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Pawns Take Queen: The Destabilizing Effects of Regional Parties in Europe

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Abstract

Regional parties encourage government instability in Europe because they make extreme demands on governments for regional autonomy. These demands are different from the demands other parties make and are also more difficult to accommodate, because they require national governments to relinquish decision-making authority over certain issues, whereas the demands of other parties only require government to adjust their policies in some direction. Regional parties are also unlikely to compromise their demands because they do not have the tools available to them that other types of parties have. I support this argument through a statistical analysis of twenty-four democracies in Europe, showing that the presence of regional parties in government increases government instability and that the saliency of autonomy issues affects stability only if it is mediated through regional parties.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard – MIT Data Center, 34 Kirkland Street, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Dawn Brancati

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  1. Dawn Brancati
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Correspondence to Dawn Brancati.

Additional information

JEL classification: A, C

Regions are defined as the political regions of a country – that is, the level of government directly below the national level of government in a country.

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Brancati, D. Pawns Take Queen: The Destabilizing Effects of Regional Parties in Europe. Constit Polit Econ 16, 143–159 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-005-2233-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-005-2233-7

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