Challenging the State: Devolution and the Battle for Partisan Credibility - A Comparison of Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (Relié)

Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit : www.ecprnet.eu The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M.
Farrell, School. of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin ; Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia ; and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg. The objective of this book is to understand the political decision that brings abouta process of devolution. Why do some parties defend devolution while others fiercely oppose it ? Why do some parties defend itin the present when they rejected itin the pastor vice versa ? Why do governments initiate a devolution reform despite its obvious risks ? The answer to these questions comes from a comparative analysis of devolution in four European countries : Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
The author argues that electoral competition between state and peripheral parties pushes threatened state parties to prefer devolution at some particular point in time. A centralized state is an institutional environment that sets insurmountable credibility constraints for threatened state parties that want to converge towards pro-periphery positions in order to stop losing votes to the peripheral challengers.
Devolution gives credibility to the pro-periphery moves of state parties. It is therefore adopted in order to make it more difficult in the long term for peripheral parties to increase their electoral support by claiming the monopoly of representation of the peripheral territory and the people in it. The price that state parties pay for making their electoral tactics credible is the 'entrenchment' of the devolution programmatic agenda in the electoral arenas of the country.
The final implication of this argument is that in democratic systems, devolution is not a decision to protect the state from the secessionist threat. It is, instead, a decision by state parties to protect their needed electoral majorities. Only when the protection of the state's territorial integrity fully coincides with the aim of achieving an electoral majority do state parties care about protecting the state.