Making Nationalists out of Frenchmen?: Substate Nationalism in Corsica

Abstract

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

Boundary shifts and vote alignment in Catalonia

“…For instance, in the Catalan election of 2012, approximately 87% of respondents in post-electoral surveys declared they had voted while the actual turnout of the election was at 67%. 2 There is a growing amount of research using alternative approaches to traditional survey analysis, but the use of observational data has received much less attention even though it offers the possibility of not relying on self-reported behaviour by survey respondents but on actual data (De la Calle and Fazi, 2010; Evans and Tonge, 2009; Guidi and Karagiannis, 2014). Observational data have its own limitations, such as the variety of information registered or restrictions due to privacy regulations, which do not allow inclusion of relevant variables that would at least complement the analysis and that must be taken into account when interpreting results.…”

Containing Nationalism: Culture, Economics and Indirect Rule in Corsica

“…From a purely culturalist perspective, the nationalist idea of defending the culture and identity of Corsicans should have been particularly well received in the rural and mountainous zones of the island, where the population is older and less subject to continental immigration and the impact of the French language. 31 Corsican nationalism has historically had difficulty penetrating these areas, however (De la Calle & Fazi, 2010). Even in 2015, when the nationalists won their first victory, the share of people aged 65+ in a commune was negatively correlated with nationalist party success (Fourquet, 2018, p. 34).…”

“… 6 Note that De la Calle and Fazi (2010, table 6) measured native Corsicans rather than Corsican speakers. …”

“…Yet despite all these ingredients, modern Corsican nationalism only appeared in the 1970s, and initially received a marginal share of the vote—even in regional elections most favorable to nationalism (De la Calle & Fazi, 2010, p. 406). 4 Nationalism has experienced a strong electoral surge since 2008, following the breakdown of the party system and a sharp decline in armed violence, which prompted moderate and radical nationalist lists to merge and garner a significant share of the vote.…”

“…Not only was the rise of Corsican nationalism late, it was also territorially uneven (see Figure 1). More puzzling still, nationalist parties have often done particularly well in some of the least culturally Corsican areas along the coast, whereas some of the traditional communes in the island’s rural and mountainous interior have seemed impervious to nationalism (De la Calle & Fazi, 2010). If nationalism really is driven by cultural factors, why have nationalist parties been least successful in some of the most culturally traditional parts of Corsica?…”