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INTRODUCTION
European integration and ethno-regional mobilization have been considered as two of the most
important forces that not only undermine state sovereignty but also disturb partisan coalitions within the
member states of the European Union (EU). At first sight, these two seem to be incompatible in that the
EU has tried to establish a new European identity against national or sub-national one, while ethnic
leaders have criticized the intergovernmental decision making process of the EU that would block their
participation further. Thus, it is not surprising that during the early EU history, leaders of ethnic parties
had no sympathy on the European project. However, since the mid-1980s, most ethnic parties have
shifted their anti-EU position by committing themselves to a deeper European integration, and in some
regions, this change was followed by the electoral success of ethnic parties. Are the revitalization of the
EU and the revival of ethnic parties just coincident? If not, what aspects of European integration benefit
ethnic parties?; and how?
This paper presents an argument that as European integration deepens, the ethno-regional
cleavage becomes more salient in elections and this change reinforces ethnic parties’ electoral power.
Economic impact of European integration is a catalyst for such a change by promoting the formation of
common regional interests that crosscut the traditional left-right ideological cleavage. Yet, the
“multilevel” governance system of the EU that raises the status of regions and legitimizes political
demands of regional autonomy is a more proximate cause for the rise of ethnic parties.
However, such impacts of European integration vary across regions. During the past two
decades, the vote for the Party of Wales (Pyrimid Cymur, PC) has stabilized around 10% of the Welsh
vote, while the vote for the Scottish National Party (SNP) has fluctuated from a low of 12% to a high of
30%. In Spain, the Catalan Convergence and Union (Convergencia I Uni