Regionalist and Regional Parties
A regionalist party is a regional political party promoting autonomy for its region; a regional party is a political party with its base almost entirely in a single region. All regionalist parties are also regional, while only a portion of regional parties are also regionalist. Because regional parties often cannot receive enough votes or legislative seats to be politically powerful, they may join political coalitions or seek to be part of a coalition government.
Examples of regionalist parties include the New Flemish Alliance in Belgium, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in the United Kingdom, Lega Nord, the Sardinian Action Party, the Party of the Sicilians, and, to some extent, the South Tyrolean People's Party and the Valdotanian Union in Italy, Convergence and Union and the Basque Nationalist Party in Spain, the Party of the Corsican Nation in France, and the Regionalist Action Party in Chile (northern parts).
Examples of regional parties include the aforementioned regionalist parties, many political parties in India, virtually all the parties in Belgium, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria in Germany, the Istrian Democratic Assembly and the Alliance of Primorje-Gorski Kotar in Croatia.
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“Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a “taxing- machine;” to the contented, a “machine for securing property.” Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)