LA RÉPRESSION, FACTEUR D’ANNIHILIATION DU TERRORISME OU DE SA RADICALISATION ? LE CAS DU CONFLIT BASQUE
REPRESION, WAY OF ANIHILATING TERRORISM OR OF RADICALIZING IT? THE CASE OF THE BASQUE CONFLICT

Summary/Abstract: Faced with a terrorist movement, the authoritarian or democratic power deploys a repressive response. At certain times, it was massive against the armed group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). To study its effects on the group’s operationality, we used two original databases (ETA actions, arrests of its activists). Statistical analysis underlines that the most intense deployments of police repression had a radicalising effect on the Basque national liberation movement, whether under authoritarian or democratic regimes until at least the 1980s, and that this radicalisation phenomenon does not occur at the end of a protest cycle as a backlash against its exhaustion. The effectiveness of repression is only real when it is not only police-related but also judicial, and when it is supported by transnational cooperation.

• Details
• Contents