4.8 Defining Devolutionary Factors

Devolution moves power away from the central government toward regional governments. It can be peaceful and limited, like giving a region its own parliament, or it can end in independence. The factors below are centrifugal forces, which push a state apart. Most real cases combine several of them.

• Physical geography: mountains, seas and long distances can separate groups from the capital and from each other. Pakistan was created in 1947 in two parts separated by about 1,600 kilometers of India. East Pakistan, where most people spoke Bengali, broke away as Bangladesh in 1971. Island states like Indonesia, with thousands of islands, face similar challenges.
• Ethnic separatism: an ethnic or national group seeks more autonomy or independence. Catalonia held an independence referendum in 2017 that Spain's courts ruled illegal. Quebec voted on sovereignty in 1980 and 1995, rejecting it by about 50.6% to 49.4% the second time. Scotland voted to stay in the UK in 2014, by about 55% to 45%.
• Ethnic cleansing: forcibly removing or killing an ethnic group to create an ethnically uniform area. During the Bosnian War (1992–1995), Bosnian Serb forces killed about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, which international courts ruled a genocide.
• Terrorism: violence against civilians to achieve political goals can pressure governments. The Basque group ETA carried out attacks in Spain for decades before disbanding in 2018. In Northern Ireland, paramilitary violence during the Troubles was largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which created a power-sharing government.
• Economic and social problems: wealthier regions may resent subsidizing poorer ones, as some Catalans and northern Italians argue, while poorer regions may feel neglected by the capital. Unequal access to jobs, services or political power feeds these feelings.
• Irredentism: a state's effort to claim territory in another state where people of its own ethnicity live. Nazi Germany demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938. Somalia's claim to Ethiopia's Ogaden region led to war in 1977–78. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, citing its ethnic Russian majority; Ukraine and most UN members that voted on the question rejected the annexation as illegal.

Catalonia shows how the factors combine. It has its own language and identity (ethnic separatism), it is one of Spain's wealthiest regions and many Catalans feel they pay more in taxes than they get back (economic), and it has a long history of self-government. Separating out each factor helps you build a clear explanation.