Democratic regeneration in European peripheral regions: new politics for the territory?

Abstract

Scholarly research on the emergence of a new politics agenda of democratic regeneration, driven by the electoral growth of challenger parties, has focused the analysis primarily at the national and supranational levels, leaving the subnational level underexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap through a comparative analysis of party competition in peripheral regions of Italy, Spain and Great Britain during the European Great Recession. Using Regional Manifestos Project data, it shows that the regionalisation of the state and the presence of a centre-periphery cleavage represent no obstacle when it comes to responding to a change of preferences among the electorate. The transformation of political spaces in the aftermath of the Great Recession is happening as much at the regional as at the national level. At the same time, the political relevance of challenger parties and the diversity of regional responses contradict the alleged secondary nature of regional dynamics.

Assessing and Explaining the Diverging Trajectories of Territorial Parties and Politics in Italy and Spain (2008‐2018)

“…Economic hardship, and its social consequences, prompted voters to move away from incumbents and try to find new political alternatives (Casal Bertoa 2014: 5). This de‐alignment was accompanied by a redefinition of patterns of political competition and the rise of new parties and movements campaigning against the political establishment and for a regeneration of democracy (Scantamburlo, Alonso and Gómez 2018: 615). When the crisis hit, the League and CDC were regarded as an integral part of the pre‐existing political system (Scantamburlo, Alonso and Gómez 2018: 637).…”

“…This de‐alignment was accompanied by a redefinition of patterns of political competition and the rise of new parties and movements campaigning against the political establishment and for a regeneration of democracy (Scantamburlo, Alonso and Gómez 2018: 615). When the crisis hit, the League and CDC were regarded as an integral part of the pre‐existing political system (Scantamburlo, Alonso and Gómez 2018: 637). Therefore, like other established parties, they had to develop strategies to respond to the challenges posed by the changing political environment.…”

“…These differences in the Italian and Spanish cases have contributed, in turn, to shaping the contrasting ways in which the strengthening of challenger parties focusing on new politics issues has led to a redefinition of political cleavages and patterns of political competition at both national and regional levels. Scantamburlo, Alonso and Gómez (2018) suggest that the increasing relevance of democratic regeneration campaigns constitute a challenge for established regionalist parties (including the LN and CDC/CiU), which need to further diversify their political platform and take into account issues that relate to the improvement and transparency of democratic processes. The emergence of a new politics conflict dimension may in turn lead to declining relative importance of competition based on the traditional centre‐periphery cleavage.…”

The second edition of the EPAC expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition – testing for validity and reliability

“…The current release of the Regional Manifestos Project covers parties' positions in regional elections in Spain and the UK until 2015. In addition, we obtained early access to RMP data for parties in the Italian province of South Tyrol and for more recent elections in Spain and the UK (Scantamburlo, Alonso, and Gómez 2018). It has to be noted that state-wide, mainstream parties are only included into RMP for the case of Spain.…”

Does EU regional policy increase parties’ support for European integration?

“…We use SNPs' election manifestos as a source for deriving their positions on European integration and CP (Marks et al 2007;Ray 2007). Comparing these positions cross-nationally and over time renders it virtually impossible to code election manifestos by hand and by assigning (quasi-)sentences to different categories (Alonso et al 2015; see also Scantamburlo et al 2017). Since SNPs do not talk about European issues in a specific 'EU section' , but throughout their entire manifesto, automated coding of EU-relevant paragraphs is not a feasible approach.…”