ABSTRACT
The violence exerted by peripheral nationalist movements almost always differs from that of movements in vertical societies in the Third World which exert control over parts of the territory belonging to the state against which they are fighting. The exceptional factors which unleash violence are often related to serious events such as changes of system of government, decolonisation, fragmentation of states, persecution of ethnic groups; in these cases, the theory of relative frustration is less applicable. When violence intervenes in the formation of a new identity, the community's self-recognition intensifies, and the entrance into a new world of values takes on the nature of a "conversion". The identity construction by the armed group and the legitimating community should be understood as a process mirroring the nation-state, but a warring state, characterised by a concentration of power. The ideology and identity dimension has specific characteristics in violent nationalist movements, and its elements form a more unified Gestalt than in non-violent movements.
