Statewide Political Parties Research Articles

Representing Scotland: Conservative narratives of nation, union, and Scottish independence

The United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European Union reignited the debate about Scottish independence, requiring statewide political parties to rearticulate the case for the Union. The UK Conservative Party, as the party of government and one with a tumultuous history vis-à-vis Scotland and devolution, was at the fore in making this case. This article explores representations of Scotland, its position within the United Kingdom, and Scottish nationalism as a political force by the Conservative Party at a prolonged moment of significant political and constitutional tension. We focus, therefore, on 2019 to 2024, a parliamentary term and political period defined by protracted debates on Scotland’s place within the Union, playing out against the backdrop of the Brexit negotiations, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a worsening cost-of-living crisis. To this end, we draw upon parliamentary debates, two daily English newspapers (The Daily Telegraph and the Sun) and two online right-leaning news sites (ConservativeHome and The Spectator online). Our analysis identifies three distinct but interrelated strands in Conservative representations of Scotland, each of which is centred on a contrast. First, a distinction between an inclusive unionism versus a narrow nationalism; second, a largely economic narrative, contrasting a prosperous union with the economic risks of independence; and finally, a contrast between governmental competence at Westminster and the SNP-led Scottish Government failing Scotland. These contrasting narratives elucidate the ways in which Conservatives construct representations of Scotland, particularly at moments of constitutional contestation.

Факторы формирования коалиционных правительств регионалистских и общенациональных политических партий в регионах Испании

Received 09.09.2020. The paper focuses on one of the most significant arenas of multi-level politics – the interaction between regionalist and state-wide parties in the creation and functioning of government coalitions at the regional level. The research is aimed at determining the factors influencing the creation of such coalitions in which regionalist parties act as coalition partners with a specific agenda. Spain provides significant empirical material for research on this issue, where regionalist parties function in most regions, and state-wide parties often enter government coalitions with them at the level of autonomous communities. A comparative analysis of the practices of concluding coalition agreements between statewide and regionalist political parties in the regions of Spain during the democratic period is a key research method. The theoretical part of the article provides an overview of the theories of party coalitions accumulated by Political Science since the 1950s and updated by researchers due to actualization of new circumstances in the context of multilevel politics. The empirical part of the article examines the influence of three categories of factors on the construction of coalition deals between regionalist and state-wide political parties in the Spanish autonomous communities, including: the size of the coalition, the ideological inter-party distance (comprising the regionalist-ideological dimension) and correspondence of the alignments of party forces at the regional and national levels. The research demonstrates that the factor of coalition size is fundamental for transactions between regionalist and state-wide political parties, while the other two categories of factors manifest themselves situationally. Acknowledgements. The research was carried out at the expense of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-18-00053 " Subnational regionalism and dynamics of multilevel politics (Russian and European practices)") at the Perm Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Party competition over decentralisation: The influence of ideology and electoral incentives on issue emphasis

AbstractUnder what conditions is decentralisation a salient issue for state‐wide political parties? It is argued in this article that the extent to which state‐wide parties emphasise decentralisation depends on their strategic considerations: on their overall ideology, on the electoral incentives created by the context in which they compete, and on the interaction between the two. The results of the analysis of party manifestos in 31 countries since 1945 are as follows. First, parties that pay greater attention to cultural matters relative to economic matters tend to talk more about decentralisation. Second, the systemic salience of decentralisation also encourages parties to talk more about decentralisation. Third, the larger the regionally based ethnic groups within a country, the more salience all state‐wide political parties will attach to decentralisation. Finally, only parties that put greater relative emphasis on cultural matters tend to respond to the electoral threat of regionalist parties. The influence of territorial diversity on the salience of decentralisation thus works through two channels and is partly conditioned by political parties’ ideological profile.

Airport ownership and regulation in Spain: Explaining the resistance to change

This paper presents the case of Spain where the government recently decided to float 49% of the capital of the public agency in charge of the airport system but to keep the public control over airports. The research question is why did a conservative government prefer to keep a unified hierarchical public structure at the time it was starting to be perceived as an outmoded model? To answer this question we propose five hypothesis taken from political science and policy process theories and we confirm that ideas and beliefs within the policy subsystem together with the external shock of the 2008 economic crisis played a role in favor of policy change. However, core values of statewide political parties and political interests with regard to avoid higher territorial decentralization explain the policy reversal. Empirical results are based on the views of political and economic actors, both in favor and against the status quo, with regard to the propositions expressed in the hypothesis.

Las huellas electorales del nacionalismo español. Identificación territorial y voto en los partidos políticos de ámbito estatal, 1980-2013

In this paper we approach the study of Spanish nationalism (the nature of the identification with Spain) from the perspective of voters of different state-wide political parties. Our goal is to analyse how the profile of constituencies of these parties has evolved according to what we call the electoral footprints of Spanish nationalism. The analysis of the degree of heterogeneity of this electoral footprint and its differences across autonomous communities over the last decades, along with other differences in socio-political attitudes among their constituents, can help us to understand party’s positioning on this issue and its treatment in the electoral agenda. The empirical analysis is based on sixteen several general population surveys conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS).

Doing As They Are Told? Subregional Language Policies in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Wales

This article analyses efforts by subregional government to plan for and implement language policy (LP). It aims to show that this governance level is key to a more nuanced understanding of the locations within which language policies are created, brought to fruition and evaluated. With this in mind, data from six subregional authorities in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, the Autonomous Community of Catalonia and Wales are employed. Additionally, from the particularity of each region and subregional authority, these data are applied more generally to analyse party political support for LP activity as well as LP interaction across governance tiers. This paper discusses the extent to which regional governments' legislative and fiscal support (or relative lack of support) for overall LP objectives influences, restricts or otherwise engages subregional government LP activity. Understanding the relationship between the first two objectives will help to link local empirical data with the third objective—that of beginning to unravel the role that non-statewide nationalist and regional branches of statewide political parties play as LP facilitators at both subregional and regional level. Party activity in LP is subsequently interpreted as a measure through which to emphasize the values of (often overlapping) identity and solidarity patterns.

Measuring party organization: The vertical dimension of the multi-level organization of state-wide parties in Spain and the UK

Over the past few years, attention to the role of state-wide political parties in multi-level polities has increased in recognition of their linkage function between levels of government, as these parties compete in both state-wide and regional elections across their countries. This article presents a coding scheme designed to describe the relationship between central and regional levels of state-wide parties. It evaluates the involvement of the regional branches in central decision-making and their degree of autonomy in the management of regional party affairs. This coding scheme is applied to state-wide parties in Spain (the socialist PSOE and the conservative Partido Popular) and in the UK (Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats). It is an additional tool with which to analyse party organization and it facilitates the comparison of parties across regions and in different countries.

Party Organization in a Multi-level System: Party Organizational Change in Spain and the UK

This article investigates the link between regionalization of the structure of government, regional elections and regionalism on the one hand, and the organization of state-wide political parties in Spain and the UK on the other. It particularly looks at two aspects of the relations between the central and regional levels of party organization: integration of the regional branches in central decision making and autonomy of the regional branches. It argues that the party factors are the most crucial elements explaining party change and that party leaders mediate between environmental changes and party organization. The parties' history and beliefs and the strength of the central leadership condition their ability or willingness to facilitate the emergence of meso-level elites. The institutional and electoral factors are facilitating factors that constitute additional motives for or against internal party decentralization.

British Statewide Parties and Multilevel Politics

The article addresses how Britain's major statewide political parties—Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats—adapted to political devolution in Scotland and Wales. It explores party organization, programs, and policymaking. It argues that the Labour Party experienced the most territorial intraparty conflict but fairly rapidly achieved a new balance between British and Scottish/Welsh party interests. The Conservative Party struggled after its 1997 UK election defeat and failed to adapt to multilevel politics with any consistency. The Liberal Democrats experienced the smoothest adjustment, largely on account of their own federal party constitution. The article concludes that the findings provide some backing to rational choice institutionalist hypotheses of party change but that a historical institutionalist approach can provide a fuller understanding of how parties adapt to devolution reforms.

Devolution and British politics

Introduction: Devolution and British Politics PART ONE. A KINGDOM UNITED 1. State-building and national integration in Britain. Michael O'Neill 2. Challenging the Centre: Home Rule Movements. Michael O'Neill PART TWO. RE-IMAGINING BRITAIN: THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY 3. Politicizing Territorial Identity: Theorems of Change. Michael O'Neill 4. The Politics of Identity: Scottish Nationalism. Antonia Dodds and David Seawright 5. The Politics of Identity: Wales. James Hunter 6. Northern Ireland: Resolving an Ancient Quarrel. Rick Wilford PART THREE. REFORMING THE BRITISH STATE 7. Reforming the British State: The1998 Watershed. Michael O'Neill 8. Intra-party relationships of British state-wide political parties within the developing territorial agenda. David Baker 9. Central Government and Devolution. Janice Mcmillan and Andrew Massey 10. English Regional Governance. Chris Stevens 11. The Impact of European Integration. Janet Mather

Political Decentralization, Electoral Change and Party Organizational Adaptation

Electoral politics in the larger Western democracies seems to be becoming increasingly `denationalized': non-statewide political parties have grown in strength, and demands for decentralization have led to major institutional changes in large unitary states in recent years. As a result, the conventional view of party politics as essentially taking place at the national level, between national parties, over national issues, appears increasingly inadequate. This article argues that party scholars need to look more closely at what we could call the `territorial dimension' of electoral politics: the spatial and geographical aspects of party competition. This article presents a preliminary analysis of how centre-periphery tensions and institutional reforms affect the way statewide parties organize, focusing on the areas of elite recruitment, electoral programmes and campaigning, and party behaviour in public office. It hypothesizes a variety of patterns of party response, and provides some tentative evidence from Western European democracies, and in particular Britain, Italy and Spain.This analysis shows that the internal workings of statewide political parties are a key variable in understanding the relationship between institutional reform and the `denationalization' of electoral politics.

A National Party in a Regional Party System: The PSC-PSOE in Catalonia

The regional behaviour of state-wide political parties is a largely ignored topic, despite the widespread trend towards decentralization in Western Europe. This article presents a framework to study this phenomenon. It identifies strategic dilemmas and organizational and policy choices faced by regional branches of national parties, and suggests factors influencing these choices. A case study of the Socialist party in Catalonia (PSC-PSOE) provides a first test. This party's strategic choices and successes reflect the identified dilemmas, and have varied over time. Influential factors in these choices have been the decentralization of the Spanish state, dual identity patterns and regional party leadership.