Terror and tolerance: The use of ballots, bombs and bullets by ethnoregional movements in advanced industrial democracies

This article presents a structural account for the variation in the forms and extent of violence employed by ethnoregional movements in Western democracies by examining the variation in the use of violent tactics by ethnoregional movements in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec, Euskadi and Northern Ireland. The differences among the cases are explained by state reinforcement of ethnic political identities usually through repression, a party system that resists rather than absorbs political change, and blocked opportunities for political mobility among ethnic movement radicals. These in turn are dependent upon the historical conditions that define state strategies for expanding their own authority.