Incentives to Devolve : Electoral Geography and the Peripheral Party Threat

A widely shared explanation of political devolution says that it is the result of pressure from mobilized parties of culturally distinct peripheries. According to it, whenever national politicians feel threatened by the electoral growth of peripheral parties they react by accommodating the demands of these parties for cultural autonomy and/or territorial self-government. The last step in this process of accommodation is very often political devolution. The accommodation thesis, however, is challenged by two empirical facts that seem to question it: first, political devolution, intended to accommodate demands for self-government, is sometimes extended to regions without peripheral party unrest, as has happened, for example, in Italy and Spain. Second, accommodation policies do not follow automatically from the electoral growth of peripheral parties in all cases and at all times. This paper will propose electoral geography (i.e., the geographical distribution of parties' votes and the diverse electoral relevance of the country's regions) as a factor that contributes to determine the emergence of a peripheral threat to national parties' electoral fortunes and, consequently, the timing (when exactly) and scope (partial versus all-round devolution) of devolution reforms. Four European cases of asymmetrical devolution shall be studied: Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. There are some important differences between the four cases concerning the timing and the scope of first-time devolution, differences that will be accounted for by analyzing how electoral geography influenced the national politicians' calculations concerning when and how to devolve