Rescaling Europe

Abstract

The European nation-state as an ideal-type was a polity bounded by fixed borders, which enclosed an economy, a society, a system of representation and a demos. Normatively, it was supported as essential to democracy and social solidarity. In practice, states had to engage in strategies of territorial management in order to maintain their spatial integrity. From the late twentieth century, spatial rescaling at supranational and substate levels has produced a disjuncture of systems that previously coincided in the nation-state. This poses a series of questions about democracy, efficacy in government and social solidarity.

Key Words:

• Nation states and Europe
• territorial management
• spatial rescaling and regionalism
• policy-making and institutional capacity
• democracy and citizenship
• social solidarity and equality

Notes

¹This was particularly ironic, since he was writing about Great Britain, a multinational state (Keating, 2008).

²This is a persistent theme in the literature on nationalism, with distinctions between eastern/western, ethnic/civic, cultural/political, exclusive/inclusive, nationalism/patriotism, all of which have both an analytic and a normative component. Even writers who start off decrying these distinctions seem to end up using one version or another of them.