Regionalism appears as the authentic response to the obsolescence of nation-state politics under conditions of global economic interdependence and crisis. While postmaterialist value change may have served as a first common denominator for the mobilization of peripheral protest, the real cause lies in the incompatibility of the capitalist accumulation process with regional development. Failed modernization and relative regional deprivation have fomented a new marginality and anti-centralist identity. Peripheral regions no longer aim at (re)integration, but instead at autonomization. However, given the paucity of peripheral opportunity structures, they have to steer a shrewd course between exit (autonomization from) and voice (participation in nation-state politics). A general theory of fragmentation ought to explore further the role and potential of regionalism in the transformation of capitalist society.
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