Separatism proneness modeling: a political economy analysis of Europe’s electoral landscape

The article examines European Union regions’ proneness to secession in the political economy framework. Regions are classified as secession-prone and secession-robust ones. The study focuses on modeling centrifugal tendencies quantitatively, using Jacob Vanschoonbeek's model as a reference point, which analyzes the utility function of a secession from the fiscal sovereignty perspective. Potential economy related costs often hold back rise of secessionist movements. The model utilizes taxes and potential benefits from tax revenue as its primary metrics, thus being built around c regional fiscal preferences. Citizens act upon them when making electoral choices. Extending the reference work, this study expands the analysis by incorporating additional variables (ethnicity, historical statehood, relative remotedness) and embarking on a more detailed level of NUTS-3 (N = 1068).

Through the model calibration regions with the highest secessionist potential (proness) were revealed, such as Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain, as well as visible disagreement between expected and at-hand values for a number of Polish regions. In addition, the most robust to secessionist activity regions were identified, including ones of Greece and Bulgaria. The results show that, although the political-economic model has certain explanatory power, anomalies remain, indicating the presence of unobserved qualitative factors, such as regional identity, historical memory, or specific policy measures taken by central government.

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