Negotiating Territorial Change in Multinational States: Party Preferences, Negotiating Power and the Role of the Negotiation Mode

Abstract

In this article, we offer an explanation for varying patterns of territorial reforms aimed at accom modating claims for more substate autonomy in multinational states.We argue that the interaction between preferences of state wide and non statewide parties, their negotiation power and the negotiation mode accounts for specific patterns of territorial change. Analytically, we advance existing research in two ways: First, by analyzing territorial change in a two dimensional space (vertical and horizontal), we pay explicit attention to jurisdictional heterogeneity between substates. Second, by applying an actor centered institutionalist approach, we highlight the stra tegic potential of actors within the institutional setting. The comparative analysis of thirteen processes of territorial change in four multinational Western democracies Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the UK reveals, first, certain conditional effects of the independent variables on specific patterns of territorial change and, second, how the negotiation mode impacts on a party's negotiation power.

Territorial Politics and Institutional Change: A Comparative-Historical Analysis

“…Research on the territorial dimension of authority has been the domain of comparative federalism. Scholars in this field devoted their attention to the establishment of federations during the process of state-formation (Ziblatt 2006), the distribution of power between federal and state governments (Falleti 2010), the stability or instability of federal systems (Lemco 1991) and processes of constitutional change (Behnke and Benz 2009;Petersohn, Behnke, and Rhode 2015). These concerns have been complemented by a growing literature on the sources of regionalization to form a larger body of work in comparative politics (Hooghe, Marks, and Schakel 2008;Hooghe and Marks 2016;Jeffery and Wincott 2010).…”

The Spanish Plurinational Labyrinth. Practical Reasons for Criticising the Nationalist Bias of Others While Ignoring One’s Own Nationalist Position

“…The result of this process is a dynamic readjustment, both symbolic and material, of the plurinational question; that is, a permanent de-alignment and realignment of the ethnic and national boundaries of the people and the strategies of the political parties (Serrano and Bonillo 2017;Corujo et al 2019). From an institutionalist perspective of rational choice, plurinationalism defines an intersubjective network of actors in which the latter relate to each other in a complex manner according to their power of negotiation and their forms of negottiation, on both the vertical and horizontal planes (Petersohn et al 2015). As different authors observe, the relation among actors within a plurinational state culminates in one of three scenarios: Secession, autonomy, or federalism (Mcewen and Lecours 2008;Lluch 2014;Basta 2018).…”

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