Ideology matters: Why decentralisation has a differentiated effect on regionalist parties' fortunes in <scp>W</scp>estern democracies

Massetti, Emanuele; Schakel, Arjan H.

doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12015

Cited by 42 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(44 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…statewide parties try and undermine regionalist parties' electoral strength at national level by implementing decentralization reforms (Meguid, 2013a); this strategy is, indeed, effective in damaging regionalist parties at national level, but it works more with moderate than with radical ones, providing an incentive for radicalization (Massetti and Schakel, 2013); and now we found evidence that such an incentive is very strong and the radicalization process does, indeed, occur.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Between autonomy and secession

Massetti

Schakel

2013

Party Politics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The literature on regionalist parties has traditionally focused on the origins of their electoral strength while their ideology remains an under-explored aspect of territorial party politics. This is surprising because for the question of whether decentralization 'accommodates' or 'empowers' regionalist pressure one needs to consider both. In this paper we single out the factors that increase the probability of adopting a radical (secessionist) as opposed to a moderate (autonomist) ideological stance, with a particular focus on the effect of decentralization. We make use of a large and original dataset, covering 11 countries, 49 regions, and 78 parties for the 1940s-2000s. Beyond the level of decentralization and decentralization reforms, we analyze the impact of two sets of factors: the first concerns regional identity and includes regional language, regional history and geographical remoteness; while the second concerns institutional/political variables which include voting systems, competition from statewide parties and from other regionalist parties, and office responsibility. We find that all variables matter for regionalist party ideology but with different effects across regional and national electoral arenas. We also find that level of decentralization and regional reform is significantly associated with radicalism, which suggests that policy success and accommodative strategies by statewide parties may lead to a polarization on the centre-periphery dimension.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Between autonomy and secession

Massetti

Schakel

2013

Party Politics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…What is at stake now, when looking to the future of federalism in Belgium, is thus how, and whether, the gap between political parties and voters will close or widen deeper. NOTES 1 Because we analysed MPs' preferences towards state reform, we do not expand on the literature that investigates the strategy of ethno-regionalist parties on their positioning on economic and cultural dimensions of electoral competition (see Massetti and Schakel 2013). 2 For the purpose of this article, the focus is on the two main linguistic communities, even though 12 out of 25 German-speaking MPs participated in the survey.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming Belgium’s Federalism: Comparing the Views of MPs and Voters

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Consociational theory posits that political elites in divided societies will show a stronger ‘spirit of accommodation’ than the groups they represent, and that this prudent leadership on behalf of the elites explains why divided societies hold together. Belgium has long been considered to be one of the best examples of such a consociational democracy. Yet in this country the spirit of accommodation of prudent leaders was questioned and discussed publicly during the 2010–11 political gridlock. The question is therefore whether Belgian political elites are indeed less radical and hold less extreme views than voters, as suggested by consociational theory. To explore this question, this article relies on survey data gathered during the historically long government negotiations of 2010–11 between members of all six Belgian assemblies. This original data set on MPs is compared with data on voters gathered in 2009 and 2014 in order to contrast their views on the reform of Belgium’s federalism. The results show that voters are less radical than MPs on this question, but the data also reveal that MPs are strongly divided within communities and also within party. Neither communities nor parties are monolithic blocks.

show abstract

“…Demands for self-rule have intensified with the decline in the share of the vote going to major parties and the growth of regional parties. The average regional-level vote share for regionalist parties in national elections in 11 countries surveyed by Massetti and Schakel (2013) has increased from 4.9 percent in the 1970s to 8.9 percent in the 2000s (see also De Winter et al 2006;Brancati 2008).…”

Section: Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%