CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Dzebo, Semir |
|---|---|
| Title | Ethno-nationalist Terrorism and Political Concessions: A Comparative Analysis of PIRA and ETA Campaigns |
| Summary | Wanting to assess what makes the difference between failure and success in terrorist groups’ campaigns, this research looks at two ethno-nationalist terrorist groups: Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). This thesis, unlike the majority of contemporary terrorism scholarship focused on religious terrorism, places the spotlight on ethno-nationalist terrorism as it is the type of terrorism most likely to succeed in obtaining political concessions. The research stems from the similarity between the PIRA and ETA cases, despite having ended differently. Employing historical facts and relevant literature, three plausible hypotheses are tested as possible answers to the research question. Each one is based around a different independent variable: goals, support, and strategy. Providing that the hypotheses may all be factors in the outcome, afterwards they are compared and ranked in terms of their explanatory value. Based on the findings, support appears to be the highest explanatory variable. The argument made in this thesis is that the difference in support was likely due to the nature of ethno-nationalist terrorism that is very dependent on its ethnic constituency. Moreover, this thesis argues that what presumably accounts for the difference in support, in these two cases, arises from the nature of violence in which the campaign is embedded. Consequently, it suggests that in face of indiscriminate attacks against civilians support from the terrorist group’s ethnic constituency is conditioned by the “tolerance limit” for violence that is contingent upon the level of violence the terrorist group’s ethnic constituency suffers from the state and/or other rival ethnic groups. |
| Supervisor | Sitter, Nick |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/dzebo_semir.pdf |
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