New Challenges for Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties

Eve Hepburn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415571814
• eBook ISBN: 9781317965954
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Throughout Europe, stateless nationalist and regionalist parties have moved from 'niche' actors in party systems to mainstream political players. No longer the 'outsider' in party politics, these parties have successfully entered government at the regional and state levels and many have been responsible for pushing the agenda for radical constitutional change in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and France.

However, the transformation of these parties from peripheral movements to established parties of government does not come without its problems. Whilst these parties were once able to focus on the single issue of self-determination, they have been forced to change their strategies, alter their behaviour and compromise on their principles in order to succeed in an era of electoral volatility, partisan dealignment and multi-level governance.

This book explores how stateless nationalist and regionalist parties across Western Europe have responded to the twin challenges of multi-level politics (i.e. operating at the regional, state and European levels), and a multi-dimensional policy space, whereby they must articulate policy proposals alongside their territorial demands. Written by leading experts in the field, this is a cutting-edge collection of theoretical, analytical and empirical work on the challenges currently facing nationalist and regionalist parties in Europe.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Regional and Federal Studies.

Explaining Regionalist Party Positioning in a Multi-dimensional Ideological Space: A Framework for Analysis

EMANUELE MASSETTI

Politics and Contemporary European Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

ABSTRACT This contribution proposes an analytical framework for explaining regionalist parties’ ideological positioning in the multi-dimensional political space. It focuses on three ideological dimensions: centre–periphery, left–right and European integration. Positioning along the first two dimensions is explained in terms of socio-structural characteristics of the regions and the incentives posed by institutional/political environments. Then mutual influences between positioning on the three different ideological dimensions are discussed. The structural characteristics of the regions are particularly useful in locating the main regionalist party in each region to the left or right of centre and, to some extent, in explaining centre–periphery radicalism. Voting systems and the dynamics of (multi-level) party systems help us to explain political fragmentation of the regionalist movement, changes of positions through time and the adoption of moderate or radical positions in both centre–periphery and left–right dimensions. Finally, the analysis of cross-dimension positioning suggests that moderate centre–periphery stances (i.e. non-secessionist) tend to match with liberal or (especially Christian-democratic) moderate and conservative positions. It also suggests that anti-European integration positions match with left–right radicalism and, increasingly so, with centre–periphery radicalism.

Introduction

The literature on regionalist parties has increasingly highlighted the multi-dimensionality of their ideology (Coakley, 1992; Newman, 1996; 1997; De Winter and Türsan, 1998; De Winter et al., 2006a). The empirical evidence that emerges from these works suggests the following: first, the regionalist party family is much more heterogeneous than other party families on the left–right ideological spectrum (De Winter, 1998a: 208–211); secondly, even on the centre–periphery cleavage, which represents the core dimension of their ideology, regionalist parties’ positions differ significantly, spanning the moderately autonomist to secessionist stances (De Winter, 1998a: 205–207); and, thirdly, it appears to be extremely difficult to find a general relationship between regionalism and social class (Coakley, 1992; Newman, 1996) or, more generally, between regionalism and left–right ideologies (De Winter, 1998a; Erk, 2005; 2009; De Winter et al., 2006a). As John Coakley (1992: 16) puts it: “In practice, nationalist ideologists tend to adopt a particularistic approach, promoting the interests of ‘their’ nation. It follows from this that the unique context of a particular national struggle shapes the class alliances that accompany it”.¹ Saul Newman (1996) has developed a fourfold typology of regionalist parties’ ideologies, suggesting that the factors shaping the ideological blend of each regionalist party are deeply contextual. Jan Erk (2005; 2009), who has explored the question of the relationship between regionalism and left–right ideologies in the most explicit way, points to the importance of agency and historical critical junctures that often occurred long before the emergence of regionalist parties themselves.²

This contribution draws on previous studies, as well as on the case studies presented in this issue, with the objective of furthering our theoretical knowledge on the positioning of regionalist parties in multi-dimensional ideological space, by proposing an analytical framework. The empirical material concerns all major regionalist parties in Western Europe and covers the post-Second World War period (with particular focus on the last forty years, from the late 1960s to the late 2000s). Three ideological dimensions are taken into consideration: centre–periphery, left–right and European integration.

Three approaches are discussed. The first combines two different traditions: Downs’ (1957) economic theory of electoral competition and Rokkan’s “comparative historical sociology”. The former adopts the metaphor of the market to explain the dynamics of electoral politics. According to this paradigm, policy is the commodity that political parties sell and voters buy on the electoral market. However, because of information costs, voters look at party ideology, rather than the details of party policy, to make their choice (Downs, 1957: 98–100). In the Downsian perspective, therefore, parties respond to voters’ preferences by adapting their ideology to satisfy electoral demand. The latter tradition (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967) highlights the links between salient social divisions and political parties: political preferences emerge depending on social characteristics. This comparative historical sociology also has the merit of highlighting the importance of the centre–periphery cleavage, which is obviously of primary importance for regionalist parties. Combining the two approaches allows us, therefore, to infer the ideological orientation of regionalist parties by looking at the socio-structural characteristics of their regions.

The second approach builds on Downs’ rational choice framework too. However, it also considers the institutional environments that affect party systems and, therefore, the dynamics of party competition and co-operation (Cox, 1999). This approach is concerned primarily with the supply side of the electoral market. In particular, it focuses on the importance of multi-level politics, the effect of voting systems on party fragmentation and the effect of left–right polarization. However, it also briefly discusses how regionalist parties may decide to target newly available electoral niches.

The third approach refers to the morphological nature of political ideologies. The structure of any ideology needs a minimum of internal consistency in order to stand as an agglomerate of interrelated concepts. As argued by Michael Freeden (1996: 36), “… logic must be evident in any articulate presentation of beliefs, and ideologies— because they are communicative as well as persuasive devices—will have recourse to some measure of logical consistency”. The discussion will, therefore, focus on patterns of positioning across the three ideological dimensions and the logic behind emerging patterns.

Before presenting the analysis of cases, the following section proposes a definition of regionalist parties, explains the case selection and provides a classification of the cases along the first two ideological dimensions—centre–periphery and left–right.

Definitions and Classifications

The defining characteristics of regionalist parties can be summarized as follows. First, they are self-contained political organizations that contest elections. Secondly, they field candidates only in a particular territory (region) of the state. Thirdly, the territorial limitation of their electoral activity is a consequence of their explicit objective of defending only the identities and interests of ‘their’ region. Fourthly, as stated by De Winter (1998a: 204), regionalist parties’ core mission is to achieve/protect/enhance “some kind of [territorial] self-government”.

The level of self-government sought—from mild autonomy to outright secession— is not a defining characteristic, nor does it matter whether they consider their territory (and the people living in it) as a region or as a nation or part of a different nation-state. Similarly, self-assigned party labels are not taken into consideration as a defining element.

This working definition allows us to sort out the ‘real’ regionalists from other regional parties, such as regional branches of state-wide parties. In the case of contemporary Belgium, for instance, it distinguishes those fighting for more self-government from all the other regionalized parties. The definition also facilitates charting the relationship between regionalist parties and two other categories of parties. The first one is the category of ethnic parties, i.e. those parties that aim to defend/enhance the identity and interests of people belonging to a particular ethnic group, whether such group is defined in terms of language or religion, etc. Evidently, there is a large overlap between regionalist and ethnic parties, as most of the former refer— more or less compellingly and more or less consistently—to ethnic identities linked to territory.³ However, as Hepburn (2009a: 481) argues in the introduction to this issue, not all regionalist parties “have mobilized issues of culture or language”. In addition, not all ethnic parties can be considered as regionalist, since some of them prefer to protect ethnic identities without seeking regional (i.e. territorial) self-government. This is clearly the case, for instance, of the Svenska Folkpartiet (SFP) in Finland (Raunio, 2006: 126).

The second category is the one represented by regional (and often ethnic) parties that originated as a reaction against regionalist mobilization in bordering regions or within the same region. Genetically these parties represent the demands of regionally concentrated ethnic groups who identify with the whole state and are keen to maintain the centralized constitutional settlement or, at least, a political union between the region and the state. The parties’ original ideology is therefore anti-regionalist and, often, centralist. They often stem from the regional branch of the most anti-regionalist state-wide party, before developing as independent and self-contained organizations. Sometimes, during this process, the aims of these parties change: from strenuous defence of state centralism to steering constitutional change in a direction that accommodates their concerns. Some of them can, therefore, become convinced supporters of regional self-government and, on that basis, have to be considered as regionalist parties. However, it is important to bear in mind that the reactive logic of their regionalism sets them apart from the other regionalist parties in important respects, not least the fact that they eschew secessionist positions because they feel safer within the state. Examples of reactive regional groups are: the (unionist) Protestants in Northern Ireland, part of the Italian-speaking community in South Tyrol, the (Blaverists) anticatalanists in the Valencian community and most of the French-speaking community in Brussels. Some of the parties created by these groups, such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland and the Unió Valenciana (UnV) in the Valencian Community, fulfill all the characteristics of regionalist parties and have to be considered as such. Others, such as the Front Démocratique des Francophones (FDF) in Brussels and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in Northern Ireland, can be considered as regionalist parties only in certain periods of their history.⁴ In contrast, Unitalia in South Tyrol cannot be considered as a proper regionalist party. Although it ceased to be the regional branch of the state-wide party Alleanza Nazionale (AN) in 1996, it has had affiliations with other right-wing state-wide parties. More importantly, it has kept supporting state centralism rather than (an alternative form of) self-government for South Tyrol (Massetti, 2009a).

The inclusion of three other parties, the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS) in Eastern Germany, the Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU) in Bavaria and the Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) in Navarra,⁵ needs to be justified, as they represent borderline cases. The PDS appears to be a case of a ‘new’ party with state-wide ambitions, which builds on its original territorial ‘heartland’ before expanding. This ambition is witnessed by the fact that it has always fielded candidates Germany-wide and finds a further confirmation in the merger with Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit—Die Wahlalternative (WASG) and the formation of a state-wide party, albeit one that still relies on Eastern German votes, Die Linke. However, the PDS has de facto built its political project on the protection of Eastern Germany’s interests and political identity (Grix, 2002), while electoral activity in Western Germany can also be explained in instrumental terms, i.e. as an attempt to circumvent the constraints of the German voting system (see Hough and Koß, 2009). On this basis, the PDS will be included in the analysis but only in the period before the advent of Die Linke. As far as the CSU and the UPN are concerned, they have certainly acted as de facto regional branches of state-wide parties (the German Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) and the Spanish Partido Popular (PP)). However, not only are they formally self-contained organizations but they have originated autonomously and then federated themselves with state-wide parties. Their history is, therefore, quite different from that of regional branches of state-wide parties that have become increasingly autonomous as a consequence of regionalist mobilization and devolution of power to the regions. Indeed, the CSU and UPN have always been, despite their close relationship with the CDU and the PP, rather assertive in demanding and protecting self-government for their regions.⁶

The following analysis takes into consideration all Western European regionalist parties that fall within the above definition and have managed to achieve a minimum electoral relevance since the end of World War II. Minimum electoral relevance is set as follows: (a) electing representatives to the regional assembly on, at least, three consecutive occasions; (b) in the case of new parties that have not contested three regional elections yet, the criterion is either electing representatives on two occasions or getting into o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abstracts
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Re-conceptualizing Sub-state Mobilization
• 1 Explaining Regionalist Party Positioning in a Multi-dimensional Ideological Space: A Framework for Analysis
• 2 From Protest to Power: Mapping the Ideological Evolution of Plaid Cymru and the Bloque Nacionalista Galego
• 3 The Rise and Fall of the Belgian Regionalist Parties
• 4 A Regional(ist) Party in Denial? The German PDS and its Arrival in Unified Germany
• 5 Explaining Failure: the Highs and Lows of Sardinian Nationalism
• 6 From Social Democracy back to No Ideology?—The Scottish National Party and Ideological Change in a Multi-level Electoral Setting
• 7 New Research Agendas on Regional Party Competition
• Index