COMPETITION IN THE MARKET FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE: NORTHERN IRISH REPUBLICANISM, 1969–1998 VOLUME ONE OF TWO A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By John Paul Sawyer, M.A. Washington, D.C. December 8, 2010 Copyright 2010 by John Paul Sawyer All Rights Reserved ii COMPETITION IN THE MARKET FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE: NORTHERN IRISH REPUBLICANISM, 1969–1998 John Paul Sawyer, M.A. Thesis Advisor(s): George Shambaugh, Ph.D., Elizabeth Stanley, Ph.D., Bruce Hoffman, Ph.D. ABSTRACT There has been considerable debate within the literature about how competition influences violent political organizations (VPOs). Applying economic theories of competition to the production of violence by terrorist or other VPOs yields considerable insight into their strategic behavior. Subversive groups cannot survive and continue to operate without a reservoir of political support, both active and passive, within the constituent base they claim to represent. These constituents exchange their support for the groups‘ violence when it is perceived to advance a preferred political agenda. However, violence also generates opposition from those constituents who perceive violence to be misguided, counter-productive or illegitimate. VPOs seek to maintain or increase their power within the constituent community by choosing the type and amount of violence that maximizes support and minimizes opposition. As such, VPOs are subject to the same forces of supply, demand and competition as firms in a market. Indeed, a qualitative time-series analysis of Republican groups in Northern Ireland finds typical market strategies employed, including attempts at product branding, productive outbidding, and reductions in violence by monopolistic groups. As the Northern Irish case demonstrates, violent monopoly power is an understudied but critical path to decreasing the levels of violence and achieving comprehensive conflict resolution. iii Acknowledgments I am extremely grateful for the support and assistance of so many family, friends, and colleagues over the years, far beyond those specifically mentioned here. I am especially thankful for the encouragement, suggestions, and deep engagement—not to mention patience—from the members of my committee, George Shambaugh, Elizabeth Stanley, and Bruce Hoffman. I could not have asked for better mentors. I am also deeply grateful to my fellow graduate students, Tricia Bacon, Daniel Baltrusaitis, Hamutal Bernstein, Elizabeth Grimm-Arsenault, Sharyn Morin, and Sarah Neufeld for the incalculable contributions they provided to the dissertation and, more importantly, for believing in me throughout. I would not have survived without you. And without the editing work of Renee and Jeff Hood, this would have been a far inferior product, assuming I would have been able to make all the deadlines. I would like to thank Dominic Bryan, Richard English, Jessie Blackbourn, Audra Mitchell, and Kacper Rekawek for making Queen‘s University-Belfast such a welcoming institutional home away from home. I am also grateful to Ross Moore for guiding me through the copious collections housed at the Linen Hall Library. Moreover, I was enormously blessed by the warm hospitality of George Durazzo and Sandra Halin-Adams, John Douglas, Paul and Barbara Cardew, Annika-Nestius-Brown, and all of my new friends in County Down. I am very grateful to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) for supporting my research from the beginning. I iv especially want to thank Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kathleen Smarick, and Victor Asal for helping me to find a vocation and launch a career. I would also like to thank Gary Ackerman and my colleagues at START for their understanding and many kind words of encouragement. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my family for the endless support and (mostly) quiet encouragement to push through the rough times and finish the dissertation. My parents, Robert and Julie Sawyer, fostered a sense of curiousity in me and always encouraged me to explore one layer deeper to understand why and how things work. I am grateful to all of my siblings for a their tangible and intangible contributions, but especially my sister, Leah Gomez, for editing so much of what had to be an extremely painful rough draft. Finally, I am forever indebted to my amazing wife, Christina, whose love, support, and belief in me never wavered—even when we were separated by an ocean. v Table of Contents ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... iv ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................ xiii FIGURES .................................................................................................................. xiii TABLES ..................................................................................................................... xv PART I: Theoretical Methodology ................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: Theory ................................................................................................. 10 I. Defining Political Violence ................................................................................. 12 II. The Political Economy of Violence ................................................................... 15 A. Downsian Models of Political Competition.................................................... 17 B. Model Modifications ....................................................................................... 20 C. Supply and Demand ........................................................................................ 24 1. Demand for Violence ................................................................................... 25 2. Supply of Violence....................................................................................... 28 3. Disrupting the Normal Market ..................................................................... 32 D. The Five Forces of Competition in the Production of Political Violence ...... 35 1. Buyer Bargaining Power .............................................................................. 36 2. Supplier Bargaining Power .......................................................................... 38 3. Threat of Substitute Goods .......................................................................... 39 4. Rivalry between Existing Firms ................................................................... 41 5. Threat of New Entrants ................................................................................ 44 vi III. Testable Hypotheses ......................................................................................... 48 IV. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 51 CHAPTER 3: Methodology ....................................................................................... 54 I. Methodology........................................................................................................ 54 II. Case Selection .................................................................................................... 56 III. Potential Cases .................................................................................................. 59 IV. Measuring the Variables ................................................................................... 63 A. Dependent Variables ....................................................................................... 65 B. Control Variables ............................................................................................ 66 C. Independent Variables..................................................................................... 68 1. Supplier Power ............................................................................................. 68 2. Substitute Threat .......................................................................................... 69 3. New Entrant Threat ...................................................................................... 70 4. Rivalry .......................................................................................................... 71 PART II: Historical Narrative ........................................................................................ 72 CHAPTER 4: Background to the Troubles ................................................................ 74 I. Anglo-Irish War and Partition ............................................................................. 75 II. Irish Civil War.................................................................................................... 78 III. Northern Ireland ................................................................................................ 81 IV. Civil Rights Movement .................................................................................... 84 CHAPTER 5: Opening the Market ............................................................................. 93 I. The Genie Out of the