Limits to territorial nationalization in election support for an independence-aimed regional nationalism in Catalonia

Abstract

This study examines the territorial cohesion of Catalonia in terms of political affiliations to Catalan nationalist parties in regional elections between 1980 and 2015. The objective is to evaluate the explanatory power of the nationalization thesis, which assumes convergence, uniformity, and nation-wide source of political alignments. Although usually applied to the state-level, the nationalization thesis can do justice to the independence demands of regional nationalist movements as well. The thesis is measured using the two traditional conceptualizations, and a new one which scrutinizes the Catalan-wide distribution of socio-spatial cleavages. The study uses municipal resolution data to provide a detailed insight into Catalan electoral geography. The methods involved include local and global statistical indexes for measuring variation in and distribution of electoral support, and linear and geographically weighted regressions which aim to identify predictor variables and, above all, their spatial (non-)stationarity. The results indicate that spatial patterns of nationalist affiliations are clustered, place-specific, and of a non-stationary character which disproves the nationalization thesis in all its three conceptualizations. As a consequence, the concept of spatial modes within the Catalan territory is introduced.