Peripheral elites and central political institutions: a complex relationship

The struggle of peripheries to obtain more autonomy (or independence) has been analysed on several occasions. However, little has been said about the strategies of political actors from peripheral territories to cooperate with central political powers to influence national policy and/or integrate their regions into state territory. This topic is addressed in this special issue, which focuses on the complex relationship between peripheral elites and central political institutions. This introduction presents the notion of peripheral elites as a by-product of the centre-periphery theory. It then contextualises this concept by stressing the multilevel connections with central elites before proposing a conceptual framework to grasp the variety of peripheral elites’ strategies to access the centre. The contributions to this special issue are presented in the final section.