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Leader Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Terrorist Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2021

Seung-Whan Choi Open the ORCID record for Seung-Whan Choi [Opens in a new window]
Seung-Whan Choi*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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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.

Keywords

leader nationalismethnic identityterrorist violenceempirical analysis
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 1151 - 1167
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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