Regional Political Movements in South-East Europe

This chapter deals with regional political movements in South-East Europe. It differentiates between ‘pure’ regionalist parties, ethnic minority parties and ethno-regionalist parties. In the first part, the chapter focuses on two regions, Istria and Vojvodina, where regionalist parties were the most successful in the last three decades. In the second part, the chapter uses quantitative data on electoral manifestos, derived from the CMP/MARPOR dataset, to identify policy changes over time, as well as differences between regionalist and non-regionalist parties. This part of the analysis includes the topics of EU integration, decentralization, support for the current constitutional order, nationalism, multiculturalism, as well as the position of parties on the left-right scale (RILE index). Finally, the chapter presents a new regionalism index constructed as a composite index from the parties’ positions on EU integration, decentralization, support for the current constitutional order, nationalism, and multiculturalism.