The Other Great Illusion : The Advancement of Separatism Through Economic Integration

Economic integration is widely argued to increase subnational demands for independence. Yet, increasingly high degrees of integration have not been associated with a commensurate explosion of separatist activity. Integration, I argue, should not promote separatism because states retain important political and economic powers even in the face of major integration, and because separatist movements intrinsically support strong states, albeit not the ones from which they are seeking independence. Empirically, I test this argument through the case of post-WWII European integration, a hard test of my argument, since the European Union (EU) is the most advanced economic integration scheme in the world today. The quantitative analysis supports this argument showing that EU integration is weakly associated with a minor increase in separatist party activity in only two countries, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Further qualitative analysis suggests that even in these two countries the increase in separatist activity is not due to integration