Stateless Nations Research Articles

The Paradiplomatic Role of the ConIFA in Promoting Self-Determination of Marginalised Entities

The purpose of this paper is to apply the paradiplomacy framework in exploring the role of NGOs in promoting the issue of marginalised peoples. More specifically, it highlights the Confederation of Independent Football Association (ConIFA), an international football governing body comprising minority peoples, stateless nations, and regions which are unrecognised by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The author attempts to discuss ConIFA’s ability in voicing the issue of self-determination concerning its members, which are mainly sidelined in the mainstream international affairs. This paper discusses two questions: (1) does ConIFA qualify to be regarded as a paradiplomatic actor? If yes, in what ways? and (2) to what extent does ConIFA advocate the issue of self-determination of its members? In so doing, the researcher first studies the nature of ConIFA through its own constitution as well as examining its activities through various sources. Second, the author also utilises core concepts on paradiplomacy to seek in which category does ConIFA’s activities fall into. The findings suggest that ConIFA qualifies as a paradiplomatic actor in the sense that it has two forces: horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, it platforms its members to interact with like-minded counterparts through numerous activities. Vertically, ConIFA also possesses a comparative advantage to reach a wider audience by framing the issue through sport. However, the study also indicates that while self-determination is promoted through ConIFA, the organisation does not possess enough political capacity to facilitate a deeper advocacy, thus making its paradiplomatic activities mainly fall into the cultural category.

Mapping media accountability in a stateless nation: The case of the Basque Country

This article analyses the media accountability instruments available in the area where the Basque language is spoken. After mapping out media accountability in the Basque Country focusing on instruments both internal and external to the media, it is discussed how the situation differs from other cases in Europe, such as Sweden or Catalonia. Despite the absence of strong institutional media accountability organizations, several media accountability instruments (MAI) have been launched in recent years. It is too early yet to affirm whether this is a passing trend or an indicator of deeper changes leading to a consensus on ethical standards with respect to the media.

A Small, Stateless Nation in the World Market for Book Translations: The Politics and Policies of the Flemish Literature Fund

This paper discusses the Flemish Literature Fund (FLF), an autonomous government organisation created in 1999 by the Flemish Community to support Flemish literature at home and abroad. It traces the institutional history of the FLF, situating the organisation in the context of Flanders’ longstanding struggle for cultural autonomy within the Belgian state on the one hand and its strong but unequal ties to the Netherlands on the other. Using a translation sociological analytical framework, it goes on to argue that the FLF’s outgoing translation grant decisions reflect two strategies of international dissemination: a focus on the central languages of English, German and French, and a strategic use of the picture book genre to break into emerging languages on the periphery, especially Chinese. While the case of the FLF clearly illustrates the shifting power relations between state and market agents in the era of globalisation, it also indicates a novel approach to state-supported literary export designed to maximise a small, stateless nation’s international resonance in a world market for translations dominated by larger (nation-) states and languages.

Kurdystan. Trudna droga do niepodległości

The article attempts to answer the question about the chances of sovereignty being obtained by the Kurdish community, one of the oldest communities in the world. The article is part of a monograph entitled Independent Kurdistan.  Challenges for the stabilisation of the region and the world, in which the same authors present a much broader approach to the problem, which has so far been omitted in reference literature and treated by political scientists and analysts of international relations superficially and without due attention. The basic question posed by the authors is: how is it possible that the Kurds, the second largest stateless nation in the globe after the Tamils, constituting a community of almost fifty million spread throughout the world and involved for decades in the work of self-determination, do not have their own state? The answer is much more difficult and requires analysis of the complicated situation in the Middle East and North Africa. This is the least stable region in the world, which suffered the painful effects of European colonialism after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. This period is the basic time cessation for the analysis of the Kurdish nation’s history as new national borders were determined at that time, often across cultures, traditions, religions and customs. The authors present prospects for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state and the framework for its functioning on the political map of the globe, primarily against the background of internal and international situation in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. These four countries, each inhabited by the Kurdish community, have been sharing one goal for decades, i.e. to effectively block the Kurds’ independence aspirations.

Gender Roles, Family Models and Community-Building Processes in Poblenou A Comparative Analysis of American, British and Catalan Soap Operas

This article explores connections between construction of gender roles, family models and community-building processes in soap opera narratives. The underlying research hypothesis maintains that construction of gender roles and family models in soap operas influences values around which a sense of community is constructed. Using textual analysis as methodology and an intercultural approach, this study compares and contrasts British and American soap operas. This approach allows to set out two contrasting models and investigate whether and to what extent Catalan soap operas adhere to one of them by proposing an original analysis of selected characters and storylines from a corpus of Catalan drama serials. This article also queries in which ways Catalonia’s situation as a stateless nation influences a sense of community construction in Catalan soap operas.

Gender Roles, Family Models and Community-Building Processes in Poblenou A Comparative Analysis of American, British and Catalan Soap Operas

This article explores connections between construction of gender roles, family models and community-building processes in soap opera narratives. The underlying research hypothesis maintains that construction of gender roles and family models in soap operas influences values around which a sense of community is constructed. Using textual analysis as methodology and an intercultural approach, this study compares and contrasts British and American soap operas. This approach allows to set out two contrasting models and investigate whether and to what extent Catalan soap operas adhere to one of them by proposing an original analysis of selected characters and storylines from a corpus of Catalan drama serials. This article also queries in which ways Catalonia’s situation as a stateless nation influences a sense of community construction in Catalan soap operas.

Traumatized selves in Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is to Keep Breathing and A. L. Kennedy’s Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

Abstract This paper presents the case of Scotland as a traumatized nation haunted by ghosts of the past. Scottish national identity has been profoundly influenced by the country’s loss of sovereignty in the 1707 Act of Union. As a result, the stateless nation deprived of agency built its literature on the foundations of idealized stories of its heroic past. It was not until the 1980s that Scottish literature started to tackle the collective trauma and gave rise to works focusing on the weak and the exploited rather than the brave. Janice Galloway and A. L. Kennedy both epitomize this new vein of literature of trauma and explore the links between national and individual experience and strategies for healing the trauma.

Separatyzm językowy w Hiszpanii

Language is one of the most important features distinguishing a nation. Its role and position in the public sphere determines the level of autonomy of every stateless nation. After the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain experience a revival of such nations as Catalans, Basques and Galicians. This revival has resulted in the natives’ demandsfor their languages to be recognized as official ones and be granted this particular status. This article describes the latest efforts and problems in this domain, the linguistic situation of the particular regions, as well as the legal status of each. The main aim of this article is to characterize these phenomena and to reveal in what way these demands have affected the structure of the Spanish state.

Seeing like a factory: Technocratic nationalism in Catalonia, 1930–1939

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the role of Catalan industrial engineers in the making of a stateless nation (within Spain) in the interwar period. After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), a home rule for Catalonia was established. In this context, the members of the Barcelona Association of Industrial Engineers developed a techno–nationalist program with the double goal of both making technology Catalan and making Catalonia technological. As an alleged ‘third class’ between the working and ruling classes, industrial engineers sought to use their expertise in scientifically managing the workshop to organize the whole nation. They participated in professional initiatives and official institutions from which they spread the ‘factory ideals’ beyond the factory, such as efficiency, rationalization and statistical monitoring. This paper focuses on the nationalist and technocratic engagement of two leading (and politically diverging) industrial engineers: socialist Estanislau Ruiz-Ponsetí and liberal Josep M. Tallada.

Metropolitanising small European stateless city-regionalised nations

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.

V. Jabotinsky’s Concept of the Jewish Nation-Building in the Context of Ukrainian Revival in the Late 19th - Early 20th Centuries

The aim of the paper is to analyze the concept of Jewish nation-building by V. Jabotinsky, who is considered to be a leader of the Zionist movement in Ukraine, in terms of correlation of ideas and interactions between Jewish and Ukrainian national modern movements.Research methodology. The author uses a comprehensive culturological approach to examine nationalism and national movements as a general methodological basis of this study. The study also draws on the methodological principles of M. Feller’s Ukrainika Judaika (Ukrainian-Jewish studies) as an ethno-cultural science of Ukrainian Jewry in its deep relationship with the Ukrainians. Methods of comparative analysis, synthesis and historicism are also used.Results. Using V. Jabotinsky’s (a Zionism leader in Ukraine) intellectual heritage as an example, the author analyzes three groups of issues directly connected with the objectives of the Ukrainian national movement at that time, namely: the issue of the existential importance of national identity and factors of its development; the issue of national fringe elements, deprived of their origins; a program of interethnic understanding, coexistence on a real political basis. The analysis of texts shows the examples of the typological similarity of a large part of the statements of Jewish nationalists and Ukrainian nation-centered leaders. This fact allows us to conclude that there is an interpenetration and mutual influence in the process of the development of the Zionist and Ukrainian national movements. The common features of the historical destinies of two stateless nations represent the similarity of their national existence, the mechanisms of self-preservation and the nation-building as well as the development of the project of the nation future.Novelty. Ukrainian-Jewish studies as an understanding of the productive ways and an insight into the fundamental levels of coexistence of the Ukrainians and the Jewish people do not belong to the traditional themes of Ukrainian culturological thought that results in the scientific novelty of this study.The practical significance. The results of this study can be used to teach normative courses, special courses, electives on the history of culture, the history of Ukrainian philosophy, philosophy of the national idea, Judaism, as well as in the further study of modern national movements in Ukraine in terms of cultural dialogue and mutual enrichment.

‘Algorithmic nations’: seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage

ABSTRACTThere are changing dynamics among political regionalization processes and the rescaling of nation-states in Europe. However, updated and timely research remains scant, ambiguous and unable to meet the challenges of data-driven societies and uneven borders. Nations’ physical boundaries matter as much as political borders in their pervasive and growing algorithmic, stateless, liquid and metropolitan citizenship patterns. This paper explores these new ‘connectographies’ from a regional science perspective, introducing the term ‘algorithmic nations’ as a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage. A case study is presented of the small stateless city-regionalized European nation of the Basque Country through its analytical and transitional lens, locally known as ‘Euskal Hiria’ (Basque city-region in the Basque language). This paper questions whether the Basque Country could evolve by (1) modifying its governmental logics and (2) merging its three separate devolved administrations (3) while enabling their direct interactions with citizens (4) through blockchain technologies as the small state of Estonia is implementing and employing cutting-edge algorithmic governance frameworks. In doing so, this paper suggests how four drivers – metropolitanization, devolution, the right to decide and blockchain – may be respectively invigorating four dynamics – geoeconomics, geopolitics, geodemocratics and geotechnologics – in this transition towards the algorithmic nations. Ultimately, this paper concludes with an algorithmic nations research and policy agenda decalogue of how these geotechnological changes might determine the future position of small stateless city-regionalized nations in the European Union.

El canvi cultural en la institució universitària: agencialització i gestió de la qualitat

The European Union has transcended many of the old prerogatives of national independence, bringing about interdependence among member states. Within the latter there are also sub-state communities which simultaneously claim both self-government and ‘more Europe’. The future intent of this political process in the Old Continent is to make territorial subsidiarity consistent with home rule within European-framework legislation and continental institutions. The first part of this article focuses on the idea of a closer European Union based upon the implementation of territorial subsidiarity, as well as on the challenges posed by democratic accountability, multi-level governance, and the preservation of the European Social Model. The second section illustrates some of these challenges in practice through an analysis of how the meaning of independence has developed in a ‘stateless nation’ such as Catalonia. In Spain, the lack of territorial accommodation, together with a long-standing centre-periphery controversy, has fuelled claims for secession by some Catalan nationalists. The conclusions consider how ‘cosmopolitan localism’ can optimise both independence and interdependence of stateless nations like Catalonia in the global context.

Independence in Europe? EU Integration and ‘Stateless Nations’

From Catalonia to Scotland, some of the most pro-European Union political parties are in favour of national independence. Paolo Dardanelli explores this apparent paradox and finds that EU integration has actually fuelled fragmentation in several European states.

The 1970 British Commonwealth Games: Scottish Reactions to Apartheid and Sporting Boycotts

Abstract The 1970 British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh is widely thought to have been a barnstorming success and an excellent advertisement for Scotland. Recent research by the authors, however, shows that the event was a deeply politicized one: reflective of Scotland’s status as a “stateless nation,” of Westminster politics during the era more generally, and of the politics surrounding apartheid South Africa’s sporting contacts with the outside world. The games managed to avert a mass boycott organized by the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC), in retaliation for the Marylebone Cricket Club’s recent invitation of the South African national cricket team. This article will explore Scotland’s place as a nonstate actor within the 1970 crisis. Attention will be given to the domestic political response from Scottish members of Parliament, members of local Scottish councils (particularly within Edinburgh itself), and Scottish National Party (SNP) activists, angered that Scotland should pay for the crimes perceived to be made by an English sporting body. However, our piece goes beyond these discourses, to examine the broader sporting relationship that Scots had with South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), governed by white supremacist regimes during the period. Policy documents, housed in the National Records of Scotland, express UK Cabinet-level concerns about the actions of individual sporting clubs’ tours of the countries. This article will also look at how cabinet ministers, most notably Labour’s Minister for Sport Denis Howell, intervened to shape Scotland’s devolved sporting councils’ policies on contacts with South Africa and Rhodesia.

Europeanisation and Catalonia’s in(ter)dependence

Abstract:The European Union has transcended many of the old prerogatives of national independence bringing about the very function of interdependence among Member States. Within the latter there are sub-state communities claiming simultaneously both self-government and ‘more Europe’. The future intent of this political process in the Old Continent is to make territorial subsidiarity consistent with home rule within European framework legislation and continental institutions. The first part of this article focuses on the idea of a closer European Union based upon the implementation of territorial subsidiarity, as well as on the challenges posed by democratic accountability, multi-level governance and the preservation of the European Social Model (ESM). The second section illustrates some of these challenges in practice through an analysis of how the meaning of independence has developed in a ‘stateless nation’ such as Catalonia. In Spain, the lack of territorial accommodation, together with a long-standing centre–periphery controversy, has fuelled claims for secession by some Catalan nationalists. The conclusions ponder on how ‘cosmopolitan localism’ can optimise both independence and interdependence of stateless nations like Catalonia in the global context.

Children’s Literature and Nation Building: The Basque Case

The Basque Country is a stateless nation located in the western part of the Pyrenees, divided between France and Spain. The romanticist nationalist trend that emerged in Europe throughout the nineteenth century gave rise to a nationalist feeling in the Basque Country that has been fed, among others, by children’s literature. Children’s literature written in Basque throughout the twentieth century in many cases had a clear educational intentionality. The need to create a Basque community, a tradition and customs of their own during Francoism resulted in the production of a literature with a clear nationalist profile. Nevertheless, the political change after the end of the Franco dictatorship, with greater freedom and autonomy for the Basque Country, gave rise to a literary production in which those aesthetic values prevail. A literature that, from the local perspective, encompasses universal subjects in which emphasizing the specificities of the Basque is no longer necessary, as today it aims to present individual and universal conflicts.

Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World (2nd edition)

Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World (2nd edition)

Purebloods and mudbloods: the continuum of Welshness and Basqueness and its implications for the development of a National consciousness

ABSTRACTThe contentious nature of national identity has been welldocumented, and the difficulties and challenges associated with self-understanding, particularly in a ‘stateless nation’ context, have undergone profound scholarly exploration. As part of this exploration, the idea of ‘multiple identities’ is prominent; one nation member can simultaneously hold a number of ideas, for example, Welsh and British. This had also led scholars to suggest that the same nominal identity, for example Welsh, may in itself have multiple meanings. Yet this accepted multiplicity of the same nominal identity often masks the hard truths: it is plausible that certain nation members may rank each other on a continuum, or sliding scale, of national identity, wherein some are considered more or less worthy of claiming that identity than others. This paper explores this concept in relation to Wales and the Basque Country. It begins by situating this phenomenon within the relevant theoretical context, subsequently exploring its analytical purchase through examination of focus group discussion in both nations. Finally, it considers the consequences of a continuum, or sliding scale, of identity for national unity, in particular its implications for the on-going development of a coherent national consciousness.

Much ‘more than a club’: Football Club Barcelona’s contribution to the rise of a national consciousness in Catalonia (2003–2014)

In Catalonia, fervour for Football Club Barcelona (Barça) goes well beyond sporting success as the team supports the demands of the stateless nation. Much ‘more than a club’, Barça is a platform for the expansion of a Catalan national consciousness. At a time when Catalonia is at a critical point in its relations with the Spanish state, claiming the right to national self-determination and presenting the possibility of secession, this paper examines how Barça boosts the strength of Catalan nationalist feelings through dynamics characteristic of the football sphere, such as rituals of group belonging, fandom performances of loyalty, the dramatization of rivalries, the elevation of those achieving sporting success to national icons or the strength of feeling provided by the sports ground. Looking at the period 2003–2014, it concludes that Barça is key in advancing claims that Catalonia is a sovereign nation with the right to decide its political future.