It is not me, it is you: The emergence of secessionist parties in Western democracies

Abstract

Although there exists a voluminous amount of existing literature that studies secessionist parties and the emergence of political parties more generally, there exists little that looks at the emergence of secessionist parties specifically. This article models the emergence of secessionist parties across western democracies and argues that the emergence of said parties is structured by both sociodemographic and political realities. This article shows that the structures of secessionist party entry differ across the arena in which parties compete: what influences emergence in subnational (provincial) elections differs than in national elections.