Ethnoregionalist parties in regional governments

Ethnoregionalist parties have gained increasing visibility over the last thirty years, and in many cases they have achieved significant electoral success. In turn, this has opened new challenges to the members of this party family, but also new opportunities to reach the “threshold of government” at regional and, less frequently, at state level. In this paper I will explore the conditions under which ethnoregionalist parties have access to government at regional level. A quantitative analysis of an original dataset of regional government formation opportunities in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom over the last decades will allow to test a number of well-established theories on coalition formation. Moreover, a recent stream of literature has highlighted that specific conditions must be accounted for when explaining government formation at regional level. In such context the goals of party structures across levels of government may vary and the analysis of coalition bargaining at regional level must take into account the nature of coalition agreements and party goals at state level. Thus, further hypotheses will be tested which are specific to the nature of ethnoregionalist parties and the multilevel context in which they operate. This will allow for an assessment of the peculiarities of this party family.