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on party positions on the EU, thereby drawing secondary hypotheses. Third, I introduce
the expert survey data and present the analysis of regional political party attitudes toward
the European Union. Next, I consider the official positions of the Scottish National Party
vis-à-vis the European Union as a crucial-case study. Finally, I discuss the results as well
as extensions of this paper which will allow further internal validity testing, including a
comparison of the 1979 and 1997 Scottish devolution referenda. With expert surveys, I
assess the views of regional parties on European integration and find more evidence to
support the optimal size of nations argument and show that regional political parties are
generally supportive of the European project. This research contributes to the growing
literature on party positioning on the EU by concentrating on an under-studied party
family, the regional political party. Further, this research project extends the multi- level
governance literature by focusing on the interaction between the supra- national and sub-
national levels.
Viability or Fear? Two Paths to Greater Sub-National Mobilization
Elsewhere, I demonstrate that European integration does encourage both the
incidence of regional political parties as well as greater electoral success in national
elections. Though European integration is rarely considered a factor when discussing
domestic elections and regional parties, there are two plausible causal mechanisms that
predict deeper European integration will in fact increase support for regional political
parties. First, the European Union makes smaller states more viable by diminishing the
advantages of larger state size (Bolton and Roland 1997; Alesina and Spolaore 2003). For
regional political entrepreneurs, this increased viability increases the credibility of their
Convention