In this article, we explore the electoral dynamics of multi-level political systems for the case of the United Kingdom (Scotland and Wales) through a comparison with multi-level voting behaviour in Germany, Spain and Canada. The analysis suggests that sub-state elections can be `second order' in relation to state-wide elections, but that this `second orderness' is reduced when more powers are decentralized to the sub-state level (and, thus, more is at stake in sub-state elections), and if sub-state identities and parties are stronger. Consequently, elections in Scotland and Wales are unlikely to be or become only `second order' to Westminster elections, and British state-wide parties will continue to face challenges and pressures to adapt their organizations and programmes to the devolution of the British state.

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Special Student Price : £20 Dan Hough is Reader in Politics and Director of the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption (SCSC) at the University of Sussex, UK. His research centres on political corruption, political parties and also issues of devolution and constitutional change.

This article sets out to find ways of analysing the relationship of regional and statewide electoral processes in multi-level systems. First, we analyse a number of `top down' approaches with the aim of assessing how and when statewide issues are perceived as shaping regional election outcomes. Second, we discuss a `bottom up' approach in which the importance of territorial politics can be measured. Both of these approaches, although not originally developed for use in this particular context, provide at least initial techniques for mapping out the dynamics of multi-level voting. They test for the subordination of regional elections to the electoral rhythms of statewide politics as well as exploring how different patterns of voting behaviour compare from region to region and from election to election. Finally, we move on to apply these two basic models to the cases of Germany, Canada and Spain, illustrating that in contexts which lack deep territorial cleavages, regional and statewide election results are broadly similar. However, in territorially heterogeneous environments, this pattern of subordination of regional elections is broken up by territorially specific influences.