This paper focuses on one such environment. Its principal goal is to highlight the theoretical connections between a society's ethnic cleavages; the development of ethnopolitical activity, especially organized violence and terrorism; and the implications of this activity for the functioning of institutions in 'democratic' and 'nondemocratic' societies. A related objective is the identification of policy responses to latent or manifest ethnopolitical activity and an assessment of their potential efficacy. These points are illustrated by examining a small ethnic group, the South Moluccans in Holland, which would appear to have had little motivation to engage in violence or terrorism, but some of whose members nevertheless did. (Author abstract)