Between Rupture and Bargaining

What drives mainstream stateless nationalist parties to adopt Atakan Çiftçi secessionist positions? Over the past decade, independence referendums in Catalonia and Scotland have made this question a timely and crucial topic in studies of political parties and nationalism. Although these referendums did not result in the creation of new states, they represented the most concrete attempts toward secession. Using process-tracing and semi-structured in-depth interviews with political elites and activists, this comparative study examines the political strategies of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and the Scottish National Party (SNP), the mainstream nationalist parties in their respective contexts. It seeks to address the puzzle of how these two parties, positioned at the relatively moderate end of the spectrum of stateless nationalist parties, moved beyond the discourse of secessionism to take concrete steps toward independence through referendums. Challenging traditional structuralist approaches, it highlights the interplay between leadership agency and institutional contexts at critical junctures, framing secessionism as a heterogeneous and dynamic phenomenon.