Revisiting the Linz-Moreno question. Identities, causal antecedents and support for secession

Marc Guinjoan (UAB)

8th of July, 13:00h, Sala de Juntes de la Facultat de Ciències Polítiques i Sociologia de la UAB.
The Linz-Moreno question has become the most popular measure to assess how national/regional identities affect support for secession in stateless nations. The empirical evidence gathered until today clearly shows that the more regional (in contrast to national) an individual feels, the higher the likelihood of supporting the region’s independence. In parallel, an individual’s origin and the knowledge of the regional language have also been shown to determine his/her support for secession. In this research note, we argue that the literature has hitherto missed a proper conceptualisation of how the regional/national identity is related to the other correlates of support for secession. Using data from Catalonia (N=16.000) and three different empirical strategies our results show that the origin and the knowledge of the regional language are strong antecedents of the national/regional identity, while the direct impact of these variables trough identity is rather small.