How to Measure Party Nationalisation

Abstract

How national is politics? The question becomes salient when a country is regionally divided, and is threatened with breaking up, when the struggle over political options goes along territorial lines. The ‘American Civil War’ might be the best-known example of national politics going regional; the struggles about the Ukrainian political direction, which became most pertinent in the 2004 elections, or the ethno-regional conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the most prominent of many recent examples from post-communist Europe. Such territorialised conflicts could have completely different implications for politics than non-territorialised ones. Autonomy for a certain part of a country is a viable solution for territorial conflicts, as is separation.