https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7167-4166
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ABSTRACT
A key issue for research in relation to terrorism is the level of support it has at the social level. This article studies which factors can explain the support for ETA in the Basque Country as a case study in order to understand the phenomenon. However, instead of studying Basque public opinion as a whole, it focuses on the electorate of the so-called Basque Patriotic Left, the political wing of ETA. We test it using regression analysis on public opinion data collected between 1995 and 2011, concluding that political-ideological factors are the most important ones while economic factors have no influence.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 If there is a general consensus in the academic literature on the definition of political violence, this is not the case for the definition of terrorism. This article will not enter into this debate. For example, see Herschinger (Citation2013), Schmid (Citation2004) or Weinberg et al. (Citation2004).
2 However, this consensus is not complete. See Mascini (Citation2006).
3 The literature on this aspect is quite extensive, including the Basque case. See for example, Reinares (Citation2001); Alonso (Citation2007, Citation2021); Fernández (Citation2016); White (Citation1993); Taylor (Citation1997); Rusell and Miller (Citation1977). A general view in Helmus (Citation2009).
4 The difference between active and passive support in Cherney and Murphy (Citation2019). Paul (Citation2010) prefers to differentiate between support and sympathy.
5 A comparison of support for various terrorist groups, including ETA, albeit with aggregated data and qualitative analysis, in Bhattachrya (Citation2017).
6 See Global Terrorism Database. https://www.start.umd.edu/research-projects/global-terrorism-database-gtd.
7 Data obtained from ‘The victims of ETA dataset’ (Juan March Institute).
8 For fatal victims, see ‘The victims of ETA dataset’ and López (Citation2015). For kidnap victims, see Llera and Leonisio (Citation2015).
9 Although there is a certain consensus on the unity of interests between ETA and the BPL, there are two currents of interpretation regarding the relationship between the two parties. One states that there was never an organic or structural relationship, although recognizing a unity of interests (see for example Justice, Citation2005, p. 296; Ubasart-Gonzalez, Citation2019; Sagardoy-Leuza, Citation2020). Another affirms categorically (mainly based on judicial resolutions) the coupling of them (see Llera et al., Citation1993; Fernández, Citation2010; Casquete, Citation2006, p. 51). This article does not enter into this discussion, as it is not relevant to the analysis.
10 There is no consensus on the territorial scope corresponding to the Basque Country. Basque nationalists consider that it comprises two autonomous communities of Spain (Basque Country and Navarre) and the so-called French Basque Country in France. For others, the Basque Country as such would be only the Spanish autonomous community with that name. This research only includes the public opinion of the autonomous community of the Basque Country or Euskadi. This is not due to any political or ideological positioning, but because the database used (Euskobarómetro) only carries out surveys in that autonomous community, excluding both Navarre and the French Basque Country.
11 The Euskobarómetro Research Team is linked to the University of the Basque Country. It has conducted biannual public opinion polls since 1995. www.ehu.eus/euskobarometro. It also has a broad database with surveys from previous years. In general, these are surveys of 1200 interviewees, although this number has varied on occasion depending on the context.
12 However, as we will see below in the methodology section, for the statistical models we can only use surveys from 1995 onwards.
13 See Figure A1 in the online appendix.
14 BPL voters are those who, in the Euskobarometro survey, declares that they have voted for the BPL in last regional elections.
15 In fact, ETA had practized indiscrimate terrorism also in the 70’s. What really happened in the 80’s was an increasing of this practice.
16 The BLP electorate was the most credulous with respect to ETA’s ceasefire. Thus, 83% of BPL voters believed that ETA’s readiness to lay down its arms was genuine, in contrast to 60% of the electorate in general (data obtained from Euskobarómetro, first wave of the year 2000).
17 In 1998, at the height of the ceasefire, the BPL obtained the best results in its history up to that point (224,000 votes and 14 of the 75 seats in the Basque parliament). Part of this increase in votes was related to the state of ceasefire, with the BPL obtaining new voters amongst those who believed that this political force would be the best to lead a peace process, see Criado (Citation2011, p. 504). In 2001 the BPL lost more than one-third of its votes and half of its seats. See Figure A2 in the online appendix to see the evolution of the share of vote of the BPL.
18 Unfortunately, we cannot test this hypothesis due to lack of proper data.
19 However, in other works James Piazza have not found relationship between terrorism and poverty. See for example (although with aggregate data), Piazza (Citation2006, Citation2009). For similar conclusions see also Abadie (Citation2004).
20 Unfortunately, we lack an objective indicator of social class.
21 For example Fair et al. (Citation2012) or Cherney and Murphy (Citation2019, p. 1061).
22 For a similar view see Mata (Citation1993).
23 However, it is true that some studies have not found relationship, for example: Kaltenthaler et al. (Citation2018, p. 812) or Piazza and Guler (Citation2019, pp. 12–13).
24 We have eliminated the November 2011 wave because by the time the fieldwork began ETA had laid down its arms definitively and we did not want this fact to influence the data.
25 In Table A1 in the appendix the results are reproduced with the ‘no answer’ option excluded. As we can see, the results are almost exactly the same.
26 The remaining responses are quite big, quite small, very small, no desire, indifference and no response.
27 We did not select fatal attacks, as is usually done, because of the small number of cases. In only 7.2% of cases there had been a murder in the respondent’s municipality in the year prior to the survey (10.7% in the two previous years). In any case, as we can see in Table A2 in the appendix, the results for the two previous years hardly vary.
28 In Table A2 in the appendix, we see that if we change this variable for the fatal attacks (over the previous two years) it still has no significance.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rafael Leonisio
Rafael Leonisio is an Assistant professor at the Department of Political Science in the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain.