Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 727–752 www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud Globalization, secessionism, and autonomy Jason Sorens  Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA Abstract This paper analyzes the relationship between the persistence and growth of secessionist parties in democratic countries and economic globalization, controlling for political and economic factors. The implications of secessionist persistence for decentralization are also examined. The paper finds that globalization is positively related to secessionist vote growth, while there is some evidence that economic conditions also impact secessionist parties in sys- tematic ways. Secessionist support is also substantially affected by policy changes. Central governments have offered autonomy more often to regions with secessionist parties than to regions without such parties, though often the offers take the form of symmetrical country- wide decentralization. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Secession; Separatism; Nationalism; Federalism; Devolution; Regionalism Recent decades have seen a more or less continuous rise in electoral support for secessionist parties in Western democracies, with the exception of a temporary decline in the early and mid-1980s in the cases best known to English-speaking polit- ical scientists: Scotland, Wales, and Quebec. This secular increase has led researchers to examine whether secessionism bears any systematic relationship to another time- variant phenomenon, economic globalization, understood as the worldwide increase in foreign trade and capital mobility. Both economists and political scientists have addressed the issue using different methods. Economists have addressed the issue in terms of the ‘‘equilibrium size of nations’’, arguing that globalization has induced a reduction in that quantum. Empirically, they have lumped together secessions and decolonizations in their research, phenomena with different causal explanations. Political scientists came to the issue around the same time as economists and have addressed it from the angle of political strategy, emphasizing the fact that  Tel.: +1-203-432-5824. E-mail address: jason.sorens@yale.edu (J. Sorens). 0261-3794/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2003.10.003