Citizens' Preferences in (Quasi-)Federal States: A Two-Country, Intergenerational Comparison

In a globalised and interconnected Europe, dreams of unification, deep integration or even exhaustive coordination are proving difficult to achieve. Not only do national borders play a large role in European political and cultural exchange, but so do sub-national divisions. Scholarship on policy and political attitudes is increasingly concerned with how citizens perceive this fragmentation of the societal structures in which they are embedded, and whether (and how) they support the almost-federalisation of multiple competences in European society. Mediators have been found to be political socialisation of new generations, party affiliation or regional wealth, amongst others. My research contributes to this field of policy feedback and public opinion by analysing attitudes towards regionalisation and federalisation from a historically contextual, transgenerational perspective. It thus speaks directly to the increasingly individual-focused, longitudinal studies regarding mass publics and their feedback effects. The study follows the question 'How do citizens of different states experience and conceptualise (further) regionalisation?'. It compares two European, (quasi-)federal countries: Spain and Belgium. Both states share the existence of multiple distinct national identities within the territory, as well as conflictual policy relations between regions. The comparison focuses on two regions in each country (Madrid-Catalonia; Wallonia-Flanders) to control for linguistic and cultural identification as well as political (regionalist) discourse. The methods proposed are in-depth interviews of two different generations in each region (those who grew up in a centralised system and those who grew up in a quasi-federalised one), to also take into account socialisation and transgenerational divides. The presentation will draw from 80+ interviews conducted throughout 2024-2025 in all four regions, to demonstrate how citizens' expectations and perceptions of their government are constructed discursively and interpretatively, depending on their personal experiences. This paper's emphasis on the mechanisms that affect citizen attitudes towards regionalisation makes it a suitable contribution to the proposed panel "Citizen Attitudes and Accountability in Multilevel Systems: How does multilevel governance shape citizens’ expectations, voting behaviour, and perceptions of governmental accountability?"