Decentralization, Territory and Party Politics in Western Europe

My work in this area has benefited from a grant from the Devolution and Constitutional Change programme of the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, held with Catherine Fieschi and Ingrid van Biezen.

The initial project studied the effects of devolution on the dynamics of party politics in Britain, drawing on comparative experiences in Western Europe. The main concern was to assess whether devolution will lead to the 'denationalization' of party politics in the UK, undermining Britain's traditional 'Westminster model' of parliamentary democracy. The project looked at how the emergence of new parliamentary arenas changes the relationships between competing statewide and non-statewide parties, and on organizational changes within the principal statewide British parties (Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats), assessing the extent to which the balance of internal power shifted from centre to periphery. Its preliminary conclusions were that changes in the first 8 years of the devolution experience had been limited and incremental, due to the perhaps exceptional combination of a strong Labour party at both devolved and UK-wide level, and the weakness of the forces inimical to devolution (Conservatives) or frustrated by its limitations (nationalists, particularly in Scotland). However, recent events (in 2007) suggest major changes could be on their way which will be the subject of future research.

For an executive summary of the project's findings, click here.

For the full final project report, click here.

 

Further Research

In 2007 I held a Batista i Roca fellowship at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and carried out further research on the Spanish case, which like the UK is also undergoing dramatic change to the territorial balance of power with Basque nationalists, and increasingly Catalan nationalists too, pushing for independence. In this context the role of statewide parties, and particularly statewide parties of the left, is increasingly important in holding these states together.

My current research in this area examines the respective roles of statewide and non-statewide parties in the development of different institutional arrangements for accommodating territorial differences. It rejects a 'primordialist' approach to the study of nationalist movements and instead explains the success and failure of demands for territorial reorganizations in terms of the ways in which political parties compete to mobilize cultural and political identities. My empirical focus is Western Europe, and my main cases are the UK, Italy and Spain. All three are large countries containing substantial cultural diversity, yet are organized as unitary states. My starting assumption is that the differing degrees of success of demands for decentralization in these three states cannot be explained solely in terms of the latent strength of territorial identities alternative to the national state, and instead should be examined as political processes in which parties and political entrepreneurship play a major role.

 

Publications:

Hopkin, J. and P, van Houten (eds.) (2009) 'Party Politics and Decentralizing Reforms: The Role of Statewide Political Parties in Comparative Perspective', special issue of Party Politics, 15(2).

Hopkin, J. (2009). 'Party Matters: Devolution and Party Change in the UK and Spain', Party Politics: 15(2): 179-99.

Hopkin, J. (2008) 'Decentralization and Party Organizational Change: The Case of Italy', in Bart Maddens and Wilfried Swenden (eds.), Territorial Party Politics in Western Europe. London: Palgrave, pp.86-101.

Hopkin, J. (2008) 'Newly Governing Parties in Italy: Comparing PDS, Lega Nord and Forza Italia', in Kris Deschouwer (ed.), New Parties in Government. London: Routledge, pp.45-64

Hopkin, J. (2008) 'Devolution in the United Kingdom: Institutional Change and the New Shape of the British State'. Italian version forthcoming in Sofia Ventura (ed.). Da unitario a federale: Territorializzazione della politica, processi devolutivi e adattamento istituzionale in Europa. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp.113-55.

Van Biezen, I and J. Hopkin (2006). 'Party Organization in Multi-level Contexts', in Dan Hough and Charlie Jeffery (eds.), Devolution and Electoral Politics: A Comparative Exploration. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.14-36.  

Hopkin, J. and J. Bradbury (2006) 'British Parties and Multi-Level Politics', Publius: The Journal of Federalism 36(1): 135-52.

Hopkin, J. (2003) 'Political Decentralization, Electoral Change and Party Organizational Adaptation: A Framework for Analysis', European Urban and Regional Studies 10 (3): 227-37.

 

Conferences Organized:

'Devolution and Redistribution', London School of Economics, 16 December 2005.

'Devolution and Party Politics', European Research Institute, University of Birmingham, 8 July 2004.