Stateless Nation Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A definition of a stateless nation included several elements, such as a sharing by the inhabitants of a self-perceived common culture and history, an attachment to a particular territory within a larger state, and a desire for home rule and eventual independence, as noted by Montserrat Guibernau (1999). In broad terms, a stateless nation can be referred to as a minority nation that has secured or aims to achieve a degree of institutional autonomy or independence within a plural or multinational state, and that concurs or coexists with a majority nation or other regions or ethno territorial groups.

As a relational construct, the stateless nation is a category put forward mainly by the ideology of minority or stateless nationalism, which usually develops within plural states and is associated with demands for self-government (it also can affect two or more neighboring states, as the Basque or Kurdish cases illustrate). Demands for political power can range from a degree of home rule to the formation of a new independent state. This type of stateless nationalism often has been made synonymous with that of regionalism. Indeed, both share three important elements in most of their manifestations: (1) a collective identity and consciousness of community belonging, (2) a center-periphery conflict, and (3) an existence of social mobilization and political organization for the achievement of their objectives. However, the upsurge of stateless nationalism during the second half of the twentieth century in countries such as the Basque Country, Catalonia, Corsica, Flanders, Quebec, Scotland, or Wales has come to reassert their preunion identities by means of political mobilization for the achievement of political power. This trend was observed by Michael Keating (1996), John Loughlin (2001), and David McCrone (1992).

In advanced industrial countries, some region states have become natural economic zones and the source of economic prosperity, as observed by Kenichi Ohmae (1993). Regions may share many features with stateless nations although the former do not necessarily aim at the creation of a new state on its own. Some stateless nations can be regarded as successful “region states” that may qualify also as stateless nations. In fact, with their efficient economies, such “region states” can pursue their own strategic interests without major disruption from central government interference and taking advantage of supranational intergovernmental relations (e.g., European Union). For such stateless nations, the processes of bottom-up supranationalization and top-down devolution of powers have allowed a considerable extension of a type of cosmopolitan localism, as pointed out by Luis Moreno (1999). This is reflected in both societal interests, which are aimed at developing a sense of local community and at participating simultaneously in the international context, allowing in such a process a growing adjustment between the particular and the general. Cosmopolitan localism concerns medium-sized polities without the framework of a state, such as Catalonia, Flanders, or Quebec.

In general terms, the revival of ethno territorial political movements in the Western world has coincided with an increasing challenge to the centralist model of the unitary state. Devolution and federalization have sought to articulate a response to the stimuli of the diversity of society. This plurality comprises cultural and ethnic groups with differences of language, history, and traditions, which also can be reflected in the party system. Minority or stateless nations aim at achieving greater degrees of home rule and political power based, among other factors, on the variable manifestation of a duality in citizens’ self-identification. As noted by Luis Moreno (2006), the more the ethnoterritorial identity prevails on modern state-national identity, the higher the demands for political autonomy. Conversely, the more characterized the state-national identity is, the less likely it would be for ethnoterritorial conflicts to appear. At the extreme, complete absence of one of the two elements of dual identity would lead to a sociopolitical fracture, and demands for self-government are to take the form of independence and eventual secession. In other words, when citizens in a substate community identify themselves in an exclusive manner, the institutional outcome of such antagonism will tend to be exclusive as well.

Asymmetrical constitutional arrangements can provide a means of accommodating plural claims within multinational states. The emerging European polity can be regarded as a model for a postsovereign order in which legal pluralism and constitutional diversity can accommodate multiple nationality claims, including those region states or stateless nations with aspirations for greater self-government or self-determination.

Bibliography:

Guibernau, Montserrat. Nations without States: Political Communities in a Global Age, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1999.
Keating, Michael. Nations against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia, and Scotland. London: Macmillan, 1996.
Plurinational Democracy: Stateless Nations in a Post-sovereignty Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Loughlin, John., ed. Subnational Democracy in the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
McCrone, David. Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation, London: Routledge, 1992.
Moreno, Luis. “Local and Global: Mesogovernments and Territorial Identities.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 5, no. 3/4 (1999): 61–75.
“Scotland, Catalonia, Europeanization, and the Moreno Question.” Scottish Affairs 54 (2006): 1–21.
Ohmae, Kenichi. “The Rise of the Region State.” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 2 (1993): 78–87.

This example Stateless Nation Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.