Jason Sorens The Cross-Sectional Determinants of Secessionism in Advanced Democracies
This article analyzes the “risk factors” of secessionism at the substate, regional level. It seeks to answer the question, What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. Specifically, in addition to “identity” variables such as regional language and history of independence, the following variables explain secessionist strength: lack of irredentist potential, relative affluence, geographical noncontiguity, population, and multiparty politicalsystem. These factors generally serve as activators of ethnic identity rather than a substitute for the same, although there are important cases of nonethnic secessionism. Secessionism—the phenomenon of agitation within a substate territorial unit for independence—has attracted little direct scholarly study. Typically, secessionism has been treated merely as one variety of ethnic conflict or nationalism. In the 1970s and early 1980s, studies of “ethnonationalism,” “minority nationalism,” “micro-nationalism,” and the like exploded, following the remarkable electoral successes of the nationalists of Scotland and Quebec. This literature was preoccupied with explaining why the literature of the 1950s and 1960s predicting the inevitable demise of peripheral nationalism under the pressures of modernization turned out to be wrong. However, following the electoral setbacks suffered by the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru/Party of Wales (PC), and Parti Québecois/Quebecker Party (PQ) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, another wave of revisionism eventually set in, explaining how secessionist leaders could be co-opted and their movements deflated.
This article analyzes the “risk factors” of secessionism at the substate, regional level. It seeks to answer the question, What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. Specifically, in addition to “identity” variables such as regional language and history of independence, the following variables explain secessionist strength: lack of irredentist potential, relative affluence, geographical noncontiguity, population, and multiparty politicalsystem. These factors generally serve as activators of ethnic identity rather than a substitute for the same, although there are important cases of nonethnic secessionism. Secessionism—the phenomenon of agitation within a substate territorial unit for independence—has attracted little direct scholarly study. Typically, secessionism has been treated merely as one variety of ethnic conflict or nationalism. In the 1970s and early 1980s, studies of “ethnonationalism,” “minority nationalism,” “micro-nationalism,” and the like exploded, following the remarkable electoral successes of the nationalists of Scotland and Quebec. This literature was preoccupied with explaining why the literature of the 1950s and 1960s predicting the inevitable demise of peripheral nationalism under the pressures of modernization turned out to be wrong. However, following the electoral setbacks suffered by the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru/Party of Wales (PC), and Parti Québecois/Quebecker Party (PQ) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, another wave of revisionism eventually set in, explaining how secessionist leaders could be co-opted and their movements deflated.
This article analyzes the “risk factors” of secessionism at the substate, regional level. It seeks to answer the question, What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. Specifically, in addition to “identity” variables such as regional language and history of independence, the following variables explain secessionist strength: lack of irredentist potential, relative affluence, geographical noncontiguity, population, and multiparty politicalsystem. These factors generally serve as activators of ethnic identity rather than a substitute for the same, although there are important cases of nonethnic secessionism. Secessionism—the phenomenon of agitation within a substate territorial unit for independence—has attracted little direct scholarly study. Typically, secessionism has been treated merely as one variety of ethnic conflict or nationalism. In the 1970s and early 1980s, studies of “ethnonationalism,” “minority nationalism,” “micro-nationalism,” and the like exploded, following the remarkable electoral successes of the nationalists of Scotland and Quebec. This literature was preoccupied with explaining why the literature of the 1950s and 1960s predicting the inevitable demise of peripheral nationalism under the pressures of modernization turned out to be wrong. However, following the electoral setbacks suffered by the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru/Party of Wales (PC), and Parti Québecois/Quebecker Party (PQ) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, another wave of revisionism eventually set in, explaining how secessionist leaders could be co-opted and their movements deflated.
This article analyzes the “risk factors” of secessionism at the substate, regional level. It seeks to answer the question, What regions are more likely to support more successful secessionist parties? Using new data in cross-sectional regression analysis, the author finds that secessionism involves unique factors not common to other kinds of ethnic conflict. Specifically, in addition to “identity” variables such as regional language and history of independence, the following variables explain secessionist strength: lack of irredentist potential, relative affluence, geographical noncontiguity, population, and multiparty politicalsystem. These factors generally serve as activators of ethnic identity rather than a substitute for the same, although there are important cases of nonethnic secessionism. Secessionism—the phenomenon of agitation within a substate territorial unit for independence—has attracted little direct scholarly study. Typically, secessionism has been treated merely as one variety of ethnic conflict or nationalism. In the 1970s and early 1980s, studies of “ethnonationalism,” “minority nationalism,” “micro-nationalism,” and the like exploded, following the remarkable electoral successes of the nationalists of Scotland and Quebec. This literature was preoccupied with explaining why the literature of the 1950s and 1960s predicting the inevitable demise of peripheral nationalism under the pressures of modernization turned out to be wrong. However, following the electoral setbacks suffered by the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru/Party of Wales (PC), and Parti Québecois/Quebecker Party (PQ) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, another wave of revisionism eventually set in, explaining how secessionist leaders could be co-opted and their movements deflated.