Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe

This book argues that nationalist violence in developed countries is the product of unresponsive political elites and nationalists blocked from attracting supporters through legal channels. Political elites are prone to ignoring a regional polity when their clout in that region is negligible and they do not rely on the region's support to maintain their positions of power. Conversely, when nationalists cannot make inroads through legal channels, incentives for violence are ripe. Thus, when nationalists in postwar Europe found elites unresponsive, it was state repression that helped radicals build a new group of support around militant action. The larger this new constituency legitimizing violence grew, the longer the conflict lasted. The book elucidates this complex dynamic through a deft combination of theoretical modeling, statistical methods and comparative case studies from the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Northern Ireland, Sardinia and Wales.

1. Introduction; 2. The argument; 3. An empirical approach to nationalist violence in postwar Western Europe; 4. The Basque country vs Catalonia: prior mobilization and differences in responsiveness; 5. Northern Ireland vs Wales: the power of institutions; 6. Corsica vs Sardinia: prior autonomy and differences in responsiveness; 7. Conclusions, limitations, and extensions.

Luis de la Calle is Professor of Political Science at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE, Mexico City). Formerly a Research Fellow at the Juan March Institute of Madrid, he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the European University Institute of Florence. His work focuses on the dynamics of armed groups, with a special focus on terrorism. He has conducted extensive field research in Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, Corsica, Peru, and Mexico. His work has been published in journals such as the Annual Review of Political Science, the European Journal of Political Research, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research and Politics and Society.