%0 Journal Article
%T Catch-all Politics under Stress ¨C Non-territorially Defined Parties and the Quest for Symmetry and Compromise in Territorial Reforms
%A Dominic Heinz
%A Eike-Christian Hornig
%J Central European Journal of Public Policy
%D 2012
%I Charles University in Prague
%X The paper focuses on a neglected group of territorial politics: the dominant non-territorially defined political parties, mainly catch-all parties of Christian Democratic or Social Democratic origin. In contrast to regionalist parties, they do not have incentives for territorial reforms, yet they are engaged in them. Despite a state of mutual neglect between the literature on territorial politics and the catch-all party branch of party theory, we argue that the catch-all party model does help understand territorial party politics in two steps. Territorial reforms as practical tests put catch-all parties under tremendous stress, since particularistic regionalist interests may threaten the catch-all party formula of competitiveness with its symmetry of interest group integration. According to the degree of the threat, catch-all parties take countermeasures in territorial reforms, restoring the respective conditions again. To test this hypothesis and identify this mechanism of ¡®threat and response¡¯, we scan territorial reforms in Germany, Austria, Great Britain and Italy.
%K Parties
%K catch-all party
%K federalism
%K constitutional policy
%K territorial politics
%U http://www.cejpp.eu/index.php/ojs/article/view/98