Leader Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Terrorist Violence

Abstract

Whether or not nationalism fuels terrorist violence by ethnic groups is an important yet underexplored research question. This study offers a theoretical argument, empirical analysis and a case study. When political leaders such as presidents and prime ministers use nationalism to shore up legitimacy, they threaten the existence of disfavored ethnic groups. In turn, those groups are more likely to respond with terrorist attacks. The author tests this argument using a sample of 766 ethnic groups across 163 countries from 1970 to 2009. The multilevel mixed-effects negative binomial regression results provide evidence that leader nationalism is a significant driver of ethnic terrorism. The detrimental effect of nationalism remains the same after using a generalized method of moments method to account for possible reverse causality. A case study of Sinhalese nationalist leaders versus Tamil Tigers also supports the nationalism and terrorism nexus.

A Move Forward: Exploring National Identity Through Non-linear Principal Component Analysis in Germany

“…Hjerm 1998;Blank and Schmidt 2003;Huddy and Khatib 2007;Kunovich 2009;Berg and Hjerm 2010;Miller and Ali 2014;Gustavsson and Stendahl 2020;Mader et al 2020) or the relationship with other kinds of identities such as ethnic identities (e.g. Masella, 2013;Citrin and Sears, 2014;Molina et al 2015;Choi 2021). We contend that both the conceptual and the methodological inconsistencies by which the extant scholarship is marked mainly result from pursuing a deductive approach based on unspecific concepts and unclear theories.…”

“…Yet, given the vast scholarship on nationalism, we are well aware that there are myriad of definitions of nationalism in other research traditions (see e.g Gellner 1983, Kohn 1944. Billig 1995; Bonikowki 2017;Choi 2021;Choi 2022).…”

Learning from precedent: how the British Brexit experience shapes nationalist rhetoric outside the UK

“…Nationalist and isolationist political parties have become increasingly successful in the electoral arena (Colantone & Stanig, 2018a ; De Vries et al ., 2021 ; Trubowitz & Burgoon, 2022 ). 1 Nationalist parties use nationalism as a legitimation strategy (Choi, 2022 ; Ko & Choi, 2022 ) and tend to blame their voters’ and their country’s problems predominantly on developments originating abroad, such as migration, international trade, or international institutions that limit national sovereignty (Posner, 2017 ; Vasilopoulou et al ., 2014 ). As a solution, they usually propose policies that limit their country’s and their voters’ exposure to these developments, such as less migration, stronger borders, or fewer internationally binding agreements (Börzel & Risse, 2018 ; Choi, 2021 ; Hooghe & Marks, 2018 ; Kriesi et al ., 2008 ; Voeten, 2020 ; Zürn & De Wilde, 2016 ).…”

Terrorist campaigns and the growth of the Muslim population: a reply to Clara Egger and Raul Magni-Berton

“…I made clear that 'the study period is determined by the data availability on domestic and transnational terrorism' (footnote 9, p. 46). This is a common practice for justifying sample selection in the literature (e.g., Choi and James, 2007;Piazza, 2008;Choi 2021aChoi , 2021b). 2 In Model 2, Egger and Magni-Berton limit the sample data to a shorter period spanning from 1991 to 2007.…”