The Regional Cleavage in Western Europe: Can Social Composition, Value Orientations and Territorial Identities Explain the Impact of Region on Party Choice?

In this article regional differences in party support are analysed by means of comparative survey data from 15 West European countries. The main research question is: How can we explain that people in different regions vote for different political parties? On the basis of the literature on new regionalism and old and new politics, this article formulates two sets of hypotheses which are considered related to new regionalism and new politics, and old regionalism and old politics, respectively. A causal model is formulated which includes three groups of explanatory variables, namely, (other) socio-structural variables, value orientations and territorial identities. The main findings support the old regionalism and old politics notions of how we can explain the regional cleavage. Social structure is the most important explanatory variable, and, among the various value orientations, old politics values are most important. There is, however, some evidence that values and territorial identities are important explanatory variables in three of the countries where the regional cleavage has increased since the 1970s: Belgium, Italy and Spain.