Abstract

South Tyrol constitutes an important laboratory for the study of nation-building at the substate level thanks to the presence of different national movements and an ethnic conflict that has been resolved through territorial autonomy. This contribution proposes an analysis of the different ways in which the main South Tyrolean political parties have built their identities in the aftermath of the Italian internal colonization process, looking at the period between the implementation of the second autonomy statute in 1972 and the final conflict settlement in 1992. The article shows how the process of regionalization has led to different identity constructions within the respective nationalisms –Tyrolean peripheral or minority nationalism and Italian majority nationalism – thus contributing to the resolution of the ethnic conflict.