Territorial Cleavages Research Articles

Nationalisation of regional elections in Central and Eastern Europe

Territory is a salient issue in post-communist countries in Europe, yet subnational elections have received surprisingly little attention. This article analyses congruence between national and regional elections in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic held between 1993 and 2010. The findings suggest that election incongruence can be partly explained by approaches which work well in the West European context – territorial cleavages, regional authority and the second-order election model – but in order to fully grasp regional election outcomes in post-communist countries one also needs to take into account electoral alliance strategies and party supply change.

Eurozone Crisis and European Integration: Functional Spillover, Political Spillback?

This paper analyzes the decisions taken since the start of the financial and economic crisis in the European Union and assesses them in the light of the traditional debates of integration theories. It discusses the key characteristics of the process of responding to the crisis since 2008–2009 when the problems of Greece have been increasingly publicized, the main actors involved, and provides an interpretation of the key decisions dealing with the crisis and their implications in terms of further European integration. First assessing these events in the light of the neofunctionalist and liberal intergovernmentalist debate, it then presents a framework linking the accounts of the integration process with a domestic politics approach. In this respect it contributes to the literature on European integration as well as the changing nature of EU polity, policy-specific effects of politics and how politics in member states constrains decisions on the further deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union and efforts to move towards transfer union. The incremental process of centralizing redistributive policies accompanied by the debates about financial transfers from some EMU countries to the others have altered popular ‘permissive consensus’ about the process of European integration and exposed territorial cleavages which became a key constraint in responding to the crisis and pressures for further integration.

Regional Nationalist Parties and Constitutional Change in Parliamentary Democracies: A Framework for Analysis

While existing research on the ‘nationalities question’ has focused predominantly on the institutionalization of the territorial cleavage or the structural factors that drive the process of constitutional change, scant attention has been paid to evaluating the influence of regional nationalist parties that voice demands for recognition and self-rule. This article develops a two-stage framework for analysis that focuses on the different avenues through which regional nationalist parties set the agenda and on the process of political bargaining between partisan actors that produce constitutional change. The framework emphasizes the significance of the electoral conjuncture, a political system's institutional arrangements and the ideology of partisan actors in determining the power relationship between regional nationalist and mainstream parties in different arenas, as well as in conditioning the likelihood of constitutional change. While anecdotal evidence from West European states is produced to illustrate the argument, the framework can be exported fruitfully elsewhere.

Congruence Between Regional and National Elections

The number of regional elections and what is at stake at these elections have increased considerably over the past decades. Yet the interpretation of regional election results lags behind, in particular explanations for when and how regional election results deviate from national election results. This article conceptualizes congruence of the vote in three different ways that make it possible to assess the contribution of three competing theoretical approaches in explaining variation in dissimilarity between vote shares across space and time. These approaches are second-order election theory, regional authority and territorial cleavages. The hypotheses are tested against a data set containing the results of more than 4,000 regional and national elections held in 360 regions in 18 countries. It appears that the depth of territorial cleavages explains variation across space, but to understand change over time one needs to consider institutional authority and second-order election effects.

Small Worlds in Canada and Europe: A Comparison of Regional Party Systems in Quebec, Bavaria and Scotland

Quebec, Bavaria and Scotland are three regions nested within multi-level states. Each has a pronounced territorial identity and a strong stateless nationalist and regionalist party (SNRP), factors that have contributed to an important territorial cleavage in political life. This contribution explores the dynamics of these regional party systems in a comparative analysis, by revisiting the approach set out by David Elkins and Richard Simeon in their seminal work on Small Worlds. Three indicators of distinctive political ‘small worlds’, which were originally identified by Elkins and Simeon in 1980, are discussed and applied in the context of present-day regional politics in Canada and Europe. These are: (1) the (in)congruence of party systems and competition at the regional and state levels; (2) the adaptation of statewide parties to the regional level; and (3) the conduct of party competition on regional issues. Following an analysis of these issues in each of the cases, the concluding section considers the continuing relevance of the Small Worlds thesis for our understanding of regional party politics in Canada, Europe and beyond.

The Neglected Nation: The CSU and the Territorial Cleavage in Bavarian Party Politics

This article examines the continuing salience of the territorial cleavage in Bavarian party politics. It does so through an exploration of the Christian Social Union's (CSU) mobilisation of Bavarian identity as part of its political project, which has forced other parties in Bavaria to strengthen their territorial goals and identities. Parties have articulated different constructions of ‘Bavaria’ to rival the CSU's dominant nation-building project. However, they have been unable to portray themselves as ‘standing up for Bavarian interests’ due to the constraints of the state-wide parties to which they belong. As an exclusively Bavarian party, the CSU has no such constraints. Indeed, the CSU's core aim of strengthening Bavaria's position vis-à-vis the German federation may be viewed as akin to that of the Convergència i Unió in Catalonia, Spirit in Flanders or Plaid Cymru in Wales. Like these parties, the case of the CSU in Bavaria demonstrates that sub-state territorial mobilisation has as much to do with negotiating autonomy within the state as seceding from it. To that end, the CSU provides a valuable case of how a regionalist party operating within a multi-level political system has sought to influence the regional, state and European levels to obtain a comparative territorial advantage.

The German Party System(s) in 2005: A Return to Volkspartei Dominance

The article assesses the socio-structural underpinnings and systemic dynamics of the contemporary German party system and identifies four phenomena: an increased level of fractionalisation that has made it more difficult for small parties to assume the ‘kingmaker’ or ‘pivot’ role; the continued strengthening of a two-bloc dynamic; the emergence and persistence of the new territorial cleavage in the united Germany; and, a skew in the party system to the left that has shifted the position of the median legislator. It is argued that all these changes have served to re-assert the dominance of the two Volksparteien and have been particularly advantageous to the SPD. The article concludes by arguing that the outcome of the 2005 federal election can thus be seen as very much in keeping with these trends.

Sense and Symbolism: Europe Takes On Human Security

human tragedy reaches its climax in the fact that after all the exertions and sacrifices of hundreds of millions of people and of the victories of the Righteous Cause, we have still not found Peace or Security. --Winston Churchill Europe, as identity and union, has undergone an extraordinary transformation since the end of Cold War. In recent history, much of this remarkable change has only accelerated, both with the expansion of membership in the European Union (EU), a growing independence in terms of foreign policy, and an emerging recognition (particularly with the votes of both France and the Netherlands in 2005 regarding support for the European Constitution) that disagreements about Europe's future and identity are inevitable. The cultural and political philosopher J. Peter Burgess has aptly summarized, nonetheless, a major European shift--especially regarding the concept of security: In New & Old Wars Mary Kaldor argues that a new type of organized violence has developed, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, as one aspect of the globalized era. The new wars are, according to Kaldor, characterized by a blurring of the distinctions between war, organized crime, and wide-scale violations of human rights. In contrast to the geo-political goals of earlier wars, the new wars are about identity politics. Kaldor argues that in the context of globalization, ideological and territorial cleavages of an earlier era have increasingly been supplanted by an emerging political cleavage between cosmopolitanism, based on inclusive, universalist multicultural values, and the politics of particularistic identities. The evolution of the European Defense and Security Policy has evolved in the shadow of this mutation. European culture with dubious historical reputation for cosmopolitanism is being thrust upon the global stage at the very moment when its geopolitical concepts are poised on the precipice of desuetude. With Solana's Thessaloniki Summit document A Secure Europe in a Better World the European community of values is being transformed into a security community. (1) Reflecting this recognition, the document Secure Europe in a Better World--most commonly known as the European Security Strategy--stands in somewhat notable contrast to the 17 September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America. (2) Specifically, the European Union strategy emphasizes the notion of cooperative engagement, relying on the strength of 450 million members and the recognition that no one country--perhaps in direct contrast to the US national strategy--can go it alone. Although the concept of hegemony between the United States and Europe seems immensely sensible, reality equally dictates that this sharing is unlikely to occur in the near future. (3) Collectively, documents and policies regarding the development of a European Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) emphasize the necessity for Europe to have the ability for independent action. Especially with the 2001 Helsinki and the call for a 60,000-member European Rapid Reaction Force, Europe has recognized a need for independence from powerful allies (such as the United States) and from powerful alliances (such as NATO). (4) Moreover, the evolution of the European defense responsibility has focused on the so-called Petersberg tasks, which concentrate on and crisis response capabilities that nonetheless fall short of a full-scale intervention force with the ability to sustain combat over prolonged time. As drawn from Article 17.2 of the Treaty of the European Union, and originally stated in the (now defunct) Western European Union Petersberg Declaration of June 1992, these responsibilities entail humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks, and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking. …

Review: Federalism and Territorial Cleavages

Review: Federalism and Territorial Cleavages

Federalism and Territorial Cleavages

FEDERALISM AND TERRITORIAL CLEAVAGES Edited by Ugo M. Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xiv, 498pp, US$55.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-7408-4)Ugo M. Amoretti's original question was whether regional cleavages in Italy-always hot issue in the electoral politics of the peninsula-would be better accommodated by than by the unitary state structure established when the country was unified almost 150 years ago. When he teamed up with Princetoris Nancy Bermeo, who had long-standing interest in the political effects of institutions, and mobilized 17 other authors, associated with universities in 10 countries, the objective became to better understand why some territorial cleavages are more easily accommodated than others and to what extent accommodation facilitated by federal state structures (2).This collection of original essays is not limited to federations, as it includes countries with strong unitary character as basis for comparison. It begins with seven case studies of advanced industrial democracies (Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Britain, Italy, France), followed by two chapters on post-communist regimes (Russia and comparative analysis of eastern Europe), four case studies of developing democracies (India, Nigeria, Mexico, Turkey), chapter on electoral rules and party systems in federations, chapter on the analytical and moral levels of the relationships among political liberalism, national pluralism, and democratic federalism, and chapter arguing that US-style symmetrical would be inappropriate for many democratizing countries, especially multinational polities.Territorially dispersed minorities, such as First Nations in Canada, blacks in the US, Turks in the Netherlands, and the Roma in eastern and central Europe, do not fall within the scope of this book. The focus is indeed on territorial cleavages, presented by Amoretti as today's main source of conflict and one of the principal causes of violence in the world (8). The difficulty with this starting point is that territorial cleavages are often coterminous with social, economic, ethnic, or religious cleavages, fact that the editors acknowledge but nevertheless tend to neglect at the theoretical level.The chapter on Canada, written by Richard Simeon and subtitled Federalism, language, and regional conflict, is built around two arguments. The first is that the highly decentralized nature of Canadian explains its historically demonstrated capacity to manage and accommodate the dualist and regionalist character of the country; and the second is that greater asymmetry could bring about more effective accommodation in the future, but the dynamics of constitutional politics will make this very difficult to achieve. In short, Simeon argues that the main historical sources of political division in Canada have been language and region, and that an adaptive has institutionalized and perpetuated these differences, allowing, for instance, Quebec to achieve a considerable de facto asymmetry within Canadian federalism (104). …

Federalism and territorial cleavages

Federalism and territorial cleavages

Regional Elections in Multi-Level Systems

This article sets out to find ways of analysing the relationship of regional and statewide electoral processes in multi-level systems. First, we analyse a number of `top down' approaches with the aim of assessing how and when statewide issues are perceived as shaping regional election outcomes. Second, we discuss a `bottom up' approach in which the importance of territorial politics can be measured. Both of these approaches, although not originally developed for use in this particular context, provide at least initial techniques for mapping out the dynamics of multi-level voting. They test for the subordination of regional elections to the electoral rhythms of statewide politics as well as exploring how different patterns of voting behaviour compare from region to region and from election to election. Finally, we move on to apply these two basic models to the cases of Germany, Canada and Spain, illustrating that in contexts which lack deep territorial cleavages, regional and statewide election results are broadly similar. However, in territorially heterogeneous environments, this pattern of subordination of regional elections is broken up by territorially specific influences.

A Territorial Cleavage in Italian Politics? Understanding the Rise of the Northern Question in the 1990s

This article discusses the rise of the variously labelled ‘ethno-territorial’, ‘centre-periphery’ or ‘regional’ cleavage in the Italian party system (1979–99). The article shows that new political mobilization in the north of Italy was inextricably linked to the Europeanization of new regionally-based political parties. It was only through the European arena that new electoral coalitions and new ideas about national distinctiveness became the basis for a united Italian north. In contrast to approaches which rely on the adoption of the old territorial divide between north and south as an explanation for party formation and party success, this article focuses on the difficulties of mobilizing the territorial cleavage in the Italian party system. The paradoxical trajectory of the northern question in Italy during the 1990s can be examined through the unintended consequences of the political exploitation of the north-south divide: the increasing visibility of differences within northern Italy, and an increasing reliance on identity politics to sustain the widely held perception that the Northern question was based on economic issues. The article situates the rise of Lega Nord within the broader framework of political mobilization in the northern Italian regions and explores the construction of political space as a non-reversible process. The implications of political choices in explaining the type of territorial cleavage in Italian politics are explained. The article is based on original research, party journals and interviews conducted in Italy in 1995–96.

Towards Regional Government in Central Europe: Territorial Restructuring of Postcommunist Regimes

Territorial systems in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are surveyed together with factors that have determined their present shape. The most important among these are: a relatively late start in the building of the modern state, the legacy of communist regimes, and the exigencies of postcommunist transition. In the second part of the paper territorial cleavages occurring in the region are examined, in particular: the centre–periphery contrasts; the urban–rural cleavage; the West – East gradient of modernisation and economic development; and sociocultural cleavages as reflected in local self-organisation. In the third part of the paper the strategies of territorial reorganisation are discussed, as they are debated and implemented in the countries under study.

The uncertain future of the Italian welfare state

The Italian model of welfare is characterised by numerous imbalances, including an uneven distribution of protection and costs, and a chronic deficit between contributions and outlays. There is also a widespread abuse of the rules governing contributions and benefits and a persisting inefficiency in public services. The failure to resolve this crisis has contributed to the erosion of Italy's social and political consensus, producing a ‘tax‐welfare’ backlash and a new territorial cleavage in welfare politics.

The social dimension of the European Union: A new type of welfare system?

Abstract This article develops a policy‐oriented, explanatory, meso‐analysis of the configurative aspects of the social dimension of the European Union (EU). In the first part (sections 1–2), the central elements of the analytical framework are set out. Social policy is conceptualized in terms of its substantive boundaries and normative foundations. Then, the distinct structures, contents and policy types of the welfare systems ‐ at national and EU levels ‐ are outlined against the background of their respective contextual determinant factors. In the second part (sections 3–5) the analytical framework is further developed. First, the article assesses the impact of cross‐national welfare heterogeneity upon the levels and nature of European social policy integration (the territorial cleavage). Second, the content of the EU welfare system (the substantive cleavage) is analysed on the basis of the degree of translation of a limited set of partly conflicting goals into actual policy initiatives. Finally, the e...

Remaking the Italian party system: How Lijphart got it wrong by saying it right

Italy is in the midst of a major party system transformation. The process has been gradual, caused by the decline of the former Communist Party and by the rise of the Northern League which has eroded the ‘stable instability’ of the Christian Democrats' one‐party dominance. Yet the direction of change remains uncertain. On electoral grounds, the recently introduced majoritarian electoral law should encourage the formation of competing coalitions. However, this change is taking place just at a time when the awakening of long‐established territorial cleavages is endangering national unity. A majoritanian government for a divided country might turn out to be the worst of the unintended consequences of institutional reform.

The Scotland—England Divide: Politics and Locality in Britain

Growing territorial cleavages within Britain have attracted considerable interest from social scientists in recent years. New spatial models of voting, accounting for the declining homogeneity of electoral behaviour,1 have drawn attention to localised patterns of political support, as well as the emergence of regional cleavages across Britain as a whole.2 Talk of a North–South split has become the common currency of political commentators to account for regional disparities between Conservative and Labour support.3 Alongside these local and regional divisions in voting patterns, there is a new interest in broader aspects of the political differences between the nations of the UK, notably between England on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales on the other.4

“Two Nations”: Class and Periphery in Late Victorian Britain, 1885-1910

Structural equation modeling techniques test a series of hypotheses on the mobilization of class voting in late Victorian Britain. The enfranchisement of the working class triggers an organizational proliferation as parties seek to mobilize the new citizenry as well as a countermobilization of religious and territorial cleavages which divide the working-class vote along pre-industrial cleavage lines. Class voting appeared as early as the 1895 election as the newly enfranchised voters of 1884 supported the Labour and Lib-Lab parties. During the period the Liberals became increasingly isolated with their middle class, Nonconformist base as organized labor in particular moved to Labour and the Lib-Labs. Conservative support appears stable among middle-class and Catholic voters. Models of regional politics show Central England to evolve quite differently, with class voting less important than in the remainder of the country. In the periphery the Liberals appealed to the Celtic fringe, while Labour garnered the working class vote. The mobilization of the lower strata, which might have united class against class, generated a countermobilization, which divided the periphery against the center.

“Two Nations”: Class and Periphery in Late Victorian Britain, 1885-1910

Structural equation modeling techniques test a series of hypotheses on the mobilization of class voting in late Victorian Britain. The enfranchisement of the working class triggers an organizational proliferation as parties seek to mobilize the new citizenry as well as a countermobilization of religious and territorial cleavages which divide the working-class vote along pre-industrial cleavage lines. Class voting appeared as early as the 1895 election as the newly enfranchised voters of 1884 supported the Labour and Lib-Lab parties. During the period the Liberals became increasingly isolated with their middle class, Nonconformist base as organized labor in particular moved to Labour and the Lib-Labs. Conservative support appears stable among middle-class and Catholic voters. Models of regional politics show Central England to evolve quite differently, with class voting less important than in the remainder of the country. In the periphery the Liberals appealed to the Celtic fringe, while Labour garnered the working class vote. The mobilization of the lower strata, which might have united class against class, generated a countermobilization, which divided the periphery against the center.