ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces a new analytical concept, Unequal Market Insertion, to explain centrifugal forces in culturally heterogeneous polities. Since the late 1970s, scholars have emphasized that overlapping cultural diversity and economic inequality is conducive to secessionism. The greater economic inequality between regions is, the more likely and the more intense peripheral nationalism seems to be. Scholars have also shown that overdevelopment is more conducive to peripheral nationalism than is underdevelopment. They do not explain, however, why would the population of an overdeveloped region be interested in separating from a broader polity. The concept Unequal Market Insertion fills this gap. It describes a situation where the benefits of insertion in an expanded market vary significantly across sectors of the economy, social groups, and locations within a given territory. When insertion in a new market runs parallel to opposite economic trajectories experienced by the different social groups and different geographic locations of a given ‘region’, those who experience economic stagnation or decline in this region may mobilize against membership in the new market. The chapter illustrates the role of unequal market insertion in radicalizing centrifugal politics in overdeveloped regions by focusing on the British population’s vote to leave the European Union.
