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Like other ethno-religious movements within France, the ideology of Corsican nationalism began at a time of growing economic and administrative homogenisation at the level of the nation state. However, the emergence in 1976 of identity-based political violence organized by a politco-military entity (the FLNC) has transformed the nature of this conflict from that of its ethno-cultural origins to a conflict between the state and part of its periphery. Underground action has become the cornerstone around which both moderate and radical political organisations have had to position themselves. In 1998, the assassination of the regional Prefect, Claude Erignac, has also deeply destabilized all the local political "games" linked to the party system. The ambition of this article is to explain these organisational or political changes that have been caused either directly or indirectly by a form of terrorist violence which goes to the heart of the sub-system of nationalist and regionalist political representation.