Cultural Legacies, Political Preferences and Intergroup Bargaining – Explaining the Failure of Jurassic Separatism in Switzerland

The study of secession generally stresses the causal influence of either cultural identities or instrumental factors. Whereas these different views are often considered mutually exclusive substitutes, this paper suggests an approach in which they are complementary. We posit that cultural identities matter for explaining secessionism, but not because of primordial attachments. Rather, membership in cultural groups matters because it generates cultural legacies that produce distinct political preferences and opportunities. On the basis of these political preferences individuals make rational choices. Instrumental considerations are therefore also crucial, but not because of pure pocketbook issues. Our theory thus builds on a cultural explanation for the origins of political preferences, and a rational choice account for how people choose on the basis of those preferences. To examine this idea, we analyze the 2013 referendum on the secession of the Jura Bernois region from the canton of Berne in Switzerland, using municipal level census and referendum data, qualitative interviews, and formal modeling. The results point to the superior explanatory power of our model over a purely culturalist or rationalist model, and demonstrate one way in which the politics of identity can be fused with the politics of interest to understand group behavior. The wider policy implication from our study is that accommodation can be an effective means of containing secession.