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This thesis compares the adaptation to devolution of the sub-state branches of the statewide UK Conservative Party in Scotland and Wales between 1997 and 2011. It uses a comparative analytical framework derived from the literature on party change, multi-level party politics and path dependency. Both parties had to change to accommodate the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and deal with the Conservative Party's weak electoral position outside England. Whilst the Scottish Conservatives concentrated on being a competent opposition party in a multi-party parliament, the Welsh Conservatives changed much more substantially in order to pursue the goal of being in office in Wales. Fundamentally, the Scottish Conservatives never rediscovered a central sense of purpose that might have served as a justification for the type of image and programmatic reform pursued in the UK and Welsh Conservative Parties. This thesis suggests that in studying sub-state parties it is important to look beyond considerations of a party's constitutional structures to examine its organisation on the ground. In particular, it cannot be assumed that the default desire of sub-state branch parties is for more autonomy from the centre. The Welsh Conservatives achieved much greater party change despite being less organisationally distinct that the Scottish Conservatives. Alongside different institutional environments, the ideas and motivations of elected party elites are central to an explanation of party change in these parties. All of these issues raise wider questions about what it means to be a statewide party in an increasingly decentralised state.

Recent years, and high-profile events such as the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and 2017 Catalan referendum, have shown that stateless nationalist and regionalist political parties remain relevant political forces in European politics. Scholars have long studied these political parties comparatively, but autonomist movements have not developed in a vacuum. This thesis explores the interconnectedness of nationalist and regionalist parties. Relationships between these parties can most tangibly be traced through taking the European political party of the European Free Alliance (EFA) as a starting point. Stateless regionalist and nationalist political parties have coalesced under EFA as their transnational political party for more than 35 years. This thesis seeks to understand how relationships between EFA member parties affect them. In particular, I focus on one possible consequence: learning. I ask, do interactions between regionalist and nationalist parties in the European Free Alliance generate member party learning? If so, why and how? If not, why not? In order to explore learning, I first develop a political party learning framework. This framework builds on existing approaches to political parties, transnational political parties, and policy and organisational learning literatures. I propose three stages of learning: information acquisition, interpretation, and implementation. I also identify five contextual factors that might condition party learning: electoral success, governing responsibility, party centralization, key entrepreneurs, and issue contestation. I apply this party learning framework to four EFA member parties: the Frisian National Party, the Union Démocratique Bretonne, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, and the Scottish National Party. These cases studies are constructed predominantly through elite interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation, and documentary analysis. I find that some political parties in EFA do learn from their interactions with other member parties. Learning occurs on issues ranging from technical renewable energy solutions to altered electoral strategies. I also identify cases of non-learning and stalled learning. The most influential factors determining patterns of party learning are electoral success, party centralization, and institutional access.