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epiphenomenal to the process of regionalization and threatening to the regional and central
organizations that structure regional governments. The key actors are the regional
institutionalized organizations where they exist. This means both the elites-- those who run the
organizations-- and the people in them. A policy acts on an organization, and that affects its
members who can have resources as well as its elites. They are the only actors bound to a level
of government but with preferences that are not directly set by the level of government to which
they are bound-- they are not necessarily obliged to defend the central state, nor to maintain
regional mobilization. They can see threats from both the central state and the nationalists, and
thus will adopt stances in territorial politics in response to whatever is the greatest threat-- central
state centralization, or separatist instability. They matter because of their influence on politics
and parties in their regions and in some cases in the state capital, and because they can pivot.
Scotland: start, stop
If the key factor in the history of at least this stateless nation, and presumptively in
similar cases, is the relationship between a complex of regional organizations, parties, and the
central state, then the politics of public policy start to matte. There are already good arguments
that part of the fuel for the devolution debate was Scottish disagreement with UK welfare social
policy in the 1990s (McEwen 2002). If what regional organizations express a preference for
their autonomy and environmental stability, then that translates into a set of views about the
formulation and nature of public policy. Scottish lawyers, for example, would have certain
substantive preferences regarding legal reforms (in favor of their status and professional
monopolies) and would also have preferences regarding any process that produced and
implemented legal reforms (that it should include them, consult with them, and rank their views
as important). A central state that caters to such pressures is unlikely to make an enemy of them.
They will on the other hand be prone to join a coalition to change, or shield themselves from, a
central state that makes substantive decisions they dislike, or one that systematically makes
decisions via a process they cannot influence.
This means that public policies can be, under certain circumstances, a crucial variable in
explaining the rise, extent, and fate of autonomist demands (or, in complex interactions,
secessionist ones). If the necessary conditions– a complex of regional organizations with
significant resources– are satisfied, then the politics of public policy and territory take on a
different cast. It is one thing to systematically enact disadvantageous policies for a region that
Convention