Regionalist Parties in Western Europe

Regionalist Parties in Western Europe

Regionalist parties matter. Over the past 40 years, they have played an ever-larger role in West-European democracies. Because of their relevance and temporal persistence, their achievements have become increasingly visible not only in the electoral arena, but also as regards holding office and policy-making. This book enhances our understanding of these different dimensions of success as it analyses various types of regionalist party success. Beyond conventional perspectives, the focus of this book is also on how the dimensions of success are related to each other, and in particular to what extent electoral and office success – jointly or alternatively – contribute to policy success. Adopting a common theoretical framework and combining the in-depth knowledge of experts from different countries, each chapter explores the evolution and impact of regionalist parties in regional or federal states, that is, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland. This allows for a comprehensive and comparative analysis of one of the main political challenges within West-European democracies. Oscar Mazzoleni is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Research Observatory for Regional Politics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Sean Mueller is Lecturer of Political Science at the University of Berne, Switzerland.

15031-0168-FullBook.indd 1

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Party Families in Europe Series Editor: Emilie van Haute

The concept of party families is central to comparative party politics. Looking systematically at individual party families, their origins, development, ideology, policy positions, organizational structure, and/or sociological composition, this series investigates the nature of families of political parties. Themes are systematically developed through case studies and comparative chapters to consider key issues around: •

•

• •

Electoral performance and composition: the electoral fate of each party family, differences among national, sub-national and European elections, common patterns in the electoral development and the composition of the electorate of each party family. Participation to power: how the relationship to power has evolved for each party family. How their origins affect their capacity to enter government. What type of governmental coalitions or alliances they favour and which policies they develop once in power. Ideology and policy positions: how the ideological positioning of each party family evolved. How electoral performances, participation to power, or leadership change contribute or not to major programmatic evolutions. Party organization: how the intra-party organizational feature of each party family has evolved. Are these features homogeneous within each family? Is each family unique in their organizational choices?

Aimed at scholars and students of comparative politics, with a specific appeal for those interested in political parties and party systems, representation and elections, voting behaviour and public opinion, the comparative nature of titles in the series will appeal to readers throughout the world. Bringing together expert authors, editors, and contributors, it renews and expands our knowledge of political parties and party families in Europe.


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Regionalist Parties in Western Europe Dimensions of success Edited by Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller


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First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller; selection and editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [CIP data]

ISBN: 978-1-4724-7754-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-60446-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC


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Contents

List of tables List of figures About the authors 1

Introduction: Explaining the policy success of regionalist parties in Western Europe

vii ix x

1

O S C A R MAZ Z OL E NI AND S E AN MUE L L E R

2

The Scottish National Party: Nationalism for the many

22

LY N N B E NNIE

3

The Christlich-Soziale Union: More than one double role

42

C L A U D I U S WAGE MANN

4

Moderate regionalist parties in Spain: Convergència i Unió and Partido Nacionalista Vasco

61

O S C A R B ARBE RÀ AND AS T RI D BARRI O

5

Regionalist parties in Belgium (N-VA, FDF): A renewed success?

86

E M I L I E VAN HAUT E

6

The Südtiroler Volkspartei: Success through conflict, failure through consensus

107

G Ü N T H E R PAL L AVE R

7

The Northern League

135

R O B E RTO BI ORCI O


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vi Contents

8

A regionalist league in Southern Switzerland

152

O S C A R MAZ Z OL E NI

9

Conclusion

169

O S C A R MAZ Z OL E NI , S E AN MUE L L E R AN D EMILIE VA N H A U TE

Index


189

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Tables

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Territorial vocation and organisational basis of political parties Overview of selected parties Scottish seats and votes in UK General Elections 1964–2015 Scottish Parliamentary elections, 1999–2011 CSU electoral results at Bavarian Land elections, 1946–2013 CSU electoral results at national elections, 1949–2013 Electoral results at European elections CDU and CSU in federal government: Relative participation of the CSU The CiU at regional level, 1980–2012 The PNV at regional level, 1980–2012 The CiU at national level (Lower House), 1977–2011 The PNV at national level (Lower House), 1977–2011 The social profile of CiU and PNV voters National and regional majorities, Catalonia and Basque Country The governments and regional Prime Ministers of the CiU and PNV Parties supporting the CiU’s and PNV’s investiture votes N-VA results at regional, national and European levels, 2003–14 FDF results at regional, national and European levels, 2003–14 Government participation of the N-VA at the regional level in Flanders, 1999–2014 Government participation of the FDF at the federal and regional levels, 1999–2014 The policy success of the N-VA, 2003–14 The policy success of the FDF, 2003–14 Language groups in South Tyrol, 1900–2011 (in %) The SVP’s success in elections to the South Tyrolean legislature, 1948–2013 SVP vote share at national elections, 1948–2013 SVP vote share at EP elections, 1979–2013 Percentages of SVP voters according to socio-demographic attributes in 1993 and 2013, in %


5 15 23 25 43 44 45 50 63 64 64 65 66 75 84 85 88 91 95 99 102 102 109 111 113 113 115

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viii Tables 7.1 7.2 8.1 9.1 9.2 9.3

Performance of the Lega Nord at national elections, 1987–2013 Performance of the Lega Nord at EP elections, 1989–2014 Electoral and office success of the Ticino League (LdT), 1991–2015 Comparison of regions and countries covered Regionalist vote, office and policy success at the regional level Regionalist vote, office and policy success at the national level


136 137 154 170 181 185

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Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 9.1 9.2

The “normal” sequence of party success The “reverse” sequence of party success The “self-defeating” sequence of party success Regionalist policy success at the regional level Regionalist policy success at the national level


12 13 13 176 177

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About the authors

Oscar Barberà has been Associate Professor at the University of Valencia since 2009. His main interests include political parties, political elites and decentralisation in comparative perspective. He has published extensively on Spanish political parties with Routledge, Oxford University Press and Ashgate/Nomos. Astrid Barrio is Associate Professor at the University of Valencia. She has published extensively on Convergència i Unió and has written numerous book chapters and articles on the subject that have appeared in Revista Española de Ciencia Política as well as REIS – Revista de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Her research interests also extend to nationalism, party membership, party funding and political elites. Her latest works have been published, amongst others, in Pôle Sud, French Politics and South European Society and Politics. Lynn Bennie is Reader in Politics at the University of Aberdeen, an institution she joined in 1996. In 2012 she published a monograph on the SNP (with James Mitchell and Robert Johns) with Oxford University Press. Other articles of hers have been published in Political Studies, Party Politics, and Electoral Studies. Her research expertise spans the areas of political participation, green politics, British political parties, and Scottish politics. Roberto Biorcio is Professor of Political Science at the Università degli Studi di Milano “Bicocca”. His main research interests lie with political participation, parties, social movements, electoral behaviour, and social capital. He is a specialist on both the Italian party system and Northern Italy. His books on Padania, the Lega Lombarda, and the Lega Nord, as well as on the Italian Green Party, were published in Italian and he has contributed to volumes edited by F. Müller-Rommel, I. Diamanti, and H.D. Klingemann, amongst others. Oscar Mazzoleni is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Research Observatory for Regional Politics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His main interests include political parties and Swiss politics in a comparative perspective. He recently published the book Understanding Populist Party Organisation (co-edited, Palgrave-MacMillan 2016), chapters in edited volumes with Nomos, and Routledge, and articles in Government and Opposition,


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About the authors xi Party Politics, Regional and Federal Studies, Swiss Political Science Review, and Contemporary Italian Politics, amongst others. Sean Mueller is Lecturer at the University of Berne, Switzerland. His latest books include Theorising Decentralisation (ECPR Press, 2015) and Understanding Federalism and Federation (co-edited, Ashgate, 2015). His articles have appeared in Publius: The Journal of Federalism, European Political Science Review, Government and Opposition, The Journal of Public Policy, Electoral Studies, the Swiss Political Science Review, Space and Polity, and L’Europe en Formation. Günther Pallaver is Professor of Political Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. One of his areas of expertise is the German-speaking Italian region of South Tyrol and its politics. Amongst others, he has written for the Austrian Journal of Political Science, the Swiss Political Science Review, Regional & Federal Studies, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, and Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale, and he has contributed chapters to edited volumes published by Routledge, Peter Lang, Nomos, Continuum, Springer, and Il Mulino. Emilie van Haute is Lecturer at the Centre d’Etude de la Vie Politique (Cevipol), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her books on parties, party systems, and organisation have been published with Routledge and Les Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, while her articles have appeared in Party Politics, Acta Politica, Electoral Studies, and Regional & Federal Studies. She is the co-editor of ECPR/Oxford University Press Comparative Politics Series. Claudius Wagemann is Professor of Social Sciences at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His publication list includes articles that have appeared in The European Journal of Political Research, Comparative Sociology, and German Politics as well as co-authored books on QCA methodology (with Cambridge University Press) and the mobilisation of extreme right activists (with Oxford University Press).


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1

Introduction Explaining the policy success of regionalist parties in Western Europe Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller

Over the past few decades, regionalist parties have become more and more important in many West-European countries (Fitjar 2009; Jeffery 2010; Jolly 2015). This book is devoted to explaining their political success. By this we refer not only to electoral success, but also to government participation (success in office) and actual political output (policy success). In fact, it is on policy success that we shall focus the most: the achievement of regionalist parties in terms of changing collective decisions. Such change can refer to two different aspects of policy-making: its actual content, that is, change in direction, or the procedure through which decisions are taken, for example through change of location from the national to the regional capital (devolution). What matters is that some change (or the successful obstruction of change) must have occurred because of the regionalist party. Policy success in that sense is the ultimate test of a regionalist party’s impact and wider relevance: what has it actually achieved? Of course, electoral and office success remain important milestones themselves. But this book is more interested in understanding how the three dimensions of success are related to each other, and in particular how electoral and office success – jointly or alternatively – contribute to policy success. In fact, we show that there are different pathways through which regionalist parties can achieve policy success. The conventional route leads from electoral through office to policy success, typically at the regional level, where change in policy direction can then be effectuated. The SNP minority government’s abolishment of university tuition fees in 2007 is a good example of this (see the chapter by Lynn Bennie, this volume). However, to effectuate devolution (a change in policy-making location), typically influence at the national level needs to be gained first. The Basque and Catalan case studies included in this book (see the chapter by Oscar Barberà and Astrid Barrio) trace how parliamentary support, that is, national electoral but not office success, can be traded for such policy concessions. While of course related, the two types of policy success are analytically distinct: one has “to do with obtaining autonomy, and [the other] more [. . .] with exercising it” (Hepburn 2010a, 29). In this introductory chapter, we first of all underline why regionalist parties need to be studied at all and how they are distinct from regional branches of state-wide parties. We then provide an explanatory framework combining the


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2

Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller

three dimensions of success just mentioned. Finally, we present our comparative approach and outline the selection of parties that all represent different forms and pathways of political success within the regionalist party family.

1.1 Why regionalist parties? Before we elaborate on our conceptual framework in more detail, let us mention the two aspects that are special about regionalist parties and that, accordingly, set them apart from other party families. First, regionalist parties provide for an explicit link to territory in the form of their region. This region is always “unique”, that is, ontologically different from other regions (Keating 2009, viii) – no matter how much of it is socially constructed (e.g. Padania), confined to a single nation or crossing two nation-states (the Basque Country), inhabited by a linguistic minority (South Tyrol) or majority of that state (Flanders), or located on the mainland or an island (Corsica). Whereas other political parties like the Socialists or Conservatives, but also “newer” parties like the Greens or right-wing populists (Bolleyer 2013), advocate a non-territorial cause in the form of a universalist ideology centred on society, regionalist parties primarily stand to defend and promote “their” particular region. In this exclusivism, they resemble nationalist parties (cf. Keating 2013, 23–41; Türsan 1998, 5–6). Second, regionalist parties typically advocate change as regards territorial autonomy, that is, they want to modify the vertical allocation of political power between centre and periphery (although the very notion of periphery is of course rejected to apply to one’s own region, since this is the real centre). This form of advocacy may be more or less radical, ranging from demands for cultural autonomy (e.g. power to decide about identity policies linked to territorially concentrated minorities such as education; Braun 2000) to outright independence (ultimate decision-making over everything, in theory at least). More generally, then, every policy’s territorial reach can be modified in the region’s favour, be that in terms of more tax autonomy (Catalonia), more welfare spending (Scotland), or less EU integration (Ticino). In other words, whereas other parties are interested in area only to the extent that it serves their more generalist policy aims, the goal of regionalist parties is to territorialise policy-making (Hepburn 2010a, 18). In their more radical form (as secessionists), they thus resemble anti-system parties. But unlike other, usually more marginal, anti-system parties, through (re)territorialising political competition regionalist parties are in a unique “niche” position (cf. Meguid 2008; Wagner 2012) which, if exploited successfully, is able to radically change the very construction of the state (Jeffery 2010, 138). The most far-reaching reforms in Western Europe in this regard have certainly been undertaken in Belgium, driven not least by the lasting electoral and office success of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA; see chapter by Emilie van Haute, this volume). This example goes some way towards answering why we should bother with regionalist parties in the first place. More generally, there are both empirical and theoretical reasons. Empirically, over the past decades regionalist parties have undoubtedly become more and more important for European politics (Fitjar 2009;


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Introduction 3 Jeffery 2010; Jolly 2015). Based on electoral success, they trade parliamentary support at the national level for autonomist concessions, as in Spain or Italy (Keating & Wilson 2009). Based on governmental success, they monopolise the centre-periphery agenda and push for independence, for example in Scotland or Belgium (Alonso 2012). And even where their demands are less radical, their success contributes to the formation of distinct regional political systems (Hepburn 2010b; Jeffery 2009) with distinct coalitions (Bäck et al. 2013; Downs 1998; Stefuriuç 2009) to give expression to different policy preferences and/or mobilise along ethno-linguistic fault-lines (Swenden & Maddens 2009). So regionalist parties are on the rise, and studying that rise is as important as studying the rise of any other party family. Theoretically, studying the relation between regionalist parties and their success is worthwhile for at least three reasons. First, unlike other parties that strive, say, for ever more equality or market liberalisation, the policy goals of regionalist parties can in fact be attained, at least potentially. The clearest example of this is the Scottish independence referendum, used by the leader of the SNP as a promise in the 2011 Scottish elections, lost in September 2014 but not completely off the table in a revised form for bargaining purposes. With fewer but more specific policy issues on their agenda, regionalist parties are thus more vulnerable to falter after they have obtained office but are then unable to deliver. In that regard they resemble other niche or protest parties (Meguid 2008; Wagner 2012), but with strong territorial roots and sometimes extended links to other societal actors like the media or the Church (see the chapters by Günther Pallaver on the SVP and by Claudius Wagemann on the CSU, this volume; cf. also Bolleyer 2013). Second, being at the outset confined to certain areas only, regionalist success can have important horizontal effects, that is, it can pull other regions in similar directions. This effect became known in Spain as café para todos. Because tackling centre-periphery issues once formed the very heart of modern state formation (Lipset & Rokkan 1990 [1967]; Swenden 2006), these developments in turn have the potential to challenge the whole West-European state system. Talk of the “Europe of the Regions” may be outdated and fading, but territory itself remains an important factor for politics (Keating 2013, 192–3). Third and finally, what additionally makes regionalist success so interesting is its connection to European integration as a parallel but conceptually distinct challenge to the role and position of nation-states (Elias & Tronconi 2011, 2; Hepburn 2010a). Today’s multilevelness can in fact be seen as both a cause and an effect of regionalist success (Jolly 2006): a cause, because Europe-wide structures have been put in place that provide regionalist parties with yet another arena in which to succeed (European elections) and where they can find non-statewide political partners (e.g. the European Free Alliance, EFA; cf. already Mair & Mudde 1998, 216); an effect, because strengthening the EU is often seen and/or argued to take place at the expense of the nation-state and to the profit of regions, so regionalist parties should be most in favour of the Europeanisation of areas like defence or macro-economic policy (cf. de Winter 1998, 210–1; Türsan 1998, 2) – domains least realistically devolved.


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And yet, attempts to explain the success of regionalist parties are rare and confined either to specific country-studies (Hepburn 2009; Schrijver 2004; van Haute & Pilet 2006) or focused on the electoral dimension more narrowly (Dandoy & Schakel 2013; Delwit 2005; Elias & Tronconi 2011; Hough & Jeffery 2006). But a systematic and up-to-date explanation of the specific office and policy success of this family of parties is missing (see, however, de Winter & Türsan 1998; esp. de Winter 1998, 235–40; and Jolly 2015). Methodologically, gaining such an understanding of the type and extent of regionalist success – and the implications this carries for West-European parties and democracy more generally – is only possible through comparative in-depth analyses based on a common framework. In the remainder of this introduction we attempt to provide such a theoretical framework to explain the policy success of regionalist parties. We next define what we mean by regionalist parties, then conceptualise party success and discuss potential explanatory factors, and conclude by outlining the structure of the book.

1.2 Regional versus regionalist parties In this volume, we focus on political parties organised both at and for the regional level that claim to represent mainly territorial, that is, “regional” interests. Only such parties do we call regionalist. But although some of these parties have been around for quite some time, they have become the object of scholarly attention only more recently. In fact, only over the past 40 years, when political science has had to catch up with the various forms of re-territorialisation occurring across Europe (e.g. Türsan 1998, 4), has it emerged that a purely national perspective on political parties misses out on important differences both within and across nationstates (Jeffery 2010; Keating 2013). The “family” of regionalist parties is defined using both their genetic origin and ideological profile (Mair & Mudde 1998, 223–4; cf. also Seiler 1980 and 2005; Urwin 1983). This approach centres on “what [parties] are rather than what they do” (Mair & Mudde 1998, 224), and brings together parties “born” on the same side of one of Lipset and Rokkan’s four cleavages while also adhering to the same common political goal, namely the political strengthening of “their” region (de Winter 1998, 204–5; Hepburn 2010a, 33). This must not necessarily mean that parties are only regionalist if they use the name of their region in their name, nor that they campaign exclusively on the centre-periphery dimension. However, political regionalism so defined always means regional exclusivity in organisational terms: a regionalist party deliberately and only files candidates in its own region (Detterbeck 2012; de Winter 1998, 211). In fact, while non-regionalist parties may also be confined to specific regions, that outcome is not tied to that party’s ideology. For example, already Putnam (1993, 119–20) alluded to the possibility that the uneven strength of the Italian Communist Party across the peninsula could help explain differences in terms of regional state capacity. The strength of left-wing parties in more urban areas versus the success of more conservative parties in rural areas is another well-known example. Moreover, some parties are regional without necessarily having the


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Introduction 5 goal of reinforcing regional autonomy (Brancati 2007, 138; Massetti & Schakel 2013, 798), or they are autonomous regional parties that are ideologically close and organisationally allied with a state-wide party, such as the Bavarian CSU (Hepburn 2010b, 533). These two dimensions – organisational basis and representational vocation – form the four-cell matrix shown in Table 1.1. Here, state-wide parties describes an ideal-type situation in which a given political party is both present and appeals to the electorate across the whole territory of a state. If a party is organisationally present only in one specific region but still potentially appeals to citizens of the whole national territory, we speak of a region-specific catch-all party. On the other hand, if a party is organisationally present across the whole or most of the national territory but wants to win votes only in one specific region, we speak of a regional branch of a state-wide party. This rough separation of political parties into four groups allows us to now move on to regionalist parties, for which a further distinguishing criterion is necessary, in addition to appeal and organisation. As mentioned before, a third and final difference relates to ideology: in the centre-periphery issue-dimension (Alonso 2012; Meguid 2008), parties either compete for more or less regional power, for the status quo, or not at all. Only regional parties or truncated state-wide parties that demand more “regional authority” (in one or both senses of Hooghe et al. 2010, i.e. self-rule and/or shared rule) are regionalist parties. To the extent that state-wide parties also embrace demands for more regional autonomy, they too can be said to be regionalist or at least supportive of decentralisation (Toubeau & Wagner 2015), albeit only in a wider sense, for this claim typically does not form part of their “primary goal, whether that be electoral success or something else” (Harmel & Janda 1994, 265; cf. also McAngus 2014). In short, regionalist parties are political parties that a) demand more regional power who are neither b) organised on a nation-wide scale nor do they c) possess the ambition to represent interests and people over, of and in the whole territory of a country. Instead, regionalist parties are organised exclusively on a regional basis and aim to cater for a regional electorate only. They are neither a branch nor a truncated version of a state-wide party, but exist in and of themselves (Jeffery

Table 1.1 Territorial vocation and organisational basis of political parties Vocation: The party appeals to an electorate . . .

Organisational basis: The party is present . . . . . . in the whole national territory

. . . only in one specific region

. . . everywhere

State-wide parties (with or without regional strongholds)

. . . only in one specific region

Regional branch of state-wide parties (e.g. Scottish Labour)

Region-specific catch-all parties (e.g. CSU, Catalan Socialists, most Belgian mainstream parties) Regionalist parties


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6


2010, 142–3). What is more, these parties have fully and completely subscribed to the territorial ideology of regionalism: they aspire to government of, by and for the region. This paraphrase expresses the desire for regional self-rule (government by the region, i.e. not by “the centre”) through institutions specifically designed to tailor public policies to regional preferences (government for the region, i.e. region-specific public service-delivery). A condition for both is the existence of a sense of collective identity at regional level (a sociological variable) and/or regional institutionalisation that carries at least some sort of outside recognition (cf. Jeffery 2010, 147).1 In any case, as a distinct collective, “the region” deserves to be treated differently, that is, the government of the region should be organised in a particular way. This distinction may have linguistic, religious, economic, geographic and/or historic contours (Keating 2013), but what matters most for the purposes of a political science approach such as ours is the invocation of and political mobilisation around such distinctiveness (Lipset & Rokkan 1990 [1967]). Hence, the extreme points in terms of the radicalism of regionalist demands are formed by secessionism, on the one hand, and mere cultural recognition, on the other (Dandoy 2010, E-206; de Winter 1998, 204–8).2

1.3 Political success: Votes, office and policy As this book is devoted to finding an explanation for the overall success of regionalist parties, some preliminary agreements are necessary. Although a comprehensive notion of party success has been rather neglected in political science (see, however, Carter 2005; Lawson & Merkl 2007), any attempt to explain it implies a conceptual clarification of its meaning. Indeed, our first goal is to define which success is at stake. Success, as understood in common sense, generally denotes something positive: a successful career, a successful marriage, a successful expedition, etc. Hence we invariably find a normative statement attached to qualifications of events, projects, or ideas as successful. But this also means that what in the eye of one observer is successful may not be so in that of another, possibly more critical, beholder: one with a different background, understanding and/or expectation. From this follows a second observation: judgements over the success of something or somebody are never absolute, but always only relative: success (and failure, for that matter) only makes sense if compared to, for instance, a prior occurrence of a similar phenomenon, an ideal type or “benchmark”, or the very goal that the subject supposedly being successful (or having failed) has set itself. These two characteristics combined – that is, the normative and relative aspects of success – potentially create a formidable obstacle to arrive at reliable and valid generalisations: How are we to predict success if there are no universally accepted definitions of it, that is, if every qualification of a situation as success may equally well be read as failure? Fortunately, we need not worry about agreement on success in general, but “only” on the success of (a sub-set of) political parties. As such, there are some equally generally – indeed, almost universally – accepted criteria that guide us in our assessment of success and failure.


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Introduction 7 In fact, concerning the success of regionalist parties, the literature usually insists on the electoral dimension, following either one of two ways: one formal, the other more descriptive. On the one hand, perhaps the best-known attempt is provided by Urwin (1983, 229), who devised an index of cumulative regional inequality, “which compares the proportion of a [regionalist] party’s vote that it receives in a region with the proportion it would expect to receive if it drew support nation-wide in proportion to the size of each region”. Such measures allow scholars to compare regionalist parties with state-wide mainstream parties and across countries, since one figure is readily available. But the measure is inadequate for parties that do not aim to gain nation-wide support because their target electorate is exclusively region-specific (Türsan 1998, 211). On the other hand, a nominal range of electoral achievement (for instance more than 11%) in national and/or regional elections within a single region is adopted (e.g. Müller-Rommel 1998, 20) to gauge a party’s electoral performance. However, both these attempts to measure the degree of electoral success do not take into account that the significance of success is largely dependent on context. For example, in a very stable multi-party system based on a proportional method of election, a mere 8% of electoral support in favour of an emergent party could very well be considered a “success”, while a similar vote share in a plurality system could not even lead to gaining seats (Bolleyer 2013, 9). In addition, these methods to measure electoral success are also insensitive to duration. A flash or contingent electoral advance is not directly comparable to durable party presence and steady electoral advance, although the results may be inconsistent over time and type of electoral competition (e.g. regional vs. national). In this latter case of durable party success, electoral “success” tends to shape more clearly the performance of a party in the policy arena, which usually needs a longer period than a single electoral campaign to produce related outputs within the regional and/or national political system (e.g. different legislation on immigration, or more money for the constituency). Moreover, the success of political parties, including that of regionalist parties, has to be defined as an achievement in terms of political relevance in three arenas, that is, not only as electoral success but also as office and policy success. Such a concept of relevance is inspired by Sartori (2005, 107 ff.), who conceived of party relevance along two complementary dimensions: a coalition/governing potential and/or a blackmail potential (or power of intimidation), that is, the possibility to “affect the tactic of party competition” as well as the “direction” of it (Sartori 2005, 108), including government agenda and public policies. Accordingly, we define regionalist party success as being able to achieve and/or maintain a politically salient role through either one, two or all three types of success: electoral, office and policy. Hence, loosely following Duverger (1980, 186), we shall distinguish four types of office success at both national and regional level: external support, coalition inclusion as junior partner, membership in a coalition as senior partner and singleparty governments. Of course, the willingness of other parties to form a coalition or ask for external support, especially at the national level, is often a condition


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only indirectly related to the regionalist party’s behaviour, and may or may not result from that party’s electoral success (de Winter 1998, 237). This will be taken up in the next section. Policy success, finally, is defined as the partial or total realisation of a regionalist party’s substantive goals, for example more regional autonomy, better constitutional protection thereof, or simply a change or continuation in national policy to the region’s favour. Because every public policy has spatial dimensions (it has to apply somewhere), in principle any domain of political decision-making is a potential object of such explicit territorialisation, from education (e.g. free universities in Scotland; cf. Keating 2009) through health (e.g. better hospitals in Northern Italy; cf. Huysseune 2006) to, of course, “regional” economic development (Biela et al. 2013; also Carty & Eagles 2005). But what matters is that to count as regionalist policy success, a change (or the successful obstruction of it) must have clear territorial consequences, that is, it must relate to spatial policies or identity matters that are territorially connected to that region (cf. Braun 2000). Furthermore, the realisation of such goals can be symmetric (in favour of all regions) or asymmetric (solely for that region; cf. Agranoff 1999). As with government participation, to give in to regionalist demands, for example by restructuring the state as in Belgium after 1993, often depends on the goodwill and/or strategic calculation of state-wide parties (de Winter 1998, 238), but to what extent this factor is dominant is a case for empirical investigation. Following this rationale, electoral strength is only one dimension of party success, albeit the dominant and (often) the logically prior one. Two other dimensions of success relate to office and policy. How then to explain not just one but all three dimensions of success?

1.4 Explaining regionalist party success We next attempt to provide an initial framework for explaining regionalist party success. To do so we have, first of all, to consider factors that would explain the emergence of regionalist parties in the first place. Although not directly relevant to our purpose of explaining the success of parties once they have started to compete, we shall see that some of the factors facilitating party creation continue to linger on and might contribute to a party’s continued, or temporally and spatially varied, success. The distinctions made in trying to explain regionalist party emergence – or regionalism more generally – typically follow that of other sub-disciplines of political science, pitting structure versus agency. On the one hand, there are those that give more weight to structural conditions such as the existence, type and intensity of social divisions and/or cleavages, regional population size, distance from the capital, inter-regional economic imbalances, and/or a legacy of prior territorial independence (classically, Lipset & Rokkan 1990 [1967]; more recently, Panizza 1999; Sorens 2005). Others instead emphasise micro-level factors such as political leadership and electoral calculations (e.g. Alonso 2012; O’Neill 2005 – the federal literature has known this as the “bargain”; cf. Riker 1964). Müller-Rommel


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Introduction 9 (1998, 21–3) captures exactly that distinction when he refers to developmental and centre-periphery analyses, on the one hand, and to rational choice and competitive approaches, on the other. A third group tries to combine the two perspectives and points to the structure of opportunity such as political decentralisation (Brancati 2007) or regional authority (Massetti & Schakel 2013) that enables “territorial protest against established political institutions’ behaviour” to be both meaningful and effective (Müller-Rommel 1998, 24). The following discussion builds on these earlier efforts, and particularly the third strategy, and is organised according to the type of success under scrutiny. Most importantly, we depart from the premise that regionalist party success is a product of an interaction between the above-mentioned macro-, micro- and contextual factors. 1.4.1 Factors for regionalist party emergence So prior even to speaking of electoral success, we need to separate factors for regionalist party emergence from those potentially explaining the success of that party once established. Relying principally on Bolleyer (2013) but also on cleavage theory (Bartolini & Mair 1990; Lipset & Rokkan 1990 [1967]), the following three factors are thought to contribute to the creation of a regionalist party as defined above: 1

2

3

Peripheral distinctiveness and/or grievances: This denotes the potential object of political mobilisation that can, although usually static in nature, be differentially and dynamically activated by political actors in arguing for a new force. Notable features include socio-economic marginality (Leimgruber 2004) or superiority, cultural, linguistic and/or ethnic distinctiveness, and geographic-topographic peripherality (distance, inaccessibility, aridity etc.; cf. de Winter et al. 2006; Friend 2012; Kellas 2004; Sorens 2012). For all these factors, subjective and artificially created perception need not necessarily correspond to objective reality; however, what matters is that the existing state structures only insufficiently accommodate such regional distinctiveness (cf. Hechter & Okamoto 2001, 203). Organisational resources: A further necessary but by itself insufficient factor for regionalist party establishment is availability of persons, finance and infrastructure, amongst others. Müller-Rommel (1998, 24–5) also counts leadership skills among the internal resources of new parties, while de Winter (1998, 242) even underlines that “one of the striking characteristics of most ethnoregionalist parties is that they have been led for long periods of time by a single charismatic leader, combining three types of leadership roles: those of creator and preacher, organiser and stabiliser”. Bolleyer (2013, 11) even goes one step further in suggesting that, at least initially, a leader’s charisma can compensate for the absence of other organisational resources. Electoral permissiveness (Bolleyer 2013; Brice 2011), which includes both the official costs for party registration and the political entrepreneurs’ ex-ante


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10

Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller perceptions of likely electoral success upon first competition (Duverger’s “psychological effect”, cf. Blais & Carty 1991). Note that since, by definition, regionalist parties and region-specific catch-all parties only compete in their region, the same electoral system that disadvantages them nationally (e.g. single-member plurality systems) might play to their advantage if their electorate is sufficiently concentrated territorially (Riker 1982, 760).

In short, there needs to be a cause for a regional elite to rally around with a sufficiently large confidence in electoral returns to justify organisational costs. As with the following range of explanatory variables, the authors of the case-study chapters will evaluate what combination of these factors has contributed to the creation of “their” regionalist party. 1.4.2 Explaining regionalists parties’ electoral success Once the regionalist party is established, it needs to win votes, the primary currency of democratic politics. Among the conditions of regionalist parties’ electoral success, we can distinguish the following factors: 1

2

3 4

The salience of peripherality as a distinct issue dimension, for example people’s commitment to their “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) of regional extent (Augusteijn & Storm 2012) as a primary identity marker. Unlike what was said above on factors for emergence, here collective identity cannot merely remain objective anymore if it is to make people vote for a specific party – that identity also needs to matter, or at least matter enough for voters to cast their ballot on the regionalist side of the territorial cleavage (de Winter 1998, 217ff.; Meguid 2008, 25ff.; also Alonso 2012); A distinctive public sphere, that is, region-specific media that provide a forum for discussion of region-specific problems, which in turn provides more or less legitimacy to claims for region-specific policies, politics and politybuilding (de Winter 1998, 232; Pilet et al. 2009; van Houten 2007); An institutional dimension, that is, electoral rules that facilitate the translation of votes into seats (Duverger’s “mechanical effect”; cf. also de Winter 1998, 219–20); and, finally, The fragility of electoral alignments, that is, the instability of traditional voting support, such as declining mainstream parties and the appearance of new issue-dimensions (ecological, EU-related, post-materialist etc., cf. Elias 2009; Hepburn 2010a; Inglehart 1977; Müller-Rommel 1989; Scully & Wyn Jones 2010). However, as Bolleyer (2013, 5) cautions, volatility might as much work in regionalist parties’ favour initially as it might work against them at successive elections.

All four sets of factors are conditions for the possibility of regionalist party success, which have to be channelled and activated by political actors – or, more precisely: by political entrepreneurs – with their own strategies and resources


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Introduction 11 in terms of mobilisation repertories and leadership (Bolleyer 2013). Combining a resource-mobilisation with a political approach, we therefore assume that political success occurring in the electoral arena depends on the capability of the regional elite to mobilise internal and external resources exploiting opportunities provided by the cultural, political and institutional environment (Müller-Rommel 1998; Tarrow 2011). However, once the elections are over, what next? Explaining regionalist success in both office and policy terms implies a slightly different configuration, to which we turn next. 1.4.3 Explaining regionalist parties’ office success One crucial condition for office success is, of course, electoral success. In parliamentary systems, if the regionalist party has gained an absolute majority of seats, it can form a single-party government; the same applies if executive elections have crowned the party’s candidate for regional presidency or governor. Matters get more complicated in the area between absolute parliamentary majority and minimal electoral success. Here, the interaction between the strategic choice of mainstream parties, especially at the regional level, and a “participationist” stance of the regionalist party are thought to determine whether and how a regionalist party is included in national and/or regional government (cf. Lawson & Merkl 2007). This can be spelled out as follows: conditions favouring a regionalist party’s office success are 1 2

Electoral success at absolute majority level or, short of that, the availability of political allies to form a coalition; and The victory of a “participationist” or pro-governance wing inside the regionalist party.

These two conditions explain the possibility of: a) a “cordon sanitaire”, or the “failure” of a regionalist party to be represented within the government despite its willingness and reasonable electoral success; b) a regional government coalition including the regionalist party if both conditions are present; and c) a single-party cabinet at regional level if the regionalist party is strong enough not to depend on allies. Important to understanding the middle ground (situation b) is the distinction between a party’s marginalisation and its recognition as “coalitionable”: while “dirty”, “dangerous”, anti-system or even anti-state3 parties might be subject to a cordon sanitaire, inter-party recognition and the role of the media have received much less attention in the literature on the reasons for parties’ office success. 1.4.4 Explaining regionalist parties’ policy success The final stage of our theoretical model concerns system outputs, that is, policy decisions on the change or continuity of collectively binding rules with regionspecific impact (Braun 2000). Building on the prior stages, regionalist policy success can occur because of the following:


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12


1

The office success of the regionalist party itself, either at the regional level (in areas where the region is competent) or, less likely but theoretically still possible, at the national level. Through the mere electoral success (without office success) of the regionalist party, that is, through the decisions by other parties in power that feel pressured enough by such success (de Winter 1998, 237–8). Whether proregionalist decisions by state-wide parties are driven by the strategic desire to expropriate that party’s unique selling point as defender of the periphery (Alonso 2012) or form part of supporting bargain, for example in Spain, is not so important here, since strictly speaking the regionalist party wins in either case, at least in terms of policy output.

2

Indeed, the wider question that arises from this is to what extent the centre-periphery discourse is reproduced or created within regional political systems: is there an acceptance of the regional claim based on (linguistic, cultural etc.) distinctiveness, and is this view shared by all the main parties active at the regional level, or does the status of “pariah” trickle down from the central to the regional level? In any case, government participation certainly helps to produce policy output, but cabinet seats are neither a necessary, nor a sufficient, condition for this. 1.4.5 Links between electoral, office and policy success The advantage of our three-dimensional view of party success is that we can not only separate between different causes, but also relate the effects of each to the nature of either of the other two. The three faces of success can first of all be meaningfully linked over time, where logic – that is, an assumption of normality based on the wide majority of cases – dictates the sequence depicted in Figure 1.1 (adapted from Strøm & Müller 1999, 20). Working backwards, political parties are first of all assumed to be interested in influencing the collectively binding decisions in a given political system to an extent that better matches their preferences. Hence, in the words of Strøm and Müller (1999, 7): “A party’s success in pursuing its policies depends on its ability to change public policy toward its most preferred positions or to prevent undesirable changes.” Normally, policies are more effectively pursued when in government, or at least when in parliament. That votes are the currency of liberal democracy explains the middle position of office in our three-stage conception of party success: “Although political office frequently does enhance policy effectiveness or future electoral success, the former may be more generally true

Electoral success

Office success

Policy success

Electoral success

Figure 1.1 The “normal” sequence of party success


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Introduction 13 Policy success

Electoral success/failure

Office success

Figure 1.2 The “reverse” sequence of party success

than the latter” (Strøm & Müller 1999, 6). Electoral success as measured in votes, then, is logically prior to both office and policy, for only a party that matters electorally can bring its influence to bear when it comes to distributing governmental, parliamentary or other offices and/or when demanding policy concessions. Again in the words of Strøm and Müller (1999, 9): “The most preferred outcome for a party leader is one in which his or her party gets the greatest possible number of votes.” Of course there is also a feedback loop linking policy success to electoral success in the form of direct recognition of the party’s policies. Office success, too, can influence electoral success through the prestige and bonuses that come with incumbency. Of course, office participation, like policy decisions, can work both ways: to enhance the profile or to damage the credibility of a party. What is more, the two can also work together against electoral success: office success in the form of a coalition may come with painful policy concessions for which the party is then punished at the next election (see, for example, the UK Liberal Democrats’ U-turn on university fees shortly after having entered a coalition with the Conservatives). It may even be office and policy success, and not so much failure, that (also) cause subsequent electoral failure, as experienced by Plaid Cymru after the victory in the May 2011 referendum on more devolved powers (McAngus 2014). Finally, the extent of electoral success may also be such that the fear of other parties, that they will be marginalized, bars entry into a government coalition. It may also be that one’s own electoral success will come at the expense of the party’s preferred coalition partner (e.g. the success of CDU/CSU in Germany at the 2013 general elections and the disappearance from parliament of the Liberals). A final combination (displayed in Figure 1.3) can be labelled “self-defeating”. Here, the initial electoral (and possibly, but not necessarily, also office) and policy success of a regionalist party may be so extensive that the party loses its rationale, since one of the primary conditions for its very creation, the inadequacy of existing state structures (see above), has disappeared. The story of the Belgian regionalist parties is a case in point here.

Electoral success

(Office success)

Policy success

Electoral failure

Figure 1.3 The “self-defeating” sequence of party success


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14


In all of this it is equally important to keep in mind that depending on how we define the nature of political parties, success in one dimension is more important than in others. If we regard a party as essentially interested in policy-making, office success may be less important than electoral success that allows for external support of a minority cabinet (as has, for example, happened so often in the Scandinavian countries). On the other hand, an office-seeking party that merely wants to stay in power will regard policy success as less important (e.g. the Italian Christian-Democrats between WWII and 1992). Finally, protest parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party under Jörg Haider (1986–2005) are, at least in their early stages (of re-orientation), more interested in votes than in anything else.

1.5 Structure of the book and reasons for selection of cases These manifold conceptions, types and sequences of success necessitate thorough analyses. The chapters that follow are in-depth studies of the different types of success of selected European regionalist parties and their development. The following nine parties are covered: the Scottish National Party (SNP); the Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern e.V. (CSU); the Convergència i Unió (CiU) and the Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ/PNV); the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) and the Fédéralistes Démocrates Francophones (FDF); the Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP) and the Lega Nord (LN); and the Lega dei Ticinesi (LdT). The selection of these parties was inspired by the idea of a most-differentsystems-design, whereby context and potential causal variables are different but the outcome to be studied is equally present in all of them. That outcome is the existence of regionalist parties and, more importantly, their achieving a minimal level of success, defined in turn as regional executive participation at least once. To further restrict the number of parties to be covered, we additionally introduced a criterion of regional relevance (in terms of the population size of the region in both absolute terms and as a fraction of its nation-station population), thereby excluding Northern Ireland, Wales, the German-speaking community of Belgium (which is, strictly speaking, not a region anyway) and the Italian Valle d’Aosta. In other words, we do not aim to cover the universe of cases (i.e. all regionalist parties with office success) but instead strive for a mix of countries representative of the wider phenomenon of European regionalism. So while the Basque and Catalan regionalists as well as the Swiss LdT become “crucial cases” in the sense that they have set the pace for other regionalist parties in their countries,4 our nine parties are “diverse cases” as defined by Gerring (2007, 99): Diversity may thus refer to a range of variation on X1 and Y, or to a particular combination of causal factors (with or without a consideration of the outcome). In each instance, the goal of case selection is to capture the full range of variation along the dimension of interest. We make use of this research design both to test certain established hypotheses – chief among them that regionalism, and thus regionalist party success, is higher


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Introduction 15 in culturally distinct regions – and at the same time to develop new hypotheses, which will be summarised in a concluding, comparative chapter. Based on the above, those hypotheses can be spelled out as follows: H1: The emergence of regionalist parties is due to a combination of peripheral grievances/peripheral distinctiveness, availability of organisational resources, and electoral permissiveness (psychological effect); H2: Electoral success of regionalist parties is due to the salience of a distinct regional identity, a separate regional public sphere, a permissive electoral system (mechanical effect), and electoral volatility; H3: Office success will occur through an absolute electoral majority (or the availability of coalition partners) and the victory of a participationist wing inside the party; while, finally, H4: Policy success is due either to electoral and office or mere electoral success. Given the complexity of our research goals – to explain not only electoral but also office and policy success as well as to assess relations between these three over time – and the many potential causal variables mentioned above – objective structure, subjective regional identity, the influence of the media, electoral de- and re-alignment, institutional context as well as party leadership – we have opted for a qualitative, context-sensitive discussion to assess the importance of the various factors listed above (Blatter & Blume 2008, 327). Table 1.2 presents an overview of the nine selected parties. There are at least two limitations to this research design. First, by selecting on the dependent variable – that is, regionalist parties having achieved regional office success at least once – we risk biasing our analysis (cf. Geddes 2007, ch. 3; Dion 1998). Thus, to increase confidence that the eventual findings of chapter authors are not spurious, the concluding chapter will provide a careful overall assessment Table 1.2 Overview of selected parties Case/party

SNP CSU CiU EAJ/PNV N-VA FDF SVP LN LdT

Country Name

Type

UK D ESP

Devolved/Union Federation Quasi-federal

B ITA

Federation of regions & communities Regionalised state

CH

Federation

Territorial base

Success*

Scotland Bavaria Catalonia “Euzkadi” Flanders Brussels (+Wallonia) South Tyrol Northern Italy Ticino

E+O(+P) E+O+P E+O(+P) E+O(+P) E+O+P E+O(+P) E+O+P E+O(+P) E+O+P

*Note: E = electoral; O = regional executive office; P = policy; (P) = limited policy success if measured against the (recent or original) goal of independence or annexation to Austria (SVP)


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(cf. also de Winter & Türsan 1998; Pasquier 2012; Wright 2003). The second limitation is the risk of over-determination: by including so many causal variables, are we not building a theory that explains everything and nothing, at the same time? Again, it will be up to the concluding chapter to achieve more parsimonious selections, after in-depth insights have been provided by the chapters on individual parties. We believe that such a multi-method research design – which combines an initial framework based on deduction from the wider literature, in-depth case studies of a reasonably representative but still “diverse” sample of regionalist parties, and finally a comparative analysis from which wider inferences can be drawn – is able to combine the advantages of case-study research (internal validity) with those of more structured cross-case comparisons (external validity). In that sense, the subsequent chapters all strive to achieve a balance between too much parsimony and suffocating over-determination. The lack of literature on political success in general is no help in this endeavour. Context sensitivity requires the liberty to include region- or party-specific factors, while valid comparisons can only be based on the same understanding of key concepts. So each chapter will start with a description of that regionalist party’s evolution in terms of membership, ideological orientation and electoral scores. Along with this each author discusses why that particular regionalist party is special, that is, what added value it provides in the eyes of its voters and/or members; what is different about its organisation and/or programme; whether it can attract support outside its (core) region; and whether the party also competes in national and European elections and why, if this is the case. The timeframe specified for this descriptive section is the post-WWII era, or, for those founded after WWI, starting with the party’s foundation. Except for the Swiss case, all party assessments conclude with the performance at the May 2014 European Parliament elections. Second, in analysing their cases, authors were asked to adopt a tri-dimensional perspective on party success: gaining votes and seats in regional and national institutions is a first, achieving government participation in either or both a second, and the realisation of specific policy goals a third component of success. A standard way of presenting these data in the form of three tables (electoral, office and policy success at regional, national and EU-level) was adopted. Naturally, these electoral, governmental and policy dimensions of success might at times conflict, and authors were asked to describe and explain such cases in more detail, for example by distinguishing between self-perception, mediatisation, and real events. So while interpretation remains key and there is no single way to define success, what will be made explicit are controversial issues, expectations, goals and results and what the mechanisms were that parties used to achieve success. Third and finally, all chapters end by reflecting on the implications of the success of “their” regionalist party for regional and national political systems. This might involve a shift towards accommodating regionalist demands in general (café para todos), organisational and/or ideological decentralisation within state-wide parties, centrifugal tendencies swapping over into policy domains that originally were not part of the regionalist agenda, and/or moves to outright secession (e.g. in the case of Catalonia). In other words, with this last step political success is


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Introduction 17 transformed from a dependent into an independent variable, so we are then able to answer questions about the impact of regionalist success.

Notes 1 Of course, collective identity can also develop as a reaction to region-building elsewhere, as happened, for example, in Wallonia; at the same time, an increase in degrees of regional self-rule (or decentralisation) can attract regional political entrepreneurs (Bolleyer 2013, 40ff.; Jeffery 2010, 143), for example in Spain, where regionalist parties have already been successfully established elsewhere (cf. de Winter 1998, 220). 2 A note on distinguishing regionalist from ethnoregionalist parties: De Winter and Türsan (1998), in what is the first comprehensive attempt at understanding regionalist parties, exclusively focus on ethnoregionalist parties, by which they understand “agents of ethnoregional mobilisation, i.e. [. . .] ethnic entrepreneurs” (Türsan 1998, 1). They thus consciously choose to restrict the notion of regionalist parties to those that “endorse a nationalism whose core is based on ethnic distinctiveness and territorial claims within established states” (emphasis added), but this seemingly precise term, “ethnicity”, is subsequently watered down to include any mere “sense of community” (Türsan 1998, 5). As there is then little left to distinguish “ethnic” from other forms of identification – the Lega Nord is not based on any “objective” ethnic criteria (Brunazzo & Roux 2012), the SNP specifically invokes the idea of a “civic” nationalism (Hassan 2009; Mitchell et al. 2012) and the PNV, too, aims at representing “all people living in the Basque Country regardless of their ethnic identity” (Brancati 2007, 138) – we might as well drop this restrictive epithet. This is not to say that regionalist parties may not also be “ethnic entrepreneurs”, but simply that we think it wiser to focus on the encompassing family of regionalist parties and treat ethnic distinctiveness (however measured) as a potential explanatory factor of success. Later approaches to studying regionalist parties follow that same path. 3 Regionalist parties demanding outright secession are clearly anti-(existing-)state, cf. Sorens (2005, 315). 4 In Switzerland, for example, there is the Mouvement Citoyens Genevois, which entered the cantonal executive of Canton Geneva for the first time in November 2013 (cf. http:// www.ge.ch/conseil_etat/membres.asp; last accessed 7 February 2014).

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