In the 90´s, Europe used to be depicted as the most privileged political arena for regional nationalist political parties to access for “more” political power but by the end of the 90’s, all regional nationalists plunged into European disillusion due to the limits of a sovereign logic prevailing in Europe.
In the 21st century, as soon as a new policy cycle started to emerge and the economic crisis started to cripple, optimistic regionalism was about to return as experienced regional nationalists realized that they could use the European Economic targets to legitimize their nationalist demands both in Europe and at the regional ground in order to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they would finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new state reform. However, since they were rationally bounded (Simon 1954), in the sense that they were lacking the policy expertise to perform these goals, they have learned to rely on policy narrative (Shabahan et al 2011; Jones and Beth 2010) embedded on a territorial economic argument to induce regional partners in government as well as regional economic stakeholders into an advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier & Jenkins 1999) to fulfill their nationalist plan.
In this paper, we will demonstrate that the N-VA in Flanders since 2004 have become “strategic emotional actors” as they have learned to rely on a strong policy narrative embedded in territorial interests to implement their renewed nationalist political plan.
