This research identifies 57 European ethnopolitical groups’ mobilization in their respective domestic arena and abroad. I explore the factors that have prompted their transnational activism, as well as shed light upon the strategies that these groups employ to further their causes internationally.

Currently, there are two theoretical schools at debate regarding what prompts the occurrence of transnational mobilization. Supporters of the macro-structural thesisargue that the process associated with globalization has facilitated trans­national cooperation among groups that are promoting the self-determination cause. The micro thesis, by contrast, pays attention to the attributes inherent in each public interest group, such as group resources and ideologies.

Both theses offer important, but partial, explanations to the trans­national phenomenon that I am interested in exploring. In this research, I pro­pose a niche theory, borrowed from population ecology and human ecology to comprehend ethnopolitical contention. The kernel of my argument is that ethnic politics constitute a very unique and interesting ethnopolitical “ecology” where ethno­political groups, their agent organizations, and the decision-makers of its host state interact in a triadic relationship. An agent organization undertakes activism to negotiate or bargain an alternative settlement for the status of an ethnopolitical group. For agent organizations to continue their operation and to gain further bargaining power vis-à-vis state representatives, they need to have niches that can demarcate themselves and their ethnopolitical groups from other claim-making groups in a society.

Agent organizations usually have a variety of strategies to create their niches. For instance, they can raise the salience of the national self-determination issue. Transnationalizing the contention has the merit of raising such salience. De­cision-makers will assess the group’s degree of transnational activism to gauge how many constituents in the country desire a policy change in favor of the ethnopolitical group. Knowing the salience of the collective spirit, and fearing that the contention would continue to expand or even spill over to more corners of the world, state representatives might consider making concessions.

By quantitatively analyzing the primary data from the European Survey of Ethnopolitical Groups (ESEPG), I confirm that although some ethnopolitical groups have presented their issues in the international arena, the domestic realm is still the main locus for ethnopolitical contention to take place: Many European ethno­political groups are more active domestically than internationally. Many of the studied groups that have transnational activism also have domestic actions. This seems to imply that when groups are already active in tackling their national governments, they are also more likely to consider exploiting international channels to advance their interests.  

High salience of the national self-determination issue is necessary for ethnopolitical groups to consider taking transnational actions. But group resources, such as capitals, are even more significant for the occurrence of international actions. In addition, in many countries, ethnopolitical groups’ resources are not only dependent on the support of their members and sympathizers, but also on the buttress from governments, which are usually more endowed with resources. Accordingly, resources and domestic opportunity structures are often connected.

Lastly, while opportunities arising from the international level matter, their utility requires the justification of elites. International structures are important but not because of their pure existence, it is because domestic actors and international actors have looked to the utilities of international cooperation and networks that help spread their beliefs, create solidarities, and form leverages to make the changes that they desire. If international structures exist activists will try to exploit them; if not, they could seek to create some. This is why I see no global society, but only the exchanges of information, discourses, and resources among a large number of domestically-based actors and very few numbers of cross-countries regional and international institutions.We should move beyond the debate over micro thesis and macro thesis, but to search the linkages and pathways that weld these two types of factors together.

In my qualitative case studies of the Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus, Welsh in the UK, Corsicans in France, Russians in Estonia, and Bretons in France, I have presented some evidences of such linkages, but I believe more can be done to specify such linkages, both theoretically and empirically in future research.