Subnational Identity Research Articles

Battles over boundaries: the politics of territory, identity and authority in three Ugandan regions

In Uganda, contested relations between the central government and sub-national regions have, since independence, shaped state formation and national identity in fundamental ways. Today, the country is characterised by regionally uneven state presence, and distinct sub-national identities and ongoing contestation over territorial demarcations, loci of authority and political identities. This article explores the politics of territory, identity and authority in three Ugandan regions in this context, in order to analyse the implications for exclusion and conflict at the sub-national level. This involves struggles over the territorial and administrative demarcations of and within regions; the loci and scope of authority with regards to these units; struggles over access to land; and the (non-)recognition of various cultural–political identities in these regions.

Multilevel Identity in Transnistria as a Model of State- building for a Modern Moldova

The article focuses on the evolution of sub-national identity of Transnistria, the prerequisites for its formations and the features of its institutional and symbolic representation.

‘A Threat to National Unity’ – Football in Jordan: Ethnic Divisive or a Political Tool for the Regime?

In Jordan, national identity is composed of two sub-national identities: the Transjordanian identity of Jordan's indigenous inhabitants from east of the Jordan river, and the Palestinians originating in the west of the Jordan river. Historically, the Jordanian throne has maintained power through an alliance with the Transjordanians. As the majority of the Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, democratisation in Jordan would likely imply the Palestinians taking over the political momentum in the country. When unrest has erupted in Jordan, as during the democracy protests of the Arab Spring, this has on some occasions been labelled as threats to the national unity by the Jordanian monarchy. No one wants to return to the civil war of 1970. On the other hand, to avoid democratisation, the memory of the civil war must be sustained. Since the civil war, Jordan has had a history of ethnic-based football riots. These are reminders of the threats to stability, security and national unity. But as long as they are contained at the football stadiums, they serve the interests of political forces wanting to preserve power and political status quo.

Developing a plural nation? Black and minority ethnic participation in the 2011 Welsh referendum

This paper analyses the manner in which some Black and minority ethnic (BAME) people are adding new voices to conceptions of what national identity can be by re-constructing their own position within the nation’s political narratives. It will do so by exploring how the 2011 referendum to establish legislative powers for the Welsh Assembly Government mobilised some BAME individuals and organisations, to contribute to the on-going development of a Welsh political identity, by announcing their support for the ‘Yes’ campaign. This will analyse how the scale of the national is made meaningful in particular spaces by those at the forefront of BAME relations, and considers the possibility this presents for creating a future plural nationality. It will do so by looking specifically at how sub-national identity challenges primary national narratives, to deepen our understanding of the complex relationships between ethnic diversity and the performance of national identity, in the re-imagining of contemporary ideas of nationhood.

Distinctive Identity Claims in Federal Systems: Judicial Policing of Subnational Variance

It is characteristic of federal states that the scope of subnational power and autonomy are subjects of frequent dispute, and that disagreements over the reach of national and subnational power may be contested in a wide and diverse array of settings. Subnational units determined to challenge nationally-imposed limits on their power typically have at their disposal many tools with which to press against formal boundaries. Federal systems, moreover, frequently display a surprising degree of tolerance for subnational obstruction, disobedience, and other behaviors intended to expand subnational authority and influence, even over national objection. This tolerance, however, has limits. In this paper, we examine a set of rulings by national constitutional courts invalidating formalized claims by subnational units to a distinctive subnational identity. The emphatically negative reactions of these courts contrast instructively with the tolerance often displayed by other state actors toward similar identity claims when they are asserted in political and sub-constitutional settings, suggesting that the legal formalization of distinctive identity claims is perceived by courts to pose an unusually acute threat to the state.

Region and state in nineteenth-century Europe: nation-building, regional identities and separatism

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction J.Augusteijn & E.Storm PART I: TRANSNATIONAL Historiographical Approaches to Sub-national Identities in Europe: A Reappraisal and some Suggestions X-M.Nunez The Birth of Regionalism and the Crisis of Reason: France, Germany and Spain E.Storm PART II: CENTRALISED NATION-STATES National Diversity, Regionalism and Decentralism in France T.Baycroft Regionalism in Italy: a Critique S.Cavazzo PART III: CONTINENTAL EMPIRES Regionalism, Federalism and Nationalism in the German Empire S.Weichlein How to run a multilingual society: Statehood, administration and regional dynamics in Austria-Hungary, 1867-1914 P.Haslinger PART IV: REGION, NATION, EMPIRE The Empire, the Nation, and the Homelands: Nineteenth-Century Spain's National Idea J.Fradera 'A Mere Geographical Expression'? Scotland and Scottish Identity, c. 1890-1914 A.Newby PART V: COMPETING REGIONAL MOVEMENTS The Gaelic and the Northumbrian: Separatism and Regionalism in the UK, 1890-1920 R.Colls Irish Nationalism and Unionism between State, Region and Nation J.Augusteijn Nationalist versus Regionalist? The Flemish and Walloon movements in Belle Epoque Belgium M.Van Ginderachter PART VI: LANGUAGE AND RELIGION The Consequences of Transport by Steam: Dutch Nationalism and Frisian Regionalism in the Nineteenth Century G.Jensma Inadvertent Allies: Catholicism and Regionalism in a German-Polish Borderland J.Bjork Concluding Remarks J.Augusteijn & E.Storm Index

Beyond Identities: Political Determinants of Support for Decentralization in Contemporary Spain

Support for decentralization has generally been considered an outcome derived from the existence of regional or subnational identities. A recent complementary explanation has highlighted the role of politics to create regionally orientated support. We combine these two explanations by studying what determines the support for decentralization in Spain, an almost unique case where these two approaches can be tested. Using a hierarchical model, we show that in those regions without a different subnational identity, some citizens develop regionally orientated support because of their wish to bring the administration closer to the citizens and because their preferred party is pushing for further decentralization. In addition, we highlight the importance of considering decentralization as an outcome derived from party dynamics, which are able to shape political attitudes towards decentralization.

Cells in the Body Politic: Social identity and hospital construction in Peronist Argentina

This article examines the critical role played by social identity in the construction of hospitals in the Argentine health care sector during the 1940s and 1950s by uncovering the way in which the “jungle” of hospitals withstood attempts by the state to apply some sense of order, purpose, and centralized organization. The first section examines how physicians envisioned the “modern” hospital they hoped to construct. The second section reveals the important antecedents of nationalized hospitalization schemes found in the collaboration between physicians’ unions and the state. In the third section, an analysis of political speeches illuminates how Juan and Evita Perón packaged new hospitals as gifts to the people from their leader. The fourth section outlines specific plans to increase the number of hospital beds. The final section surveys examples of hospital construction to demonstrate how sub-national identities were instrumental to fragmenting both Argentine society and its hospital infrastructure.

Between Yugoslavism and Serbianism: reshaping collective identity in Serbian textbooks between the world wars

Studies of nationhood in interwar Yugoslavia generally refrain from considering dynamic relations between different levels of collective identity available in the state. Inspired by scholarly studies which have pointed at the compatibility of national and sub-national identities, this article examines interaction between definitions of Yugoslav national ideology and Serbian collective identity in textbooks published in Belgrade. In textbooks of the 1920s the imagination of Yugoslav unity reflected the structure of Serbian national identity as it had been defined in pre-First World War Serbian textbooks, providing few possibilities for other viable sub-national definitions of Yugoslav identity. After the establishment of the Royal Dictatorship in 1929 textbooks reshaped Serbian collective identity by embedding it in a more openly defined Yugoslav whole to which different sub-national traditions could contribute. Thus, contrary to its programmatic insistence on the homogeneity of Yugoslav identity, the dictatorship’s educational policy created opportunities for multiple sub-national interpretations of Yugoslav unity.

Ottoman Beirut: Crisis, History, and Sectarian Memory

History writing is a powerful tool in the construction of collective memory. Typically in postcolonial states, history is linked to a national project. Methods and tropes of national history writing aim to create or reinforce a sense of shared identity rooted in past experience. Particular historical actors are valorized and emphasized, as they become protagonists of the national narrative. Often the outlines of the present-day state are anachronistically projected backward as part of attempts to construct a modern national identity. Lebanon's contested history offers a window—or indeed a laboratory—for considering the uses of history in addressing issues of subnational identity. Alongside attempts to construct a national Lebanese narrative rooted in the politics and history of the country's Christian and Druze mountain communities, there exists a counternarrative of the major coastal cities and their predominantly Sunni Muslim populations. Shifting the geographic focus this way means that some of the same tropes and methods used to construct putative national histories can be applied to develop subnational sectarian narratives. This article studies the 1980s-era output of a prolific Sunni Muslim historian of Ottoman Beirut, Hassan Hallak. Hallak's construction of history is interesting by virtue of his close links to Beirut's Sunni communal power structure. His books, published during a period of crisis and trauma in Beirut's and Lebanon's modern experience, paint Beirut in essentialist terms as a timeless Arab and Muslim space. Ottoman-era materials provide the documentary and material evidence to support this interpretation or claim. The present article explores and analyzes Hallak's invocation of the Ottoman past to support a confessionally partisan vision of Beirut's present.

Legal Conflicts and Subnational Constitutionalism

This paper analyses the increasing use of the concept of subnational identity, understood as a peculiar (to some extent) category that is opposed to the State or federal identity. References to it are included in the second-generation Italian (subnational) fundamental charters (Statuti) and Spanish Estatutos de autonomia. After an overview of the identity clauses contained in the sub-national constitutions, we will move to analyse the first cases of judicial relevance of these clauses when they are invoked before national courts, and test whether and how these subnational identity provisions could be interpreted in a manner consistent with the national constitution.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the questions of identity, territory and political destiny of the indigenous Nuba of the Sudan

ABSTRACT The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 was successful in ending the longest war in contemporary Africa. However, its implementation has been below the expectations of several communities, particularly in the war-torn regions of the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and the Abyei Area, widely referred to as ‘contested’, ‘marginalised’, ‘transitional’ areas or ‘border territories’. While many interwoven causes were behind the eruption of the protracted civil wars in the Sudan (Elnur 2009; Johnson 2006; Khalid 1987), the political question of sub-national identities and their intrinsic link with specific territories (Murphy 1991; William and Smith 1993) is hypothesised here as a prime factor in extending the civil war into these three areas. Taking the Nuba and their claimed territory of the Nuba Mountains as an example, this article will, first, trace the political striving of the Nuba people and their shift from peaceful political movement to armed struggle; second, it will examine their political status during the peace negotiation process; and third, it will analyse their political responses to the outcome of the CPA and its impact on their future political choices in view of the April 2010 election results, and the projected right to self-determination for the people of Southern Sudan, to be exercised through the referenda in 2011.

Regional Subnationalism in Canada and the Social Meaning of New Organisations

The modernist view is that nationalism is the political alignment of a national culture with a state. Of particular relevance to modernist approaches to nationalism is the role of technology, including sociotechnical technologies such as organisations, in shaping nations and nationalism. This paper uses the literature of nationalism to argue that new organisations enjoying the indirect or direct support of governments have a substantial role in the development of subnational identities, especially in those subnational contexts characterised by political alienation from a national state. Subnational contexts include provinces, states, and other regional political regimes in a political relationship with a nation state. New organisations constitute a 'demonstration effect', which means that they show the benefits of an enhanced subnational culture for individuals and groups. Subnationalism is the alignment of regional economic and cultural projects with aspirations for an increase in political and economic autonomy. The case of the creation of Nova Corporation in 1954 is examined to reveal the demonstration effect within Alberta, Canada. The social effect of the new organisation, along with other public projects of its kind, was to strengthen the subnational culture and its link to the provincial state.

Through Thick and Thin: ‘European Identification’ for a Justified and Legitimate European Union

Debates on the viability of European integration often rest on the need for some form of common European identity. This article looks at European integration through the framework of normative political theory to explore what form of European identity is needed for the EU to be considered both justified – having a good or just reason for existence, and legitimate – having consent from its citizens. It critiques arguments for a purely justified EU, which rule out the need for a common European identity, as well as those requiring a thick common identity for a legitimate EU. In contrast, this article argues for a European identification that is both desirable as an identity and works to sustain a justified and legitimate EU. The proposed conception of European identification takes into consideration national and sub-national identities and opens up the potential for Europeanised identities at multiple levels.

The impact of state weakness on citizenship a case study of Kyrgyzstan

This article, using contemporary Kyrgyzstan as a case study, examines how state weakness is both reflected and reinforced at the citizens' level. Based upon field research conducted in April and May 2007, we discuss three hypotheses. First, the inability of the state to provide essential goods and services and has deterred citizens' willingness to fulfill their responsibilities such as paying taxes, respecting the laws, and serving in the army. Second, citizens have lost trust in their regime; some directly confront the state by joining demonstrations, strikes, and other protest activities. Finally, state weakness has negatively influenced the feeling of collective membership and reinforced sub-national identities. Declining loyalty is particularly evident among the citizens who have left the country in the prospect of better employment abroad.

Frontier Hybridisation or Culture Clash? Transnational Migrant Communities and Sub-National Identity Politics in Andalusia, Spain

Frontier Hybridisation or Culture Clash? Transnational Migrant Communities and Sub-National Identity Politics in Andalusia, Spain

Todo sobre Barcelona: Refiguring Spanish Identities in Recent European Cinema

This essay considers the transnational intercultural dimensions of two European co-productions set in Barcelona — Todo sobre mi madre (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999) and L'Auberge espagnole (Cédric Klapisch, 2002) — in terms of how these films reflect non-traditional notions of European, Spanish and Catalan identities. It investigates how Barcelona's African communities are represented cinematically, and how these representations challenge conventional notions of what it means to be Catalan, Spanish or European. In Todo sobre mi madre, through its themes, soundtrack and carefully composed background, Almodóvar emphasizes the multicultural fabric of contemporary Barcelona by drawing explicit attention to African Spaniards and African culture. In L'Auberge espagnole, Klapisch foregrounds within the film an explicit discussion about the linguistic and cultural underpinnings of the national, subnational and transnational identities that comprise modern-day Spain. Both films exploit the real space of Barcelona as a symbolic setting that reflects their directors' pluralist, multicultural, multipolar, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual visions of European social reality.

Does Belgium (still) exist? Differences in political culture between Flemings and Walloons

The emergence of two separate political systems in Belgium is the logical consequence of a gradual cultural and social divergence between Flanders and Wallonia. It is particularly in Flanders that Belgian nationhood is being put under pressure by a subnational identity. At the same time, there are still widespread emotional ties to Belgium, albeit stronger in Wallonia than in Flanders, that act as an important counterbalance to both the social and institutional centrifugal forces. Church involvement was traditionally higher in Flanders, but the stronger decline in the latter region has levelled off this difference. In both regions, the impact of pillarisation on voting behaviour is diminishing. As concerns the attitude towards foreigners, Flemings are more concerned about maintaining their own culture, while the Walloons are more concerned about the alleged economic and social threat. Other differences with regard to values exist, but are relatively small from a comparative perspective.

Frontier hybridisation or culture clash? Transnational migrant communities and sub-national identity politics in Andalusia, Spain

In this paper, ethnographically focused on the southern Spanish frontier region of Andalusia, the intercultural support activities of local voluntary associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are analysed in the context of ethnicised islamophobia. Currently, the recently emerging islamophobic actors, which tend to combine narrowly localist and Spanish nationalist identity horizons with an emphasis on Catholicism as a decisive 'ethnic marker' of Spanish-ness, are being countered by Andalusian regionalist strategies of islamophilia, which claim that a 'return of Islam' and/or the pluri-religious legacy of Al-Andalus will empower the region's ongoing search for a supra-local, but sub-national and non-Castilian common identity. The specific context and problematics of migrant community formation are illustrated for the Andalusian region, and then contrasted with the 'identity politics' of the non-migrant Andalusian host society and its struggle for regional autonomy inside the Spanish state. Finally, the increasingly important role of Andalusian NGOs as intercultural mediators and spaces of cultural hybridisation is analysed with regard to its socio-political as well as theoretical consequences for the study of identity politics.

III. Nation-State Building in Central Asia: A lost Case?

AbstractWith the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have entered a period of nationstate building, which had been started to a large extend by the political elites of the former Soviet Union. These republics were not prepared for independence that came to the region suddenly. The former communist leaders of the Soviet era became the new national elites to take their countries by publicly declared goals and policies through the path of independent nationhood and independent statehood. However, it remains unclear whether this top-to-bottom approach will prove successful in the long run. This article discusses nationstate building in the region by first looking at problems of external sovereignty. Second, domestic state building policies and structures, more specifically, the newly formulated official discourse on-building nation- and the political-legal framework to develop that discourse, are analyzed. Then, the limitations of this process with specific emphasis on supranational identities (basically religious identity of Islam), subnational identities (local and/or tribal identities), and ethnic minorities (with a specific on the Russians in these five countries) are examined. It is concluded that the process of nation-state building in Central Asia is not complete yet and that each republic has unique problems that may challenge this process. For the time being, there exist certain frictions between the goals of the official discourse and nonofficial levels of identity that may hinder the success of the nation building process in the region.