This session examines the impact of the economic crisis in Europe on multi-level state dynamics and the rise of autonomist or secessionist movements. On the one hand, the prolonged economic crisis has fanned political discontent in regions with a strong nationalist orientiation, such as Catalonia and Scotland, heavily shaping their referendum campaigns on independence. Economic crisis also affects the re-emergence of separatist sentiment in Belgium, notably in Flanders where nationalism challenges the traditional welfare state and its underlying mechanisms of consensus. On the other hand, there is strong evidence that the economic crisis and ensuing austerity drive has been exploited by national governments to rein in the policy discretion and limit the financial autonomy of regional/ local governments, most evidently in the cases of Italy and Spain. Although Germany has suffered more limited economic damage, the political dynamics of the EU fiscal union (itself generated by the economic crisis) have fed into the rules and operation of German federalism. These competing centripetal and centrifugal state dynamics highlight the need for more systematic and informed analysis on the subject, with a view to building a stronger comparative picture. This session assembles leading scholars with new papers analysing the economic factors behind the Scottish referendum and the re-emergence of regional-nationalist parties in Belgium, and the relationship between economic crisis and multi-level state reform in the cases of Germany, Spain and Italy.