‘Building a social project’? The welfare preferences of minority nationalist parties

Minority nationalist parties increasingly govern welfare domains, yet little is known about how they form welfare preferences. The rescaling of authority to regional levels has compelled them to craft welfare discourses aligned with their communities’ interests, but how and why they develop such stances remains an open question. Integrating insights from time-series cross-section (TSCS) regression and election manifesto analysis of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco, EAJ-PNV), we systematically examine how welfare preferences evolve over time. We conclude that a combination of socio-economic factors, regional authority devolution and party competition determine whether they treat welfare as an instrument of nation-building or fiscal contention.