How Authority Devolution Influences the Welfare Attitudes of Ethnonational Parties: Evidence From Scotland and the Basque Country

Traditionally, ethnic diversity and fragmentation have been linked to lower levels of support for redistribution and public good provision. The basic argument states that ethnically heterogeneous societies should display lower levels of public spending because people are more reluctant to incur costs to provide for others when those others are much more likely to belong to their own ethnic group. Political authority devolution has deeply transformed ethnic minority parties all over Europe. In the past, they almost exclusively engaged in ethnocultural issues and political contention with central authorities regarding the status of their community, nevertheless, this new reality has influenced them to seek new positions that align with their intrinsically nationalistic goals and the needs of the communities they claim to represent. This article aims to answer the question of whether minority recognition and representation through authority devolution make communities more willing to engage in sharing practices. In order to do so, I perform a comparative historical analysis of the welfare attitudes of ethnonational parties in the Basque Country and Scotland over the last four decades. The results suggest that their ability to gain control over policymaking, fiscality, and representative autonomy is a key factor in understanding how they develop their welfare preferences regardless of cross-regional economic differences.