Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy.

The recent political crisis in Belgium has drawn attention to the political fragility of the realm and the centrifugal dynamics of its federal system. The crisis characteristically involves both interest and identity, economic arguments reflecting the unwillingness within the richer community (Flanders) for continuing support of the poorer one, and non-economic arguments related to the travailed relations between the country’s communities. The presence of centrifugal forms of regionalism in Western Europe is far from unique. Similar cases, where the affirmation of regionalism is in one way or another related to a potential secession of the privileged, concern Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country, northern Italy and the exemplar one of Slovenia.

The comparison between Belgium and Italy has an additional interest since both countries share many similarities like the North-South tension, a low degree of satisfaction with the political system and high levels of support for neo-populist and radical right parties. Both the strong emphasis on economic arguments and the embedded presence of radical right parties that defend secession moreover distinguish Flanders and northern Italy from other European cases of centrifugal regionalism. Taking into account one important difference, the fact that the identity-building process in northern Italy is a recent phenomenon and hence does not reflect a “historical” mobilization of an ethnic minority, both cases concern the questioning within the richer region of economic mechanisms of national solidarity, in a context where moreover the groups concerned are (contrary to the other cases) of a relatively comparable size.

It is articulation of regional identity combined with the development of centrifugal tendencies whereby richer regions question national solidarity and redistributive policies, interacting with the affirmation of xenophobic parties, that this seminar proposes to research, by means of systematic and multidisciplinary comparison between Belgium and Italy, and more in particular Flanders/Belgium and Northern Italy/Italy. We propose to reach a better understanding of the dynamics that characterize the two particular cases we study, and in particular which factors stimulate or constrain this centrifugal regionalism: the construction of identity, the issue of institutional reform, the development models of successful regions and its possible relation with ethnocentrism and support for radical right parties.