Content area
Abstract
Nationalism in prominent stateless nations such as Catalonia, Flanders, Quebec, and Scotland promised secession when it arose. Rather, it has fed into regionalization, or the creation of strong regional tiers of government. Nationalism, historically identified with the demand for statehood, has instead often merged with a global trend towards regionalization.
This study argues that the dynamics explaining the demand for greater self-government in Scotland and Catalonia also explain why these strong stateless nations stopped short of secession—in other words, it argues that the same actors that drove the process also braked it. These actors are strong complexes of regional organizations that, like most organizations, seek their own autonomy and environmental stability. Their interests include the formal or informal autonomy and stability of the region—their resource dependencies mean that they sink or swim with it They will support political campaigns for the best combination of autonomy and stability; this equally means supporting regional autonomy when a centralizing state is the greatest threat and opposing further regional autonomy when it opens up the destabilizing prospect of secession. Their influence comes from their size, density, and interconnections in the regions; their influence works through direct campaigns and environmental changes, but above all by making political parties resource dependent upon them to win in the region.
The argument is based on case studies of regionalization in Scotland and Catalonia since 1970. In Scotland, initial proposals for devolution (regionalization) in the 1970s failed when many regional organizations opposed it as a threat to stability. The experience of the centralizing Conservative governments between 1979 and 1997, however, converted their opposition to support for devolution as a defense of previously informal autonomy. In Catalonia, the nationalist party in office since 1980 has successfully built its relationships with regional organizations on the basis of winning autonomy and guaranteeing stability for them. In addition to the larger analysis, the study also includes case studies explaining how higher education, health, pre-university education, and industrial policy each were regionalized when there was a preexisting group of regional organizations that sought autonomy through regional autonomy.
