Multi-Level Elections and Party Fortunes: The Electoral Impact of Decentralization in Western Europe

Abstract

Despite an extensive literature on the consequences of political and fiscal decentralization for a variety of outcomes, little is known about these reforms’ effects on the parties that implement them and the ethnoterritorial parties that demand them. This paper approaches this question from the perspective that decentralization is not simply the multiplication of subnational offices as previously argued, but it is also a strategy to bolster a party’s national vote share, by appeasing voters of threatening regionalist parties. Consistent with this appeasement theory, statistical analyses of election results in the subnational regions of 17 Western European countries find that governing parties gain support and ethnoterritorial parties lose support in national elections following significant decentralization. Token decentralization fails to satisfy decentralization voters and leads instead to further ethnoterritorial party vote gain and governing party vote loss in national elections. In subnational elections, ethnoterritorial parties benefit electorally from extensive decentralization, whereas the nationally focused governing parties lose support.

Keywords: decentralization, party strategy, appeasement, national vote share, governing party, ethnoterritorial party, Western Europe