Political institutions and structures inherently shape political parties and party systems. The decentralization of power between national and regional governments is no exception. In particular, as regional or devolved governments become more powerful, so to do parties that only run in certain portions of the country as a whole, what for the purposes of this blog I will call regional parties.
Such parties most often support greater devolution. In the UK, these include the SNP or Plaid Cymru which, with no offense intended, I call regional parties because they only run candidates in limited geographies (Scotland and Wales respectively) in elections for both their devolved governments and at Westminster. The term “region” I borrow from political science and is not a comment on the national status of any region.
In contrast to these regional parties exist what for our purposes we can call “nationalized” parties. In the UK this would include Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who run candidates for Scottish and Welsh elections as well as for seats in England, Scotland and Wales in the House of Commons. When power is less centralized as a result of devolution[1], these political parties that run and gain support across an entire country and its regions tend to fare worse over time, even in national-level elections.[2]
Despite the potential long-term consequences of devolution, I argue that nationalized parties may agree to further devolve power for political gain in the sovereign legislature – in the UK, the House of Commons. Indeed, it was the Labour Party that spearheaded the formation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly as part of the New Labour campaign in 1997, in addition to facilitating the creation of the Northern Irish Assembly. Conservative-led governments subsequently passed legislation devolving more powers to both the Scottish and Welsh governments.
I argue that this exchange of power happens generally in one of two ways. First, regional parties may agree to support or join a national-level government in exchange for greater powers for their devolved legislatures. Second, by removing certain political issues from the national-wide debate, nationalized parties can avoid alienating voters in one region by creating policies that would please voters in another. However, while nationalized parties benefit from these decisions in the short term, they may ultimately damage their fortunes in the long term as regional parties gain more support in both devolved and national-level parliaments. At its most extreme, these arrangements can lead to a vicious cycle in which devolution brings increased success for regional parties who, in exchange, demand greater power for devolved governments.
Party systems and (de)centralization
In the long term, devolution and federalism tend to benefit regional parties more than nationalized parties because voters tend to focus their attention on the level of government that matters the most to them. If devolved governments hold significant power, voters will care more about a party’s platform for the issues a devolved government has control over. Parties will therefore have an incentive to tailor their platforms accordingly. Of course, this process happens over time and voters may have differing opinions over which levels matter the most, leading to a situation like we see in the UK with both regional and nationalized parties competing with each other.
Belgium is a useful example of the rise of regional parties that comes with greater political decentralization. Until the 1960s, Belgium’s three main parties ran across the entire country. However, as the central government gave more power to the subnational governments, all three of these parties came to split into independent Francophone and Flemish groups. Today, there is no party that runs in all three of Belgium’s subnational regions.
In contrast to Belgium, highly centralized states with few or no levels of devolved government tend to have fewer regional parties because there is less incentive to create regionally specific policies. Indeed, there may be significant disadvantages in creating such policies because by attempting to address the regionally specific concerns of some voters, voters in other regions, where the policies are less popular, may become alienated. This tradeoff might be worth it if a party can come to wield significant power in a devolved government, but there are fewer advantages in systems without devolved governments. We do sometimes see nationalized parties introducing regionally targeted policies into their platforms, such as with the Conservative’s “leveling up” platform aimed at luring voters in the north of England. However, these tend not to be a long-term part of nationalized party platforms. Furthermore, voters may find such proposals less credible from nationalized, as opposed to regional, parties. Nationalized parties can look elsewhere for the votes they may lose in one region by not fulfilling their promises, regionalized parties cannot. As such, voters may believe that regional parties will fight harder for a regionally targeted policy than nationalized parties will.
Benefits and drawbacks for regional parties
By definition, regional parties operating within a devolved geography do not have popularity outside that area, meaning that they tend to hold significant power within the top-level legislature less frequently. If they do make it into government at this level, in the UK at Westminster, it will almost certainly be as part of a coalition. In contrast, regional parties can achieve majorities or pluralities within devolved government, allowing them to control regional-level policies. This may ultimately be more valuable when a devolved government has control over the issues that most directly affect the territory’s citizens. In Scotland, for example, control over the key issue of health provides Holyrood parties with significant opportunities to impress or disappoint the electorate while in government.
For separatist parties – parties that want their regions to become independent countries – devolution may also prove to be a double-edged sword, though. On the one hand, it allows the region to have some autonomy over itself, with little to no interference from the national-level government. Alternatively, it may lessen the overall desire for independence. Voters may feel that they have enough control over regional issues while still benefiting from being part of the larger nation on issues such as defense, trade, or security. Indeed, scholars argue that this may be one of the key reasons to create federal or devolved governments in the first place, a phenomenon William Riker called “holding together federalism”. This tactical argument appears to have been successful in the UK – the Scottish independence referendum failed in 2014. There, without the existence of a devolved government allowing Scots some level of self-determination, some voters may have felt there were fewer advantages to staying part of the United Kingdom.
In the central legislature, regional parties can put themselves in the position of kingmaker by being comparatively “cheap” coalition or confidence and supply partners. Nationalized parties can give up either money or policies to a devolved geography without having to make significant concessions regarding their national-level agenda. This happened in 2017 when Theresa May negotiated a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party. While the agreement made some small policy concessions, the Conservative government was allowed to pursue the vast majority of its agenda in exchange for approximately £1bn in funds allocated towards Northern Ireland.
In Spain, regional Basque and Catalonian separatist parties have frequently found themselves in this situation. Research shows that when these parties support a Spanish government in an investiture vote, the number of laws devolving power to Spain’s regional devolved governments increases. More recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finds himself reliant on the Bloc Québécois after they supported his minority government in a no confidence motions on 25 September and 1 October. In return, they are demanding the government pass bills increasing pensions and improving the country’s supply management system controlling trade on certain agricultural products.
Benefits and drawbacks for national-level parties
As previously mentioned, devolution can significantly disadvantage nationalized parties as regional parties gain greater support under devolution. Nonetheless, nationalized parties are still often the ones that agree to create or empower devolved institutions. A classic example would be the Labour Party facilitating the creation of the present three UK devolved governments. For such nationalized parties, devolution can sometimes allow them to gain power in the highest-level legislature when they would not have otherwise, though at the cost of losing some decision-making power to regional governments.
In addition to allowing government formation, devolution can remove so-called “wedge” issues – political issues that divide voters within a party. In the UK, support for Israel is becoming a wedge issue for the Labour Party, with some traditional Labour voters wanting the Party to withdraw military aid to the country while other Labour voters favor continued support. Indeed, Labour lost four seats in largely Muslim areas to pro-Palestinian independent candidates in July.
Such wedge edge issues are often divided along regional lines too. For example, voters in largely rural or agricultural areas may want their government to spend more on farming subsidies, while those in more urban areas desire money to be spent on public transportation. Nationalized parties have, broadly, to take a single stance on such an issue. However, whichever stance they choose to take will upset at least one set of voters. Regional parties do not have this concern. In these instances, nationalized parties may be able to avoid splitting their voters by instead giving the decision-making power over a regional wedge issue to a regional or devolved government, removing it from the national-level debate.
I argue that this dynamic played a significant role in New Labour’s decision to implement Scottish devolution in the 1990s. To combat the Conservatives in England, Labour needed to moderate its economic policies, but in doing so, it risked losing votes in Scotland to the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats. By devolving certain spending decisions to a Scottish Parliament, Labour could move its Westminster-level policy towards the center to capture English voters, while maintaining a more social democratic policy platform in Scotland.
Conclusion
For most regional parties, decentralization can allow them to exert more influence in both a devolved and top-level national legislature, though at the possible expense of achieving independence for a particular geography. However, there are often fewer benefits for nationalized parties.
Not only do such nationalized parties have control over fewer issues in the top-level government, they also risk bolstering the chances of success for regional parties in both regional and national level elections. Furthermore, once powers have been granted to regional governments it can become extremely difficult to gain them back. And once regional parties gain more prominence, they can demand even greater powers for their devolved legislatures. Nationalized parties may therefore be making a Faustian bargain when they agree to empower regional governments by exchanging their long-term prospects for short term power.
Kathryn Wainfan.
Kathryn Wainfan holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been a lecturer in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Merced, and Loyola Marymount University.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.
[1] This also applies to other forms of regional decentralization of power including federalism.
[2] Regional parties that desire independence for their region from the wider country as a whole are sometimes referred to as nationalist parties. I refer to these types of parties as separatist in order to avoid confusion between nationalist and nationalized parties.