Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article introduces three small, European stateless nations that – invigorated by pervasive metropolitanisation phenomena – are increasingly shaping calls for devolution: Catalonia, the Basque Country and Scotland. These three nations are re-scaling their respective nation-states (Spain and the UK) in different ways: (i) being bolstered by their metropolitan hubs (Barcelona, Bilbao, and Glasgow) and (ii) generating a stateless ‘civic nationalism’ rooted in the metropolitan ‘right to decide’. Oppositional response to this ‘civic nationalism’ has re-emerged as state-centric ‘ethnic nationalism’. This article concludes that gaining or lacking metropolitan support for the ‘right to decide’ will establish the future directions of devolution debates.
Highlights
Just as the world has continuously urbanized over the last several decades, it has rapidly metropolitanised (Brenner, 2003; Sellers & Walks, 2013) by reinforcing the rescaling of nation-states through multiple interconnected factors
This article attempts to answer the research question by exploring two main ideas: (i) metropolitanisation phenomena are responsible for invigorating the claim of the ‘right to decide’ in these three city-regionalised nations due to the official growing support being manifested through regional and city council parliamentary elections as well as the crowded grassroots demonstrations regularly occurring in Barcelona, Bilbao, and Glasgow (Figure 2); and (ii) this claim challenges our perceptions and interpretations of both civic and ethnic nationalism (Lecours, 2000) (Figure 1)
This article has presented the cases of three small stateless city-regional nations to provide a better understanding of how metropolitanisation and the ‘right to decide’ are increasingly invigorating the devolution-driven debate in Europe while provoking theemergence of a pattern of stateless civic/metropolitanised nationalism and its opposition in the form of an ethnic/non-metropolitanised nationalism
Summary
Just as the world has continuously urbanized over the last several decades, it has rapidly metropolitanised (Brenner, 2003; Sellers & Walks, 2013) by reinforcing the rescaling of nation-states through multiple interconnected factors. Self-government and devolution accommodation regimes provided by nation-states to city-regions continue to be perceived as insufficient by civic nationalist movements, resulting in further tensions among territorial statehood, spaces of historical identity, and future secessionist aspirations (Mulle & Serrano, 2018).
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