Central governments in multinational states frequently deploy indirect rule to contain peripheral nationalism. Through the exchange of economic resources for political control, local notables are co-opted into cementing loyalty to the central state. Although nationalism often has cultural roots, these can fail to bear fruit because indirect rulers prevent them from developing. When the incentives sustaining support for indirect rulers change, this can open a window of opportunity for nationalism. This article examines how culture, institutions and economics influence center-periphery relations, specifically the demand for autonomy and nationalist parties. Utilizing new, disaggregated data and an original survey from the French island of Corsica, we show that indirect rulers have managed to contain nationalist parties in culturally distinct communes, specifically those that are more dependent on public funds. Only where a thriving private sector offers alternatives to state dependence, lessening the force of indirect rule, is cultural distinctiveness associated with nationalist voting.

This article analyzes the electoral performance of the nationalist movement in Corsica. First, we ran an ecological analysis of a new dataset, including observations from all Corsican towns for all regional elections from 1992 to 2004. Second, we complemented the ecological findings with individual-level data. Our results show that the classical combination of economic-based and identity factors that account well for nationalist voting is conditioned in the Corsican case by the existence of two specific phenomena: the tendency of the nationalist movement to experience internal divisions and party splitting, and the extraordinary electoral resilience of local notables, the traditional French-loyal political leaders on the island

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Résumé Depuis 1945, l’idée décentralisatrice s’est imposée dans quasiment toute l’Europe. Au demeurant, dans toutes les régions insulaires de Méditerranée occidentale – que celles-ci disposent ou non de pouvoirs législatifs régionaux –, les classes politiques ont montré un fort tempérament succursaliste. Jusqu’à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les régionalismes n’avaient pu contrarier des systèmes très intégrés, fondés sur la connivence entre élites locales et pouvoir étatique. Depuis, le conformisme institutionnel révèle une réelle continuité, tant les différents statuts se distinguent peu de ceux qui régissent les régions continentales. Quoique l’électorat soit très mobile et les partis nationaux souvent minoritaires, les chances d’une évolution importante à court terme en Corse sont faibles tant la culture politique des forces dominantes demeure gestionnaire, et les nationalistes encore loin de pouvoir accéder au pouvoir régional.

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