Complementary Explanations

This chapter examines how the strategy of programmatic coordination turns the identities, grievances, and ambitions (greed) commonly invoked to explain substantial secessionist campaigns into substitutable motivations with which campaign cadres work to construct support for the goal of independence. The tactical-logistical opportunities that are often added to explain the resort to violence are for national-secession campaign leaders remote considerations when armed victory over the central government is an unrealistic operational objective. Introducing variables from these more common explanations into the statistical analysis introduced in Chapters 5 and 7 yields results that are substantially weaker than those for the cues to programmatic authenticity and realism.