–0.0004	–0.001
Remoteness	(0.0004)	(0.0004)	(0.0004)	(0.0004)	(0.0004)	(0.0004)
Ethnicity	–0.10	–0.02	–0.10	–0.10	–0.10	–0.10
Ethnicity	(0.31)	(0.32)	(0.29)	(0.28)	(0.31)	(0.28)
Constant	–14.00	–19.00	–20.00	–19.00	–14.00	–19.00
Constant	(21.00)	(22.00)	(23.00)	(21.00)	(21.00)	(21.00)
Observations	160	160	160	160	160	160

Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Since population emerges as a significant variable in Models 1–4, I used it as an exposure variable in Models 5 and 6 to adjust the population effect and account for differences between counties’ population (Hox et al., 2010). Similar to Models 1–4, the exposure models also suggest that higher education is strongly associated with higher numbers of violent revolutionary activists. Other than higher education and population, no other variable shows a significant relationship with the outcome variable.

Table 3 presents the incidence rate ratios of Model 4, which shows how the independent variable affects the expected number of revolutionary activists. According to the incidence rate ratio, one percentage point increase in the percentage of educated individuals per county is expected to increase individuals’ participation in violent political activism by a factor of 1.20 if all other variables in the model are kept constant. In other words, a 1% increase in the educated population per county is expected to increase the number of armed revolutionary activists by 20%. The incidence rate ratio for the population variable is 10.52, suggesting that a one percentage point increase in the population size of a county is expected to increase individuals’ involvement in armed activism by a factor of 10.52.

Table 3.

Incidence rate ratios.

Variable	Incidence rate ratio
Higher education	1.20*
Population	10.52***
Unemployment	1.10
Agriculture	1.05
Industry	1.09
Services	1.05
Remoteness	0.99
Ethnicity	0.90
Observations	160

Note: *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Figure 4 shows the geographical distribution of revolutionary activists (red dots) and the percentage of individuals with higher education per county (graduated blue color). In general, the map does not suggest any regional pattern of activism. Tehran county has the largest number of revolutionaries with 93 activists. The two next counties—Tabriz and Mashhad—with the largest numbers of revolutionaries are located in the northwest and northeast of the country, respectively. As the figure shows, the next four counties—Boroujerd, Lahijan, Esfahan, and Shiraz—with the largest numbers of violent activists are spread geographically as well. In general, no regional clustering pattern of revolutionary activism emerges from the data.

Figure 4.

Geographical distribution of revolutionary activists and higher education.

One methodological limitation should be addressed. Since the unit of analysis for the regression models is county, this study faces the ecological inference problem. However, the sociodemographic information on revolutionary activists is consistent with the findings of the county-level analysis. The descriptive statistics show that the vast majority of revolutionary activists had college experience and came from middle-class backgrounds. Therefore, the individual-level data supports county-level regression results and mitigates the ecological inference problem.

Selective recruitment: an alternative explanation?

The demand side theory of recruitment in terrorism studies argues that politically violent groups tend to recruit individuals who have better education and skills. In particular, the literature on terrorist organizations’ recruitment suggests that terror groups prefer highly skilled and educated individuals because those individuals are more likely to succeed at the difficult responsibilities required of a terrorist operative (De Mesquita, 2005; Krueger and Malecëková, 2003). Building on this argument, one might argue that the presence of educated individuals in the revolutionary groups could be related to the demand side. In other words, these armed groups selectively recruited highly educated individuals in order to use their skills and knowledge to conduct high-quality anti-regime operations. If the revolutionary groups used this selective mechanism of recruitment, then the over-representation of educated individuals has little to do with political expectations, networks, political knowledge, and new ideas. Rather, these groups are composed of highly educated people because the leaders of the groups decided to recruit them.

To explore this alternative explanation, I interviewed two former revolutionary activists and sympathizers. Farrokh Negahdar, a revolutionary activist in the 1960s and 1970s and a member of the FK’s leadership committee in the late 1970s, explained that the organization did not have qualification requirements regarding education or skills. According to him, the only requirement in the process of selection was the ability of individuals to deal with the issue of death. In other words, the organization would recruit only those individuals who “were ready to take up arms when they are in danger or swallow cyanide [and commit suicide] and not be fearful of death. The reason that the FK chose the name Fadayi (self-sacrificer) was because of that: sacrificing yourself for the people, revolution, and the organization.”³ Negahdar, however, points out that after 1976, the organization came to the conclusion that it needed to recruit individuals with political knowledge and experience. As a result, it focused on individuals who had political experience and leadership abilities.

Amir-Hossein Ganjbakhsh, a revolutionary sympathizer, who had been in contact with revolutionary activists in the 1970s, explains that since the armed activism was an extremely high-risk behavior, the demand for this kind of activism was limited. Consequently, the revolutionary groups did not have the luxury of only recruiting skilled and highly educated individuals.⁴

In order to explore recruitment patterns over time, I analyze the available data. It will also help assess Negahdar’s comment on selective recruitment after 1976.

Figure 5 presents the recruitment of individuals with and without college experience by the FK group over the 1963–1977 period. While there is a consistent gap between college-educated and non-college-educated recruits, the gap narrows in 1976 and 1977. In other words, the ratio of individuals with college experience to individuals without college experience becomes smaller in 1976 and 1977. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the available data on recruitment year is limited and includes only 141 individuals recruited by the FK. While caution is required in interpreting the data, the available information suggests that the group has consistently been dominated by individuals with higher education experience. Also, it should be noted that the vast majority of recruitments took place before 1976.

Figure 5.

Recruitment by the FK: 1963–1977.

Another factor that could affect the patterns of recruitment is turning points in the history of revolutionary organizations. In order to understand whether turning points in the revolutionary movement affected the recruitment patterns, I conduct a regression analysis. The first independent variable is the pre-1971 period. I chose 1971 as a turning point since the year 1971 marks the beginning of the armed resistance. In 1971, a group of FK armed members attacked a police station in the small town of Siahkal in northern Iran. While the attack was crushed by security forces, it became a turning point in the history of the revolutionary movement. The purpose of armed attacks against the government was to inspire the masses and ignite a revolutionary uprising (Behrooz, 2000). Did this turning point inspire the masses (with no or limited education) to join the revolutionary movement? The regression analysis aims to answer this question. The second independent variable is the pre-1976 period. The second independent variable captures the new recruitment strategy by the FK that aimed to recruit more politically experienced individuals. Both variables are binary, coded 1 if recruitment was conducted after the turning points (1971 and 1976), 0 otherwise.

There are three dependent variables in this analysis to capture the educational background of recruits. The first dependent variable is whether the recruited revolutionary had college experience. This is a binary variable, coded 1 for activists with college experience and 0 for those without college experience. The second dependent variable is whether the recruited member was a student when they joined the organization. This is also a binary variable, coded 1 for students and 0 for non-students. The third dependent variable is educational attainment. This is an ordinary variable and coded 1–3 for individuals with elementary school, high school, and college degrees, respectively. I used logistic models for binary variables and an ordered logistic model for the educational attainment dependent variable given its ordinal nature. I used three different dependent variables for education to increase the robustness of the results.

As Table 4 suggests, no statistically significant relationship between independent and dependent variables emerges from the models. The results suggest that turning points in 1971 and 1976 did not significantly affect the organization’s recruitment pattern in terms of education. To re-emphasize, the available data on recruitment is limited and the findings should be viewed with caution.

Table 4.

Regression results.

	Dependent variable:
	College experience	Student	Educational attainment
	Logistic	Logistic	Ordered logistic
	(1)	(2)	(3)
Pre-1971	0.43	0.17	–0.42
Pre-1971	(0.43)	(0.34)	(0.56)
Pre-1976	–0.93	–0.38	–0.66
Pre-1976	(0.68)	(0.62)	(0.73)
Constant	1.20^***	0.21
Constant	(0.32)	(0.26)
Observations	153	156	141
Log likelihood	–76.01	–106.32
AIC	158.02	218.65

Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Archival evidence

This section presents qualitative, contextual information on Iranian revolutionary activists during the 1960s and 1970s. The qualitative information offers further evidence on the education–violence nexus and explains how the mechanisms—knowledge, social networks, and expectations—worked in the authoritarian context of Iran. To this effect, I examine books and pamphlets published by the leaders of the FK in the 1970s, and the secret police’s interrogation of the activists.

Following the August 1953 (28 Mordad) Coup,⁵ the Shah established a new secret police, SAVAK, and crushed non-violent resistance groups such as the National Front, founded by Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s prime minister who was overthrown during the 1953 coup. By the late 1950s, the Shah had succeeded in consolidating his power in the country, especially over the intelligentsia and the urban working class (Abrahamian, 1982: 420). The newly established secret police and the government’s determination to crush any kind of political dissidence left no room for non-violent and institutionalized political activism.

It was under these conditions that the idea of armed uprising gained popularity. An example is Bizhan Jazani, a guerrilla activist and one of the central figures of the revolutionary movement. Before becoming a guerrilla revolutionary, Jazani was a non-violent political activist and a member of the youth section of the Tudeh Party (Iran’s main communist party) in the 1950s. Since the mid-1950s, he had been in and out of prison (Abrahamian, 1982). Disappointed by the failure of non-violent political activism, he alongside a few other like-minded students at the University of Tehran, established a secret group. In addition to efforts to organize open political activities, the group also studied and discussed militant activism preparations (Vahabzadeh, 2010).

A few years later, SAVAK, Iran’s secret police, infiltrated the group and arrested most of its members, including Jazani. He then was sentenced to 15 years of prison in a military court. He wrote a series of books and articles on Iran’s sociopolitical situation when he was serving his prison sentence. In his book, titled Nabard ba Diktātori-e Shāh (Battle against the Shah’s Dictatorship), he criticizes non-violent activism by saying that “those who are waiting for the establishment of bourgeoisie democracy and opening of the path for free political activity, they are waiting in vain” (Jazani, 1979: 21). Then he suggests that the main reason for the necessity of armed combat against the regime is violent and stifling repression of the dictatorship (Jazani, 1979: 47). Also, during his interrogation, Jazani discussed the content of the revolutionary activists’ meetings. According to him, in their monthly meetings, they “examined peaceful and violent methods. Some people believed that all social rights are stripped. An example of this is the government’s violent repression of the National Front’s⁶ peaceful activities. These kinds of activities are fruitless and any public demand would be responded by violence. So people have no choice other than resorting to force. Therefore, open or semi-open political activism is impossible. The government has left no room for these kinds of activities” (Naderi, 2008: 70). They had come to the conclusion that given Iran’s political situation “victory is possible only by violent methods because there is no possibility of political activism and expanding the movement through public activities” (Naderi, 2008: 71).

Another important figure of the organization who played a major role in the armed struggle against the Shah’s government was Hamid Ashraf. In his pamphlet, An Analysis of One Year of Urban and Mountain Guerrilla Warfare (Tahlili az Yek Sāl Jang-e Cheriki dar Shahr va Kuh), he analyzes conditions that resulted in the initiation of the armed resistance. According to his analysis, when “any kind of activity by opposition forces was repressed by full-scale violence, and a massive amount of fear and humiliation on the masses and even intellectuals had caused heavy deterrence [on political activity], the Jangal group⁷ started its activities … The purpose of the group was simply to create armed encounters, hitting the enemy to break the stifling atmosphere in Iran’s political environment and showing to our hero people that the only way of fighting is armed struggle” (Ashraf, n.d.: 1). As the archival evidence suggests, the lack of opportunity for institutionalized and conventional political activism increased the appeal of armed resistance, especially among the intelligentsia whose demands for political participation were suppressed or significantly restricted by the government.

Higher education played an important role in the formation of the FK and shaping their political attitude. As pointed out earlier, universities can provide environments conducive to network building. They also increase individuals’ knowledge of domestic and global issues. Thus, students are able to update themselves with the most recent political developments in the world. A published book on the biographies of nine guerrilla activists by the FK (FK, n.d.-a) provides insightful information on the role of educational institutions in creating social networks and their impact on activists’ knowledge. According to the book, Abbas Meftahi, a young, religious activist, who later became one of the influential members of the FK, entered the University of Tehran in 1963. Before entering the university, Meftahi had an interest in Marxism, but he had maintained his religious beliefs (FK, n.d.-a: 7). Once he started to socialize with other leftist students, his interest in Marxism and radical movements became a real passion. Finally, in 1965, he left Islam for Marxism and became a revolutionary activist who believed that launching an armed struggle is the only solution to the full-scale repression of political dissidents by the government.

Two years after Meftahi’s admission to the University of Tehran, Amir-Parviz Pouyan, who later became one of the central figures in the FK, moved from the city of Mashhad to Tehran to start his college education. Similarly, Masoud Ahmadzadeh, another influential thinker of the organization in the late 1960s, moved from Mashhad to Tehran at the same time to start his undergraduate studies at the University of Tehran. They both had been active in religious clubs in their city before coming to Tehran. Once in Tehran, they became acquainted with leftist activists. They were also introduced to Meftahi through a mutual friend. Pouyan, Ahmadzadeh, and Meftahi established a reading group to study “revolutionary and philosophical” works. They also learned foreign languages in order to further their knowledge of armed resistance movements around the world (FK, n.d.-a: 8). Their studies mainly focused on successful revolutions, such as the Cuban and Chinese ones. Finally, Pouyan converted to Marxism in 1966. A year later, Ahmadzadeh adopted Marxism as well. In 1968, they established their underground revolutionary organization to initiate an armed movement against the government.

The evidence on the formation of the Pouyan–Ahmadzadeh group signifies the importance of educational institutions in creating social networks and gathering together like-minded people. It is also clear from the evidence that the reading circles and information exchange fundamentally changed activists’ beliefs, increased their knowledge of political ideologies and successful models of revolutions, and finally, contributed to their decision of adopting the idea of armed resistance. Furthermore, the archival evidence shows that political activists turned to violent methods of resistance when their expectations for peaceful political activism were not realized under a closed political system.

Concluding remarks

The findings from quantitative and qualitative evidence show the perils of higher education for authoritarian regimes. The results are consistent with the theoretical expectations of revisionist modernization theorists, such as Samuel Huntington (1968), who envisioned the destabilizing consequences of authoritarian economic modernization if implemented without effective political institutionalization. Archival evidence shows that anti-regime activists were drawn to radicalism because they found the Shah’s government unwilling to implement political reforms. Furthermore, the analysis of qualitative evidence demonstrates how exposure to new radical ideas on college campuses shaped activists’ perspective on political change. The documents suggest that radical leftist ideologies around the world in the 1960s and 1970s significantly influenced violent activists’ attitude. At the same time, colleges provided revolutionary activists with a diverse set of social networks that facilitated recruitment. In general, the college experience played a significant role in the radicalization of activists.

As pointed out earlier, the existing cross-national literature views education as a variable that discourages individuals from participating in civil conflict. The existing explanations on the pacifying effects of education implicitly assume that countries have an institutional environment conducive to peaceful activism and political participation (Croke et al., 2016). However, effective institutions for political engagement are absent in many countries. Qualitative and quantitative findings from this study suggest that higher education is strongly related to participation in violent activism under authoritarianism. The findings underscore the impact of specific institutional settings. Archival documents show that before starting armed activity, revolutionary activists were willing to engage in peaceful activism. However, because non-violent activism was not possible owing to what they call the “stifling atmosphere in Iran’s political environment,” those activists turned to violent activity. Therefore, when opportunities for political participation remain limited under modernizing authoritarian governments, higher education could have disruptive effects. In other words, the evidence supports the idea that authoritarian settings are more prone to anti-regime activism by highly educated individuals. This highlights the significance of political institutions in shaping individuals’ radical behavior. Recent empirical research on competitive authoritarianism (regimes with a combination of formal democratic institutions and autocratic practices) demonstrates that education decreases noncontentious forms of political participation such as voting (Croke et al., 2016). Thus, further attention to the impact of the institutional environment on the education–violence nexus is needed in future research.

While this article provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between education and political violence, caution should be exercised in interpreting the results for two major reasons. First, the quantitative data provides information at a single point in time. It does not test changes in education over time. In other words, the data does not provide evidence on the temporal relationship between education and participation in political violence. Therefore, a time-series analysis that focuses on changes in education and its effect on revolutionary activity could enhance our inferential abilities on the relationship between higher education and political violence. Second, this article only examines leftist and leftist-religious revolutionary groups. It does not include militant religious activists given the lack of access to data. Future research may focus on ideological differences between revolutionary groups (e.g. religious vs. leftist) and explore whether education affects different ideological organizations differently.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. I would also like to thank Henry Thomson, Margaret Hanson, Babak RezaeeDaryakenari, Reed Wood, Roya Izadi, and Arash Beheshti for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank Tirdad Bonakdar and Shahin Zeinali for their help with the qualitative section of the article. All errors are mine.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research is partly supported by the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University.

ORCID iD

Peyman Asadzade

Notes

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