The untold story of asymmetry under new lenses: regional governments’ reactions to asymmetrical empowerment

Differences in status and powers among the constituent units of a federal or politically-decentralised state are likely to create inter-regional tensions and grievances between the region(s) granted asymmetry and the rest of regions within the same country. Yet, little attention has been paid to these tensions and how they may facilitate or hinder the actual enactment and implementation of asymmetry within a system. From a methodological point of view, moreover, the configurational comparative methodology brings potential advantages for causal explanatory research, as it relies on (and seeks to maintain) a balance between causal complexity and in-depth case knowledge. Yet, these benefits have not been explored and exploited sufficiently in the literature on comparative federalism and regionalism, where QCA analyses are still relatively rare if compared to other fields of social and political sciences. The proposed paper aims at bringing these two -contents and methodology- gaps together, by developing a QCA analysis of reactions to asymmetry in Canada and Spain with a focus on well-known episodes where asymmetrical empowerment was at stake in each country. Rather than looking at Quebec and Catalonia and their relationship with their respective central government, as most scholars have done so far, I set out to study the position of other Canadian and Spanish under-empowered regions (namely, Alberta, Ontario, Andalusia and Valencia) and, how they reacted to actual or prospective asymmetrical autonomy in favour of Quebec and Catalonia. First of all, the findings of the paper should provide evidence about the very occurrence of three different types of reactions: acquiescence, catching-up and blockage. Furthermore, the paper will explore several socio-structural and political-institutional conditions (type of asymmetry; central or peripheral position of under-empowered regions; their economic position and the strength of their regional identity; the strength of regionalist parties; and cross-level government congruence) and their influence on the way under-empowered regions have responded to asymmetry. Ultimately, and assuming that reactions to asymmetrical empowerment cannot be satisfactorily explained by isolating individual causal factors, I aspire to shed some light on different paths and combinations of causal conditions that can lead to each outcome.