Does decentralisation turn minority parties into secessionists? Insights from Eastern and Western Europe

Abstract

Whereas Western European governments have devolved political authority to minority regions, governments in Eastern Europe have shied away from using decentralisation to accommodate national minorities. This article assesses how these differences affect the secessionism of minority parties. The theoretical section argues that both programmatic accommodation (i.e. when governments adopt positions in favour of decentralisation) and institutional accommodation (i.e. when governments create regions that correspond to the settlement areas of minority groups and transfer authority to the regional level) increase the likelihood that minority parties will adopt secessionist positions. Regression analyses of 83 European minority parties show that a higher level of programmatic and institutional accommodation is indeed associated with a higher likelihood of secessionism. However, increases in programmatic accommodation between 2011 and 2017 in fact decrease the likelihood that minority parties turn secessionist when using the method of first differences. Future research should therefore collect panel data on minority parties’ positions.