Regional inequalities and the electoral success of regional parties: Evidence from the OECD

Abstract

Income inequalities across regions will tend to engender redistributive conflicts about the territorial distribution of resources. The salience of territorial redistribution in the context of regional inequalities is likely to mobilize support for regional parties in national elections since territorial redistribution is decided at the national level. Thus, regional inequalities will favor the electoral success of regional parties in national-level elections. In this article we report evidence consistent with this argument based on an original data set that captures the electoral fate of regional parties in national contests across twenty-two OECD countries. Our results are robust to the use of different estimation methods as well as the consideration of the confounding influence of other factors which may affect the electoral fortunes of regional parties