Armed Organisations and Their Milieus: The Terrorist Organisation ETA and the Basque Independentist Voters

The Basque terrorist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) has been one of the most influential armed organisations in the European continent. For decades it had a very strong capacity to influence both Basque and Spanish politics. Nevertheless, in the last decade its strength has declined notable and in September 2010 declared a ceasefire that was followed by its renounce to the use of the armed struggle one year later. In this paper we study the link of the power of ETA as an active organisation with the response of the Basque society to the use of violence with a political motivation. Our study analyses the history of the terrorist group and its activity and confronts it with the evolution of the Basque public opinion to find a parallel between the declining support of the armed organisation and the increasing number of Basques that consider that the use of violence is not legitimate to defend the creation of a Basque state. In order to do that, we will study data from public opinion studies series (Euskobarometer) describing the evolution in the perception about violence of Basques, political phenomena in the Basque Country (such as ceasefires and negotiations) and electoral support of the political parties aligned with the armed organisation. Studies on terrorism and terrorist groups tend to place most of the attention on the reasons that explain the appearance of these groups and strategies or on the impact that the use of non-conventional violence has for politics and societies in different parts of the world. It is a paradox that the demise of terrorist organisations has studied much less profusely. With the exception of a few seminal works (Crenshaw, 1991; Cronin, 2009) little attention has been paid to the reasons or conditions that make difficult the continuation of an armed struggle to achieve some political goals. This type of studies are critical in a time when the use of terrorist violence is threatening numerous states and governments and societies are engaging in an offensive in order to eradicate this social phenomenon. In the paper we are going to use approach to the use of violence that considers that terror is an act of communication and in which the relation between the armed group and its public is absolutely fundamental to understand the success or failure of the terrorist group and we are going to assess how the relation between the Basque terrorist group ETA and its public, the Basque society, has evolved as the activity of the armed group has continued.