At a time when public debate focuses on the foreign and transnational origins of terrorism, Luis De la Calle’s book is an important reminder of Western Europe’s recent history of political violence that is domestic and nationalist in origin. From the Basque Country in Spain to Corsica in France and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, he argues that nationalist movements turned to violence, including terrorism, when faced with regional elites worried about losing power and political elites in each capital who did not see these regions as important. Nationalist movements in Catalonia, Sardinia, and Wales, in contrast, faced political elites with more incentives to be accommodative and, as a result, stayed within the realms of nonviolent and conventional tactics. Yet these divergent trajectories were not a given.
By means of historically rich case studies and cross-national statistical analyses, De la Calle offers an actor-centered account of variation in nationalist violence in settings where economic or political grievances meant that the potential for violence was relatively similar. His argument revolves around the relationships among political elites in each capital, nationalists in pursuit of greater self-determination for their group, and—introducing an often ignored actor—political elites in the region that is home to the nationalists.
Nationalists, the argument goes, are likely to mobilize supporters for violence when faced with unresponsive political elites and repression. Whether central political elites grant concessions to nationalists’ demands or, instead, resort to repression depends on their political relationship to regional elites. Herein lies the crux of the argument. If regional and central elites are from the same statewide political parties, they have incentives to cooperate, as their ability to win votes and remain in office are linked. Thus, if faced with a strong nationalist movement, regional elites aligned with central elites will try to extract concessions from the government in order to defuse the nationalist demands. Central elites, keen to keep support in the region, are inclined to comply. In turn, nationalists are less likely to mobilize violent support.
If, however, regional elites are politically autonomous, central elites are more inclined to respond to nationalists with repression, as the region is not important to them politically. Even if central elites were inclined to grant concessions, autonomous regional elites, concerned that nationalist gains would come at the expense of their own power in the region, will try to influence the central elites to resort to repression, which then allows the regional elites to hold on to power. Either way, nationalists are likely to turn to violence.
These different incentive structures explain the divergent trajectories of, for example, Wales and Northern Ireland, the author argues: “Wales, a core region for Labour and an attractive one for Tories, always had the Westminster radar monitoring it. Northern Ireland, in a remarkable contrast, was an electoral backwater for both major British parties. This lack of interest extraordinarily empowered hard-line Unionists who were unwilling to compromise with the Catholic moderates. As a result, heavy repression strengthened the armed actors and radicalized the conflict” (p. 175).
Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe makes use of a mixed-methods research design to put the theoretical argument, modeled as signalling games, to a test. Based on a data set of 29 regions of Western Europe (and Québec) that have seen sustained nationalist mobilization, De la Calle first tests implications of his argument in cross-sectional statistical (and Boolean) analyses. Then follows paired comparisons of cases that did and did not turn violent: the Basque Country versus Catalonia, Northern Ireland versus Wales, and Corsica versus Sardinia. Some of these cases may be well-known to readers—Corsica and Sardinia less so, which is a nice touch—but the book’s strength lies in the comparative analysis. The focus on Western Europe in the study of political violence is well taken (in the tradition of, for example, Donatella della Porta’s Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany, 1995). As the concluding chapter makes clear by considering how the argument extends beyond Western Europe (to the Kurdish struggle in Turkey and the Kosovo conflict in Serbia), there is room in our field for more systematic comparison of cases that at first sight might look rather different.
The empirical meat of the book are the paired comparisons aimed at elucidating causal mechanisms, drawing on both primary and secondary sources. For example, central to understanding how the relationship between central and regional elites affects the nationalist movement is the information advantage held by regional elites. Although central elites can assess the nationalist threat in a region based on intelligence and surveys, regional elites on the ground are likely to be better informed, and central elites often rely on their opinion. As such, if autonomous regional elites fear that nationalists would gain the upper hand in their region, they can use their information advantage to downplay the support for the nationalists in order to prevent central concessions or fuel repression. The case studies help demonstrate how this played out—for example, De la Calle points to the way that the British government’s lack of information about Northern Ireland in the late 1960s shaped the decision-making process—although the empirical discussion could have more explicitly guided the reader through the evidence and how it speaks to the theoretical mechanisms in the model.
De la Calle’s account of nationalist violence is a welcome departure from a more standard bargaining model that focuses on states and their nationalist challengers as the key players. Where recent books have challenged this model by emphasizing the dynamics among actors within nationalist movements (see Wendy Pearlman’s Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 2011, and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham’s Inside the Politics of Self-Determination, 2014), the book under review highlights regional elites as a critical link between nationalist actors and central political elites. Combined, these insights suggest that our understanding of nationalist violence can benefit from further research on intramovement dynamics and how they shape or are shaped by regional elites and their relationship to the elites in the capital.
The role of statewide political parties in linking regional and central elites resonates well with existing research on comparative federalism (notably, Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shvetsova’s Designing Federalism: A Theory of Self-Sustainable Federal Institutions, 2004). Indeed, the contention that concession in the form of decentralized decision-making could help prevent nationalist violence, “provided the statewide parties remain competitive at the regional level” (p. 238), speaks to ongoing debates about the role of political parties and decentralized governance in containing separatist conflicts (for example, Dawn Brancati, Peace by Design: Managing Intrastate Conflict through Decentralization, 2009, and Kristin M. Bakke, Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec, 2015).
Given that concessions are key to avoiding nationalist violence, it might be worth exploring whether all types of concessions are made on the basis of the same cost–benefit calculation. The ultimate choice made in De la Calle’s formal model is between central repression and concessions—and then nationalist mobilization for violence follows or not (which is what is tested in the statistical analyses). Repression ranges from indiscriminate repression against nationalists (think of Bloody Sunday) to doing nothing, and concessions include a variety of measures, such as fiscal transfers, political autonomy, and bills protecting a regional language. Yet even in the presence of statewide party links to regional elites, is it the same for central elites to concede to nationalists demanding official status for their language, regional power-sharing institutions, or fiscal autonomy that might starve the central government for resources for redistribution? This question suggests an avenue for further research that would allow the author’s argument to speak more directly to debates about institutional design and conflict.
The account offered by De la Calle in Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe is compelling, making the case that regional elites are an often ignored yet crucial set of actors who shape government actions and nationalist violence.
