Social patriotism: populist glue for a multinational democracy

ABSTRACT

This article defines contemporary social patriotism as a type of welfare nationalism, with characteristics of an achievable civic form of maintenance nationalism. It investigates the presence of this type of nationalism in contemporary Spain, pointing out the novelty of the explicit linkage of patriotism and a reformist agenda by leftist parties. It also argues that social patriotism has the leverage for creating transversal identities within a multinational democracy such as Spain. After testing our hypotheses using qualitative and quantitative data, we discuss the implications of these findings within a wider European context.

KEYWORDS:

• Social patriotism
• welfare nationalism
• banal nationalism
• civic nationalism
• leftist populism
• Spain

Acknowledgements

For their valuable comments on earlier drafts, we are indebted to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of National Identities, as well as Francisco Javier Rueda Córdoba for his assistantship, and our colleagues from the Sociology Department at Pablo de Olavide University for their criticisms and comments. This work is part of the research project ‘Spanish Nationalism: discourses and praxis from the left, 1982–2008’ funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. CSO2008-01182-CPOL), as well as the project PYR028/17 funded by the public foundation Centre for Andalusian Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Antonia María Ruiz Jiménez is Adjunct Professor at the Sociology Department (Pablo de Olavide University of Seville). She is graduated in History, Master in Social Science and Doctor on Political Science and Administration. She has leaded national and international research projects and is now the leader of DEMOSPAIN research group.

Daniel Romero Portillo is graduated in Sociology and in Political Science and Administration by Pablo de Olavide University of Seville. Currently, he is enrolled as student in the ‘Master on contemporary democracies. Nationalism, federalism, and multiculturalism’ at Pompeu Fabra University.

Luis Navarro Ardoy is Doctor in Sociology and Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology in Pablo de Olavide University, Seville. He leads the Committee on Practical Sociological Research of the Spanish Sociology Federation.

Notes

1 National identity and patriotism are used synonymously in this article. We agree with Ward that

‘patriotism’ cannot be separated from the question of national identity, for even taking its most basic definition, ‘love of country’, the object must be defined in order to be loved. The nation must be ‘imagined’ in some form to be worthy of affection. (Ward, 1998, p. 2)

Thus, social patriotism is understood here as a particular manner in which one imagines the nation and feels part of it. Nation and political community are also used synonymously.

2 Leftist elites seem to have been traditionally trapped in the trade-off between their class identity and open nationalist attitudes and discourses. Scholars have noted the unease and contradictions between these two extremes both in structural and specific terms. From a structural perspective, the contradictions between the inspiring principles of nationalism and leftist ideologies have been noted (Berger, 2000; Laxer, 2001). Leftist ideologies are universally inspiring, whereas nationalism is based on distinguishing and giving allegiance only to a particular group of people, excluding the rest (Hobsbawm, 1996; Kasprzak, 2012; Berger, 2000). Furthermore, the left has categorized nationalism as a bourgeois and capitalist ideology, the aim of which is to dilute social class consciousness (Field, 1992; Hoswell, 1986; Kasprzak, 2012; Schwarzmantel, 2012; Van Ginderachter, 2007, p. 218). In addition to these structural difficulties, the particular combination of rightist ideologies and nationalism, which began after 1848 and have intensified since WWII, have made this a difficult topic for the left to cope with.

3 The concepts of oppositional or radical patriotism have also been used to describe the increasing integration of the working classes into their respective nations before 1914 (meaning both their integration into the political and socioeconomic systems and their emotional acceptance of their fatherlands) (Van Ginderachter, 2007, pp. 215–216; Ward, 1998, pp. 4–5). However, there are differences between radical and social patriotism. Radical patriotism, while implying love for the country, does not necessarily mean acceptance of the government/state as synonymous with the nation. Social patriotism, on the other hand, is oriented towards domestic social reform, implicitly through the state’s democratic machinery.

4 The studies of so-called majoritarian nationalisms (as opposed to minority or peripheral nationalisms) have recently joined the group of researches focusing on the ways established democracies reproduce themselves, paying particular attention to multinational states (Basta, 2017; Gagnon et al., 2011), given the added difficulties for these democracies to maintain social cohesion through a common national identity.

5 The parties selected for the interviews do not present themselves with the same name in every Spanish region. The Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (PSOE) and the United Left (IU) use these same designations in Andalusia and Madrid and are federated branches of the same national parties. This does not happen in Galicia or Catalonia, where we have chosen the closest leftist ‘non-nationalist’ parties for analysis. In Galicia, the affiliated party for this analysis is PSdG (Galician Socialist Party), which is in fact a federated branch of the national Socialist Party. In Catalonia, every party selected is formally independent although with strong linkages to the PSOE and the IU, thus the PSC (Catalan Socialist Party) was selected as the party most closely affiliated with the PSOE and the ICV (Enterprise for Catalonia Greens) and the EUiA (United Left and Enterprise) as closely affiliated to the IU. The location of these two parties on the continuum between unitary and completely independent, along which they have moved historically (Smiley, 1987; Thorlakson, 2001), is subject to debate (Vergé & Barberà, 2009). Our decision to combine them into two ideological domains (the PSOE, PSdG, and PSC, on the one hand, and the IU, ICV, and EUiA, on the other) is also based on their ideological proximity as perceived by citizens. In 2012 (CIS study 2956), citizens placed the PSOE, on an ideological scale ranging from 1 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right), at 4.10, the PSC at 4.52, and the PSdG at 3.97; whereas the ICV–EUiA was placed at 2.83 and the IU at 2.29.

6 Podemos can be characterized as a challenger party, on the left, together with the IU and PSOE; it emerged in the context of public mobilizations against the consequences of the Great Recession, as other radical right parties also emerged (or strengthened) in several European countries. Only three months after its foundation in January 2014, it was the party with the highest percentage of votes for the European Parliament in Spain. Its success in subsequent elections marked the end of the two-party system in Spain. Ideologically, it is placed by citizens on the far left with a position of 2.25 on a scale ranging from 1 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right).

7 The interviews were conducted under the guarantee of confidentiality; thus, they are cited by number with no correspondence to the order in which they appear in Appendix 1. Specific information can be provided upon request, for replication purposes only, and also upon signing a guarantee of anonymity.

8 This represents a surprising turn, considering the traditional and strategic alliance between the statewide left and peripheral nationalism (Quiroga, 2011). In our interviews, this alliance was even judged by some as harmful for the long term.

9 It is also helped by the insistence of mainstream parties on using the ‘populist’ label as a disqualifying term for any type of challenger party (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2014). This negative understanding of populism in the European tradition might explain why Podemos has looked for intellectual references in other literatures, including Laclau’s (2016) notion of populism, Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, and the political practices of ‘twenty-fist century socialism’ in Latin America (Iglesias, 2015). However, what this demonstrates is that the content of the populist discourse developed by this party is not significantly different from the social patriotism previously developed in Europe, many characteristics of which are also found among PSOE and IU elites.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios Andaluces (is part of 'Consejería de la Presidencia, Administración Pública e Interior' of the Andalusian Goverment 'Junta de Andalucía'): [grant number PRY028/17]; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government [grant number CSO2008-01182CPOL].