Regionalism and Political Competition

Abstract

Although regionalism in France contributes to consolidating differentiated territorial narratives and allegiances, it is more difficult for it to establish a balance of political power with the central state. Unlike other European states, regionalist or ethno-regionalist parties — in other words those parties which identify with specific ethnic groups and which have roots in a particular region (De Winter and Tursan 1998; De Winter Gomez-Reino et al. 2006) — have only limited, often residual, influence in France. Yet the manner and timing of regional politicisation in France correspond closely to the Rokkanian model of the divide between centre and periphery. The politicisation of regionalism took place in two main phases in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An initial phase characterised by a conservative regionalism, bringing together elite networks to defend the economic and cultural interests of the periphery, was followed by a nationalist regionalism led by the Left, who, from the 1960s to the1970s, developed a more structured ideological and organisational repertoire in regions which differed in cultural and linguistic terms (Brittany, Corsica, Occitania). However, this regional movement carries little weight in electoral competitions under the Fifth Republic (Izquierdo and Pasquier 2004). This exception to the pattern in France is explained both by the local and national rules governing political competition and by the construction of regional identity.