Decentralization of the Party System.

Before Spain decentralized in the late 1970s, regional parties had a strong presence in the ethnically and linguistically distinct regions of the country, including the Basque Country and Catalonia. After Spain decentralized, the strength of regional parties in these regions stayed the same and grew in the non-distinct regions of the country. Similarly, in the United Kingdom regional parties in Scotland and Wales won more votes after the UK created regional legislatures in Scotland and Wales than before. Decentralization, as Spain and the UK illustrate, can encourage the growth of regional parties. Decentralization may do this by creating sub-national legislatures in which regional parties have a better chance of governing than they do in national legislatures. This encourages both elites to form more regional parties and voters to vote for them. Decentralization may also encourage regional parties to participate in national elections. Regional parties may do this because they might improve their chancing of winning elections at the sub-national level of government by participating in elections at the national level, even if they have little chance of governing at this level of government. Despite the experience of Spain and the UK with decentralization, some countries, like the United States, are politically decentralized and do not have regional parties. This suggests that the effect of decentralization on regional parties may be mitigated by other factors, like presidentialism, single-member district systems, and the sequencing of national and sub-national elections among other things. This paper will explore the effect of decentralization and these other factors on regional parties using a large-N statistical analysis of more than twenty countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]