Between rupture and bargaining: Political strategies of secessionist governing parties in Catalonia and Scotland

What drives mainstream stateless nationalist parties to adopt secessionist positions? Over the past decade, independence referendums in Catalonia and Scotland have made this question a timely and crucial topic in studies of political parties and nationalism. Although these referendums did not result in the creation of new states, they represented the most concrete attempts toward secession. Using process-tracing and semi-structured in-depth interviews with political elites and activists, this comparative study examines the political strategies of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia and the Scottish National Party, the mainstream nationalist parties in their respective contexts. It seeks to address the puzzle of how these two parties, positioned on the relatively moderate end of the stateless nationalist party family spectrum, moved beyond the discourse of secessionism to undertake a concrete initiative toward independence through referendums. The study analyzes the divergent paths of radicalization in their territorial strategies and their strategic ambiguities, oscillating between rupture and bargaining. It explains this process through three interrelated variables: the "loosely framed" constitutional contexts at the center, escalating demands for fiscal sovereignty in the periphery, and the internal configuration of secessionism. Challenging traditional structuralist approaches, it highlights the interplay between leadership agency and institutional contexts at critical junctures, framing secessionism as a heterogeneous and dynamic phenomenon.