Abstracts Category : Other

Oligopoly, regional development and the political economy of separatism, with a case study of the United Kingdom and Scotland

by Ivan Rajic

The present thesis aims to increase our understanding of the causes of separatism. Theinspiration for this topic comes from the fact that separatist conflicts can become extremelydestructive, and thus a better understanding of why they emerge may help us prevent muchhuman suffering by pointing to ways in which separatism can be avoided.More specifically, the thesis aims to explain the link between separatism and regionaldevelopment disparities. The argument presented is that inter-regional economic conflicts(such as about inter-regional fiscal redistribution) easily emerge between regions at differentlevels of development, and that under certain conditions, particularly prolonged recessions andausterity, such conflicts can become an important driver of separatist aspirations. This canhappen in both poorer and richer regions. The thesis further argues that this entire process canonly be fully understood if we analyse society through a class prism.Given that regional development disparities often lie at the root of inter-regional economicconflicts, one of the ways of avoiding such conflicts and thus also separatism would be toequalize regional development levels. In order to do so, however, we first need to understandwhy regional disparities emerge and persist. Focusing on capitalist countries, the thesis arguesthat the disparities emerge as a natural consequence of the operation of oligopolistic markets,which are the dominant market form in capitalism. Regional development policies are exploredat length, and it is argued that they are generally insufficient to overcome the tendency ofmarkets to produce regional disparities.All the topics in the thesis are explored at the general level and for a larger number ofcountries, but the main in-depth case study is of regional disparities in the United Kingdomand how they relate to Scottish separatism.