Post-devolution, foreign policy issues such as international treaty negotiations and international development remain under the remit of UK central government. Indeed, it might be expected that international relations is the typical policy over which the nation-state level would be most assiduous in seeking to maintain its exclusive prerogatives against encroachments from sub-state nationalisms. However, the international activities of the Welsh Assembly Government to date are clearly extensive.

This article examines the findings of research analysing the implications and significance of paradiplomacy in post-devolution Wales. It focuses on the Assembly Government’s international involvement beyond the EU: that is on those forms of paradiplomatic activity that were perhaps the most distinctive and unexpected results of decentralisation. It argues that the level of activity has been extensive and reflects Welsh Labour’s nation-building activities with broad agreement across the parties. 

The breadth of Welsh international relations is nevertheless clearly dependent on the agreement of and collaboration with the UK Government.  Overall, by tackling the under-researched and significant topic of Welsh paradiplomacy, the paper contributes to enriching our understanding of the consequences of decentralisation in the UK context and of sub-state nationalist responses within contemporary Europe to the challenges of a global era.

The aim of this paper is to argue that the lack of legitimacy apparent at European Union level – namely, the EU’s failure to create an adequate link between the supranational decision-makers and the people they represent (see, e.g. Bundesverfassungsgericht 2009), and which has famously come to be known by the term ‘democratic deficit’ – can also be observed at sub-state level. Yet, the same criticism of a lack of democratic legitimacy is not applied here – neither in the political nor the academic discourse.

The case we use is that of devolved Scotland within the UK, which is a situation of asymmetric decentralisation and power-sharing. We submit that, in comparison to the EU level, the problem in the Scottish case is neither one of (lack of) representation nor of (electoral) distance between the decision-makers and the people, but rather one of (arguably illegitimate) involvement and inclusion of that elected representative.

Our argument with regards to the Scottish case is threefold. First, there is a misrepresentation at the sub-state level. The second point is related to this, as said misrepresentation leads to an inherent legitimacy problem. Third, we find that there is a potential clash of legal and political competences between the Scottish, UK and EU level.

With regard to the first point, we refer to the fact that Scots directly elect representatives to membership of the Scottish, UK and European Parliaments, and that problems arise from a lack of clarity and proper guidelines governing access to decision-making procedures that are based on party political traditions. This results in ad hoc political methods of deciding how and when powers are exercised by Westminster MPs vis-à-vis Scottish attendance at EU- and international-level events.

The second point relates to Tam Dalyell MP’s 1977 ‘West Lothian Question’. This refers to a legitimacy problem inherent to asymmetric power-sharing arrangements, one that has now become increasingly apparent under the current form of UK devolution. The ‘legitimacy break’ here appears when the votes of elected representatives of a particular region (i.e. England) are defeated using the votes of similarly-elected representatives from another region (i.e. Scotland) but where there is no reciprocal possibility.

In other words, compared to the English voter, the Scottish voter has representatives in Westminster who may take decisions on issues that only concern England and/or Wales and Northern Ireland. Again, we argue that this type of action is not only based on the particular form of devolution chosen in the UK, but is exacerbated by party political traditions and considerations in the Westminster system.

Our third and main point argues that the lack of competence demarcation evident in the UK is also apparent within the EU; though the systems of governance differ, the problems of legitimacy and democratic representation reveal compelling similarities. There is no clear hierarchy of competences in either case and, while Westminster also has de jure capacity to withdraw all powers from the Scottish Parliament, the political reality in the UK is that neither is there any de facto authority over competence-competence, similar to the situation at EU level (see Opinion Case C-58/08 2009).

Although administered as a county of England, and often forgotten in the story of British nationalisms, Cornwall is a nation in the South West of the UK.  It is also one of the poorest parts of Europe, and in 1999 qualified for Objective 1 Funding from the European Union Structural Funds programme with a GDP of 69% of EU GDP.

Before this time, and despite an underperforming economy, Cornwall had not qualified for this funding because it had been administratively tied to its neighbouring county, Devon.  To achieve the statistical separation required, campaigners at a range of political levels utilised narratives of Cornish nationalism to justify why Cornwall should be a ‘NUTS 2’ region in its own right.

This paper will use qualitative interviews with a range of actors involved in the campaign to explore how nationalism was used to achieve greater economic support, and to assess the effects that this has had on national narratives and economic fortunes over the following years.  It will argue that the use of nationalism was a popular identification which built a hegemony that unwilling policy actors were unable to ignore.  It also meant that for a while, policy in Cornwall had to adopt elements of nationalist discourse, which they have not yet been able to fully dismantle.

The Northern League has represented one of the most successful sub-state nationalist parties in Europe. Due to its capacity to federate several parties from different Northern Italian regions, it has become not only an important party at regional level but, primarily, at state level. Until November 1997 the Northern League kept professing its support for European integration in general and for monetary union (EMU) in particular. In the space of few months, the party started expressing anti-EMU and increasingly anti-European integration positions. The U-turn carried out in 1998 has proved to be a strategic, long-term move, as the Northern League has since become the most anti-European party in the Italian party system.

Previous studies have concluded that the determinant factor which led the Northern League to change its position on Europe was its policy seeking orientation, which entailed the need to get closer to the Eurosceptic position espoused by Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Chari, et al., 2004). While this interpretation is not rejected, the analysis presented here, based on party documents, interviews and public speeches of the party leader, Umberto Bossi, shows that it has to be included within a wider framework and that it does not constitute the best explanation.

The most credible explanation concerns party ideology, which had always possessed some anti-European integration features, and party strategy. In particular the 1998 U-Turn can be seen as the failure of a strategic gamble which aimed to use one level (Europe) in order to stir the re-organization of power relationships between two other levels of government (state and sub-state).

Language endangerment is certainly an important issue in today’s globalizing world regarding aspects such as the hegemony of the English language, the experience of cultural loss among the growing numbers of transnational migrants, and the dying out of semantic fields as traditional means of life, crafts and professions are disappearing. Furthermore, language endangerment still plays a fundamental role in the political agenda of several n sub-State nationalisms which, like the Basque, place not only language but the risk of language endangerment at the centre of their nationalist project.

The foundation of a Basque Language Academy (Euskaltzaindia) in 1918, the creation of a unified Basque language in the late 1968 (the so called Euskera Batua), and the Constitution of a Basque Autonomous Community within the Spanish state in the late 1970s which implemented the use of Batua in Basque institutions (e.g. schools) generated a hearted debate about the practical reasons behind this construction and, more importantly, about the ways in which this unified and, to some, ‘artificial’ language would put local variations of Euskera at risk. 

Drawing from interviews with writers and oral poets (bertsolariak) from the seven Basque provinces or herrialdeak, in this paper I will analyze to what extent the unification of the Basque language and its becoming a literary language has placed local variations in a subordinate position such that their continuity is at risk.  I am specially interested in exploring the presence and symbolic meaning of local variations of Euskera in fiction writing and oral poetry in so far as these two fields are not necessarily constrained by the official linguistic policy and can vindicate the use of local speech variations.

The implementation of the 482/1999 act in Italy substantiated the opportunity to link the linguistic minorities to the local self government. In the present paper I will argue that major institutions such as the Communita Montana and the Sportello Linguistico have refreshed the interest in the Grecanico culture in the Calabria region. Through European Union and regional sponsored courses on the Grecanico language and culture, a considerable number of people aspire to occupy a position in the aforementioned institutions. These people – of Grecanico and non Grecanico origin – are trained within the Grecanico constructivism and have followed paths of identity formation similar to nationalisms. Grecanici idiosyncratic ethnicisation is a configuration of power and knowledge with specific disciplines and governmentalities and it is constructed as both a political ideal and mobilising metaphor.

As EU integration takes us towards an ‘ever closer union’, secessionist movements and parties in some of the more prominent minority nations in the larger multinational member states of the EU (such as the SNP in Scotland, Esquerra in Catalonia and Plaid Cymru in Wales) are adopting, at least at a rhetoric level,  the aim of Independence in Europe.  This suggests that the wider political community within which secession is placed is the EU.  In order to address whether Independence in Europe is a legitimate aim and how it can be justified, we need to define secession in a way that is more appropriate to the reality of the EU and the discourse of secessionist movements. 

This paper suggests that the concept of secession as traditionally considered is not appropriate to understand or assess this claim and offers an alternative definition / conception of secession.  It argues traditional secession is isolationist and based on a Wesphalian concept of absolute sovereignty in a world made up of territorially bounded states where the state holds complete authority within its territorial borders. 

In this sense, and by examining the existing theories of secession, I argue that secession has only been portrayed, at least theoretically, as external secession.  I then suggest an alternative view of secession should be internal secession; secession that occurs within a larger political community where sovereignty is not absolute but shared and authority is not exclusively reserved for the State. 

Europeans with a Difference: Consensus, Distinctivness and the Political Technologies of Sub-State Nationalisms

People in sub-state nationalisms often express that they miss out on experiencing the kind of ‘democratisation of feeling and practice’ that is proclaimed from Brussels as well as from within dominant nation states in Europe. The EU deems that ‘sub-national and independence’ claims should be primarily resolved at ‘national’ level as opposed to being resolved at a ‘european/EU level’. As such, sub-state nationalist feelings have gone from being closely allied to the 'European project' (as it was the case in late 19^th and early 20^th Century) to falling out of alliance with the larger European project due to, as I will argue, EU's failure to address nationalism outside national/Sovereign/Estate borders and these sovereign states’ biopolitical strategies of governance.   

This paper examines the concept of 'independent nationalisms' as those expressed in ethnographic encounters in Catalonia, Wales and Northern Ireland in order to interrogate what it means to be  a ‘sub-state minority-whilst-being-European’; and what it means to be politically positioned as a ‘region’ within the  ‘technologies of consensus’ and 'integration' predicated in EU policy discourses.

The paper looks at sub-state minority engagement with European policies through the lens of what Foucault (1979) popularised as 'political technologies', in other words, the kinds of biopolitical strategies of governance known as biopower the define the modern nation state, the sovereign nation state and the normative regulation of citizenship. I aim to extend Foucault’s theory of biopolitics further as to argue that this concept needs to be understood much broader and linked to external rather than merely internal aspects of governance.

The paper argues that when looking at sub-state nationalisms we have a lack of ethnographic understanding of what sovereign European power really means in the European context. Sub-nationalisms appear positioned in the tension between national descentralisation (from within), descentralisation of the European polity (from EU) and the shared aimed of greater political integration albeit of diferent types of governance.

The paper further contends that the case of European sub-state nationalisms is very important for understanding political governance, citizenship participation, and the role of the nation state in our new period of altermodernity (what comes after Postmodernity Bourriad 2009).  I argue that the social future of the European project in terms of citizenship participation, and EU’s governamentality itself, must understand how to address sovereignty outside state borders (among other types of participation outside state borders) and that sub-state nationalisms are a key to this.

This paper seeks to interrogate the concept of nationalism as a homogenously constructed category of representation. From the perspective of Trikalinoi informants in Thessaly, central Greece, the paper will explore the interplay between forms of nationalist and sub-nationalist ideology in relation to territorial claims and ethnic identities in the region of Greek Macedonia. As Trikala is situated outside of the ‘official’ borders of Greek Macedonia, a view is offered on Macedonian sub-nationalism which is at once both external and internal, as many ethnic populations in the town share strong cultural ties with the Macedonian region. Amidst the complexities of powerful ethnic stereotypes cultivated locally, the issue of territorial and naming rights to the region of Macedonia passionately unites those of different ethnic backgrounds in the town – Karagounithes, Vlachs, Pontians, Sarakatsans and Arvanites among others.

Whilst possessing an inherent interest in the politics of Greek Macedonia as part of the Greek nation and fervently placing territorial claims to the region on collective cultural, economic and historical bases, many Trikalinoi would consider the inhabitants of Greek Macedonia as the ‘accepted Other within’ due to the complex stereotypes that are perpetuated between the ethnic groups.

Sub-nationalism in this case pertains to conflicting ideologies concerning territorial claims on the one hand and the ethnic identity of the inhabitants on the other. Along with local sentiments of the state ‘selling-out’ ‘Greek’ culture and history to satisfy foreign political and economic demands, this paper engages with different levels of sub-national collectivity and calls into question the concept of nationalism as a mode of collective representation within the territorial boundaries of a sovereign state.

Sub-state nationalism has risen in Europe over the last 60 years. They have led to fundamental changes within some European states, which developed from nation to multinational states.

As a consequence state leaders have attempted to address the problems surrounding sub-state nationalism in a variety of ways, ranging from ethnic cleansing and assimilation to the recognition of sub-state nationalism and the introduction of federal and power-sharing arrangements. The use of federalism as a tool to give territorially concentrated minorities autonomy combined with representation at the central level has been used in a number of European states. The paper will discuss the use of federalism in Belgium, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which all have seen national revivals over the last decades and have consequently implemented federal or quasi-federal regimes.

The paper will therefore discuss to what extent federalism is able to “manage” sub-state nationalism, by discussing the three case studies. However, the paper will also contribute to the philosophical debate of nationalism and federalism and see how these concepts relate to each other. The discussion will therefore contribute to the ongoing debate whether federalism strengthens sub-state nationalism and consequently leads to secession (as in the case of Yugoslavia) or whether federalism will be able to hold a multinational state together and reconcile the different nations under a common roof.

Much theorising on sub-state nationalism in the newly democratising states is based on defining nation- and state-building projects along the lines of ‘ethnic’ vs. ‘civic’ dichotomy.

This paper takes as its starting point Aviel Roshwald’s theoretical assumption (2001) about coexistence rather than predomination of one of dichotomically contrasted ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ elements within a nation-building project. It is empirically supported by the divergence of the construction of political communities in the post-Soviet European space which balance ethnic and civic components differently. This is particularly puzzling against the backdrop of the shared institutional design at the outset of regime change after the dissolution of the USSR.

The paper seeks to analyse why some states adopted more inclusionary vision of political community than others. Namely, an attempt to specify Rogers Brubaker’s thesis (1996) about ‘nationalising’ states as a product of Soviet dual institualisation of nationhood is made by identifying and analysing the factors which caused divergent outcomes in Estonia and Ukraine. These two cases representing opposite ends of spectrum of ‘nationalising state’: whereas Estonia completely fits Brubaker’s scheme, Ukraine does so partially.

In the paper, it is argued that country-specific contingent factors have an impact on a degree to which ‘civic’ or ‘ethnic’ elements predominate during construction of political community. The research design is a qualitative few cases comparison made from historical perspective, which allows to pay close attention to specific trajectories of post-communist transitions.

The innovation of the paper lies with first, an attempt of specification of Brubaker’s thesis, and second, with comparison between two post-Soviet states - still rare in the field of postcommunist studies with single case-studies predominating. Finally, its relevance for the topic of the conference is due to the investigation of the factors of the construction of political community, which – if exclusive – can trigger the resistance of national minorities and interethnic conflict. Thus, the opportunities for political integration outlined during construction of political community are the basis for social integration, or lack of it, as generally agreed on in the literature (Paul Kolstoe 1999).

Corina Filipescu

Correlation between the growth of sub-state nationalism and the rise of right wing parties in Romania

This article investigates the rise of sub-state nationalism in Romania, focusing on the process of political mobilization by regionally based minority group forces. These sub-state movements aim to widen the degree of political autonomy of particular regions and groups. Sometimes in most extreme aims, the groups try to achieve outright territorial autonomy within the existing nation state and even secede from that nation state and establish a new nation. Although there are yet no examples of outright secession in Romania, it is the argument of this study that the growing tendency towards sub-state nationalism has impacted on the proliferation of right wing parties.

The emancipation of minority groups has drawn nationalist parties such as Vatra Romaneasca and Greater Romania Party to adopt anti-minority doctrines and to become popular choices with Romanian voters. Other parties such as the National Unity (PRNU) had openly called for bloody war against minorities. This had especially emerged with the demands of the Hungarian community to request a Hungarian-language University in order to reproduce their cultural community and a system of autonomous local self-administration for the Hungarian minority.