Our results also validate that political directors’ regional identity boosts the positive effect they have on CSR. In addition to this positive effect of board politicization, we find that political directors’ liberal ideology positively affects CSR, both directly and in moderating the relationship between political directors and CSR. Our results indicate that the higher the proportion of directors with political ties on the board, the greater the allocation of resources to CSR activities. Using a sample of Spanish savings banks ( cajas ) during the period 2004–2013, we analyze the influence of political directors on the CSR of these entities, focusing on their ideology and regional identity. This study analyzes the influence of directors with political connections on corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper demonstrates the potential of this new strategy during the Great Recession but also its limitations, linking its demise to the organizational weakness that prevented electoral realignment, and ultimately allowed the BNG to regain its leading role in the territorial dimension of competition. We find a new subsuming strategy developed by AGE and En Marea, which prioritized left-wing anti-austerity policies over core pro-periphery ones. Our analysis shows the different strategies displayed by the BNG and new challengers (AGE, and later En Marea), examining both the electoral supply (framing and party programmatic positions) and demand (voter positions). For that, it focuses on the multidimensional electoral strategies developed by Alternativa Galega de Esquerda (AGE) and En Marea, comparing them to that of the traditional Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG). This article explains the rise, success, and subsequent failure of new challenger formations in the Galician party system during the Great Recession. A qualitative illustration of two paradigmatic cases, the Lega Nord (LN) and the Scottish National Party (SNP), appears to support our interpretation that left-right orientations are subsumed into centre-periphery politics through the adoption of two ideal types of regionalist discourse: one labelled as ‘bourgeois regionalism’ (Harvie, 1994) and one labelled as ‘internal colonialism’ (Hechter, 1975).

Based on a quantitative analysis of 74 regionalist parties – distributed in 49 regions and 11 countries – over four decades, we find strong evidence that regionalist parties acting in relatively rich regions tend to adopt a rightist ideology, while regionalist parties acting in relatively poor regions tend to adopt a leftist ideology. We argue that the relative economic position of a region is a key variable for explaining how regionalist parties adopt left-right positions and link them to the centre-periphery dimension. The primary dimension of political contestation for regionalist parties is the centre-periphery dimension but they are pressured to adopt positions on the left-right dimension by competition with state-wide parties.

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