The role of the terrorist constituency in state-terrorist conflict. The case of the Irish hunger-strikers

Most terrorism research has over the years been directed to programs that deal with the effectiveness of counterterrorist policy or the terrorists themselves. In the last years researchers have begun to stress the importance of the role of the population during terrorism crises, raising questions about the societal and cultural dynamics set in motion by the terrorists’ acts and threats. Especially, the milieus from which terrorists spring and the networks they function in have come into focus. Terrorists need people around them not only to provide new recruits and to deliver all sorts of practical assistance, but also they need them as a resource of justifications for their struggle. Without at least a nod of recognition and respect from this societal surround, which is their first audience, they will find it hard to sustain their efforts. Most terrorism researchers focus on the direct environment of terrorists but to study the workings of this environment as a resource of justifications of the struggle and as the terrorists’ main reference group, researchers have to look at a broader circle around the terrorists, including groups and individuals that have no direct connections to the hard-core of a terrorist movement, but is nevertheless considered by the terrorists, by others, such as state authorities and the media, and potentially also by themselves to be their first audience. Here this section of the population is termed the terrorist constituency. The lack of attention to this constituency can also allow for the fact that the question why some terrorist movements are able to survive long-term while others die out has not satisfactorily been answered so far. The centrality of the issue of popular support is not directly surprising. Almost all terrorist groups are unable to overcome state power by sheer force, their success is thus entirely dependent on their ability to convince (a part of) society of their interpretation of power relations and thus generate sufficient support among the population for their objectives. If we have to speak of a competition between the terrorists and the state over popular support, it is clear that society as such has to be regarded as an actor in itself, whose response to the narrative and actions of the terrorist group and of the state are crucial. This paper will propose this new approach in terrorism studies and test its potential and validity by investigating the reaction among the Irish population to a range of hunger strikes between 1917 and 2016, with a concentration on the period 1970-1981. For this it will look at debates in the broadly defined constituency over whether they consider the terrorist strategy to be legitimate, i.e. in accordance with their political objectives, norms and values, and secondly whether they consider the terrorist strategy to be expedient. The constituency include all those who share certain views about the ideal structure of society with the terrorist organisation and who are potentially receptive to its ideology and the messages implicit in its acts.