What drives ethnic terrorist campaigns? A view at the group level of analysis

Abstract

This article examines the drivers of terrorist campaigns waged specifically for the sake of ethnic identity groups. Terrorism scholarship has generally overlooked the ethnic dimension that some terrorist campaigns have in favor of building or testing theories applicable to all terrorist violence, regardless of ideological orientation. The research that does address ethnic terrorism attributes it either to a broad and vague notion of nationalism or to factors that might be idiosyncratic of a small number of cases. This study tests the causes of ethnic terrorism found to be of most theoretical salience: political and economic grievances with the host state and competition between the ethnic community’s elites for control over the group. It uses data at the ethnic group level of analysis, rather than the more common country level. In doing so, model results should offer improved explanations for the outcome of ethnic terrorism, linking group features, rather than country characteristics or subnational factors aggregated to the country level, directly to group terrorism. The results show that political grievances and elite competition increase the likelihood of ethnic terrorism, while economic grievances are not generally associated with this form of violence.