How nationalism evolves: explaining the establishment of new varieties of nationalism within the national movements of Quebec and Catalonia (1976–2005)

Abstract

The national movements of sub-state national societies are divided into two or three competing political orientations (independentists, autonomists, and federalists), which vary over time. This article compares the process that led to the founding of the ADQ (autonomism) in Quebec, with the process that culminated in the transformation and de facto re-founding of ERC (independentism) in Catalonia during the period 1976–2005. Using the cases of two nationalist parties in two different national movements that have successfully established new political orientations, I analyze the political origins of this form of temporal variation. My outcome variable is the “tipping point” at which these nationalist political parties get established. This “tipping point” was reached through a temporal sequence that evolved in four phases. In each of these phases, a key variable was involved: the existence of a preexistent ideology, the occurrence of a central state constitutional moment, an impulse from the sphere of sociological nationalism, and the consolidation of a new leadership nucleus.

Keywords:

• nationalism
• nationalist movements
• autonomy
• independence
• political parties
• Quebec
• Catalonia

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the National Science Foundation for NSF Grant No. SES-0706689 during 2007–2009. Thanks are due also to the European University Institute for its institutional support during 2007–2009, the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) for hosting the author in 2009, and the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin for the postdoctoral fellowship it has offered the author for 2009–2010. Finally, thanks are due to Michael Keating and Rainer Bauböck for their comments on a previous version of this paper.

Notes

Here, I use Miroslav Hroch's terminology. “National movements” tend to pursue three aims: (1) the development of a national culture, based on the native language; (2) the achievement of civil rights and political self-administration (autonomy or independence); and (3) the creation of a complete social structure from the ethnic group. “National movements” are composed of those political parties, intellectuals, artists, associations, organizations in civil society, and individual nationalist militants that support the goals of the national movement (Hroch, Social; idem, “Nationalist”).

In general, “sub-state national societies” are historically settled, territorially concentrated, and previously self-governing societies with distinctive sociolinguistic traits whose territory has become incorporated into a larger state. In some cases the incorporation of such societies has been through imperial domination and colonization, military conquest, or the cession of the territory by an imperial metropolis, but in other cases reflects a voluntary pact of association (Kymlicka). These are also known as “stateless nations,” “internal nations,” or “national minorities.” I prefer to use the term “stateless nation,” given that, as Michael Keating writes, the term “national minority” more often refers to a “people within a state whose primary reference point is a nation situated elsewhere” (Keating x; Brubaker). Some stateless nations are in control of the administrative apparatus of a sub-state government (e.g. provincial government) but lack the accoutrements of sovereign statehood. Examples of stateless nationhood include: Scotland, Quebec, and the Basque Country.

Independence is the realization of full political sovereignty for a nation. For stateless nations, it is the attainment of separate statehood, independent from the majority nation with which they have coexisted within the same state for some time. Also, proposals for sovereignty-association and associated statehood are variants of the independence option.

I maintain that autonomy proposals are political arrangements that generally renounce independence – at least for the medium- to short term – but which seek to promote the self-government, self-administration, and cultural identity of a territorial unit populated by a polity with national characteristics. The cases of autonomy vary widely and no single description will be applicable to all such situations. Contemporary instances of actually-existing autonomy relationships include: Äland Islands/Finland, Alto Adige/Italy, Faroe Islands/Denmark, Greenland/Denmark, Puerto Rico/USA. Most cases of actually-existing autonomy arrangements can be clearly distinguished from classic federations. Classic federations, where all the constituent units have substantially equal powers, may not be sufficiently sensitive to the particular cultural, economic, institutional, and linguistic needs of a sub-state national society, which requires a greater degree of self-government (Ghai 8). Generally speaking, moreover, “autonomy is always a fragmented order, whereas a constituent … [unit of a federation] is always part of a whole … The ties in a … [federation] are always stronger than those in an autonomy” (Suksi 25).

Federalists seek to have their nation remain (or become) a constituent unit of classic federations, which constitute a particular species within the genus of “federal political systems,” wherein neither the federal nor the constituent units' governments (cantons, provinces, Länder, etc.) are constitutionally subordinate to the other, i.e. each has sovereign powers derived directly from the constitution rather than any other level of government, each is given the power to relate directly to its citizens in the exercise of its legislative, executive and taxing competences, and each is elected directly by its citizens.

Díez Medrano's book focuses on patterns of development in order to discuss the origins of Basque nationalism (independentist) and Catalan nationalism (autonomist or federalist) before 1936, and he shows that the contrast between these two national movements is largely the result of the different development patterns experienced in the Basque lands and in Catalonia and the distinctive social structures produced by these patterns (Díez Medrano 10). He found that “combined development and specialization in capital-goods production in the Basque Country and endogenous development and specialization in consumer-goods production in Catalonia … facilitated the development of very different social structures, very different attitudes towards capitalism and membership in the Spanish state, and, consequently, very different political structures [and institutions] and degrees of support for particular nationalist political organizations” (Díez Medrano 16).

The comparability of Quebec and Catalonia has been noted previously (Pares and Tremblay 9).

Please note that these insurgent orientations are “new” in the sense that they may have been present in sociological nationalism and in small extra-parliamentary groups or parties, but did not have a significant presence in the arena of parliamentary politics and electoral competition.

The de facto re-founding of ERC during the period 1986–1989 is functionally equivalent to the “founding” of a new party, as in the case of the ADQ in 1994.

Case study methods may encompass both within-case analysis of single cases and comparisons of a small number of cases, given that “there is a growing consensus that the strongest means of drawing inferences from case studies is the use of a combination of within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons within a single study … (although single-case studies can also play a role in theory development)” (George and Bennett 18).

Previous scholars who have investigated regionalist and “ethnoregionalist” parties agree with me that this “tipping point” is analytically important and they have therefore focused on asking “why and how ethnic sentiments were converted into organizational structures” (De Winter and Türsan 8).

Even today, many Catalan nationalists still reject the Spanish Constitution of 1978. For example, Alfons López Tena, the president of the Cercle d'Estudis Sobiranistes, recently stated in response to the question of why he rejects the Spanish Constitution: “Because it is Spanish. It says very clearly that there is only one sovereign nation: the Spanish one … The Constitution created a unitary state, uninational, and monolingual: it is based on only one sovereign nation” (Avui 24 Mar. 2009, 8).

Avui 27 Dec. 2009, 7.