From armed group to movement: armed struggle and movement formation in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country

Abstract

In recent decades, social movement scholars have expanded our understanding of ‘terrorism’ by analyzing a particular trajectory, movement to armed group, whereby movement demobilization spurs armed struggle. This article analyzes an alternative trajectory: armed group to movement. Once armed struggle’s limitations become apparent, armed groups often adopt an attritional military strategy suited to their capacities. To securely wage an attritional campaign, groups disembed through the adoption of insular structures, removing them from their milieux and from recruits and resources needed for organizational reproduction. To offset this, armed groups reembed through the development of politico-military movement structures: forming allied aboveground movement organizations; coordinating armed and unarmed activism; and creating a ‘movement’ identity. This offsets disembedding in three ways. First, collective action augments armed groups’ violence by expanding the struggle into new domains. Second, mobilized support provides armed groups political legitimacy, countering the ‘terrorist’ label. Third, aboveground movement organizations assist in recruitment, alliance-formation, public communication, and mobilization, facilitating armed groups’ organizational reproduction. This paper investigates the strategic decision to adopt movement structures by analyzing documents produced by militants linked to the IRA and to rival ETAs, ETA Politico-Military and ETA Military, allowing for the exploration of different aspects of the decision to adopt movement structures. From Irish republican texts, insights into the basic benefits of movement development are gleaned. Basque separatist documents, on the other hand, provide perspectives on the nature of interorganizational centralization and coordination within politico-military movements.