By Davide Vampa

European politics today is marked less by stability than by turbulence. Established parties are losing their grip, new challengers are rising, and electoral outcomes feel less predictable than they did just a generation ago. For much of the post-war era, scholars spoke of “frozen” party systems, anchored in class, religion or ideology. That world now seems distant.

We now know that turbulence does not stop at national borders. Electoral shifts in EU member states often reverberate at the European level, reshaping the dynamics of the Union itself. From Brexit to the growing volatility and political fragmentation of core countries such as France and Germany, we have seen how radical (and frequent) electoral shifts can unsettle the European project. Yet far less attention has been paid to what happens below the national level. Does this turbulence also transform the politics of Europe’s regions – broadly defined to include devolved nations in the UK – or do they follow their own distinctive patterns?

This is the focus of my recent article in West European Politics (2025), ‘From Nations to Regions: Electoral Volatility in European Multi-Level Politics’. It builds directly on my earlier work in Party Politics (first published in 2023), which mapped long-term patterns of volatility in regional elections, and in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (2024), where I explored what these shifts might mean for policymaking. Together, these pieces offer a broader picture: turbulence is not just a national phenomenon. It is multi-level, territorial, and consequential.

Mapping regional turbulence

My article in Party Politics set out to answer a surprisingly underexplored question: how volatile are regional elections? To find out, I examined almost 400 contests across 58 regions in Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK between 1993 and 2022.

The study introduced a new framework that separates volatility into two components:

• Region-specific volatility (RSV): changes in support for parties that only compete in one region.
• Region-transcending volatility (RTV): shifts in support for parties that operate across multiple regions or nationally.

This distinction matters because it reveals whether turbulence is mainly driven by actors competing nationally, or whether it originates within regionally rooted politics.

The results showed clear variation. In some regions, turbulence reflected the rise and fall of national parties. In others, region-specific actors were the main disruptors. In a few cases, both forces combined, producing what I call multi-level instability. In short, regional politics cannot simply be read as an echo of the national stage; it has its own logic of change.

From electoral turbulence to policymaking

But why should we care about this? In my Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis article, I explored how stability and instability at different levels of government can shape the way policies are made and carried out.

When politics is stable, policymaking tends to follow recognisable patterns: sometimes national and regional governments pull in the same direction, sometimes they clash, and sometimes they find ways to work together despite their differences. These dynamics – integration, competition, cooperation – have been familiar features of European multi-level governance for decades.

But turbulence unsettles this equilibrium. When instability enters the picture, policy processes become less predictable. National upheavals can spill into the regions, reshaping agendas overnight. Regional volatility can fuel polarisation, as leaders try to outbid one another on autonomy and resources. And when both levels are turbulent at once, the risk is that policy promises evaporate before they can be translated into action.

There are other intermediate possibilities too – central governments reasserting control when regions are unstable, or fragmented patterns emerging when regional politics is steadier than the national scene. The message is clear: turbulence does not just change who wins elections. It alters how multi-level systems function, and how effectively they can respond to citizens’ needs.

How regions reflect – or resist – national turbulence

In my most recent article in West European Politics, I took a fresh look at the sources of electoral turbulence and its relationship to national dynamics. The study examines nearly 500 regional elections across Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK, building on the distinction I had previously drawn between region-specific volatility (RSV) and region-transcending volatility (RTV).

The results show a complex picture. In many cases, regional volatility rises and falls alongside national volatility, suggesting that broader political shifts ripple through both levels. Yet in regions where strong regionalist parties dominate, where institutions enjoy greater autonomy, or where economic conditions are relatively stronger than at the national level, the connection is looser. Here, regional politics follows its own rhythm, sometimes diverging sharply from national trends.

This tells us two important things. First, national instability is not the whole story: looking only at general elections risks what scholars call methodological nationalism, the assumption that the nation-state is the sole unit of analysis. Second, regional politics can sometimes buffer or even counterbalance national turbulence, depending on their institutional, socio-economic and party-political configuration.

Why all this matters

At first glance, electoral volatility might seem like an academic concept. But its implications are concrete. When regional elections produce unexpected shifts, coalition building becomes harder, long-term strategies are disrupted, and policy delivery can suffer. Conversely, where regional politics remains relatively stable, it can provide a counterweight to turbulence at the national level.

In practice, this means that citizens’ experience of democracy – through public services like healthcare, education, or welfare – may depend not just on who governs nationally but also on how turbulent or stable regional politics is. For policymakers, recognising this can help anticipate bottlenecks, manage intergovernmental relations, and design more resilient institutions.

Over three linked studies, I have tried to capture the complexity of electoral turbulence in Europe’s multi-level democracies. The overarching lesson is clear: turbulence is not confined to national elections, nor is it a temporary disturbance. It is a defining feature of our era, shaped by both national and regional dynamics. Understanding it requires moving across levels of government, connecting electoral outcomes to policymaking, and paying attention to territorial context.

Democracy in Europe is not collapsing. But it is in motion – fluid, unpredictable, and uneven across space. Grasping the patterns of this turbulence is essential if we want to understand where our political systems are heading, and how they can remain resilient in the face of change.