Ideological Similarity and the Quest for Political Self-Determination. Decentralization and Salient Ideological Conflict Dimensions in Islamic, Catholic and Protestant Countries from 1900-2015

It has been shown that ideological similarity between national governments and autonomy seeking movements increase the prospects to gain autonomy. We provide a refinement of the argument. The question is what ideological dimension matter where and when? We argue, before the end of World War II a divide between progressive secularists and clerical conservatives dominated the Catholic and Islamic world. The prospect of accommodation for autonomist movements were determined by the coincidence of the ideological stance on secularism with the national government. In contrast, the conflict between state and market dominated political discourses in Protestant countries already in the early 20^th century and took centre stage in the Catholic and Islamic countries right after World War II as well.

We trace the ideological framing of autonomist movements and their respective national governments in 21 regions from 1900 to 2015. We visualize the sequences of the historical development of autonomy arrangements, their abolition and reinstallation. We add case study evidence to underline the role of ideology in specific bargains over autonomy. Finally, we run logistic panel regressions to substantiate the relation between the state of autonomy and ideological similarity on different dimension in different time periods. The results confirm that government’s preferences on autonomy are superimposed by the theorized ideological concerns. The findings also indicate, that democracy leads to a lock-in of autonomy. The findings are based on a new collection of data. They entail the ideological framing of autonomy seeking movements, parties as well as the ideological framing of national governments.