Subnational State Research Articles

‘Wat We Zelf Doen, Doen We Beter’; Belgian Substate Nationalisms, Congruence and Public Policy

This study assesses the impact nationalism has on public policies in ethno-linguistically divided societies. In particular, focus is on the institutional changes from nation-wide systems to Flemish and Francophone halves in Belgian education and mass media. The explanation is a society-based one, which highlights the impact of society on institutions rather than the more common opposite. Evidence demonstrates the role played by the ethno-linguistic structure in promoting the direction of change. Many issues which divide societies and engender political partisanship were subsumed under the question communautaire until a sufficient degree of congruence between the underlying social structure and political institutions was attained.

The practice and politics of food system localization

As an apparent counterpoint to globalization, food system localization is often assumed to be a good, progressive and desirable process. Such thinking rests on a local–global binary that merits closer scrutiny. This paper examines the social construction of “local”, by analyzing the practice and politics of food system localization efforts in Iowa, USA. It argues that desirable social or environmental outcomes may not always map neatly onto the spatial content of “local”, which itself involves the social construction of scale. These contradictions in turn relate to differing political inflections discernible in food system localization. Localization can be approached defensively, emphasizing the boundaries and distinctions between a culturally and socially homogeneous locality needing protection from non-local “others”. But through the experience of new social and gustatory exchanges, localization can also promote increased receptivity to difference and diversity. More emergent, fluid and inclusive notions of the “local”, however, may challenge the very project of crafting and maintaining distinctive food identities for local places. These themes are explored through a case study of food system localization efforts and activities in Iowa, an American state that has been a stronghold of conventional commodity agriculture. Demographic and agricultural histories are drawn on to understand recent food system localization practice that has come to emphasize a definition of “local” that coincides with sub-national state boundaries. The emergence and popularization of the “Iowa-grown banquet meal” and the shifting meaning of “local Iowa food” further illustrate the potential tension between defensiveness and diversity in food system localization.

Globalization, European integration and the rise of neo‐nationalism in Scotland

This article proposes the following theory: by cutting the benefits of integration and by reducing the obstacles to independence or the various forms of autonomy, globalization and European integration promotes disintegration. Moreover, the processes of decentralization imposed by globalization and European integration are resulting in the substate players having more and more financial resources and areas of jurisdiction. In brief, globalization is expanding the set of actions of the substate nationalist movements to ensure the survival of their nation. Substate nationalist movements can now implement an international policy through their paradiplomacy. The case study ‘Scotland’ is of particular interest since the state of which it is part (United Kingdom) is neither decaying nor totalitarian, but a modern welfare state in which the rule of law governs intra‐societal relations.

Re-scaling IPE: subnational states and the regulation of the global political economy

Over the past 30 years, subnational states have become significant global economic actors, yet they remain unincorporated into the main body of IPE research. This is largely because their relevance has been sought in the narrowly defined local economic milieu, when instead their real significance lies in their emergence as sites of regulation of the global political economy. In particular, through efforts to attract transnational corporate investment and create transnational business networks, sell exporting to small and medium firms, and imagineer local metropolises into 'world cities', subnational states become the structural site around which the local social foundations of transnational liberalism are built. As national Fordist blocs composed of national capital and nationally organized labour erode, a new hegemonic bloc in the Gramscian sense is emergent, organized not simply globally or locally but glocally. Such blocs have the potential to join transnational capital, small and medium manufacturers and farmers, and the consumption-oriented metropolitan middle class in and through the subnational state into a social formation supportive of the transnational liberal project. This is a key element in the re-scaling of the state and the production of new geographies of global regulation in the twenty-first century.

The Future of Quebec

SchSpflin (1995, 2000) has recently argued that the demands of substate nations in the West have been comparatively easy to satisfy. This claim is pari of a larger story about Western exceptionalism written primarily by historical sociologists. Much, but certainly not all of this work, is about the formation and consolidation of territorial states in the West the states of the classic 'Westphalian system'. Since 1945, and in particular since the end of the Cold War and the deepening of the European Union, it has been possible also to point to the virtuous circle of peace, interdependence and liberty in Western Europe and its stabilising effects on classes and nations.

The multi-level state: Canada in the semi-periphery of both continentalism and globalization

This article looks at an old subject (the state of the state) under new conditions (accelerating globalization and fragmentation), using Canada as the case in point. My first concern is linguistic: such labels as 'post-Keynesian', 'post-welfare', and even 'post-national' tell us more about what the state may have been than what it has become. These 'post-' categories do not capture the extent to which governmental functions have been redistributed – upward to international institutions, downward to sub-national states, and laterally to the private sector. Nor do they direct our attention to the dynamic interconnections that are linking evolving governmental forms with civil society. I go on to consider to what extent these difficulties can be resolved by considering the 'state' as a nested, multi-tiered set of institutions providing governance on five levels – from the municipal and the regional, through the national to the continental and global. Political economy analysis of the dynamic that links these levels of governance with civil society and transnational market forces may tell us better than the post-it labels that the present capability of the Canadian, or any other, state is less bleak than it may have seemed.

Regional governance and foreign direct investment: the dynamics of institutional change in Wales and North East England

In recent years, something of a consensus has emerged regarding the need to build local institutional capacity in order to foster and support ‘embedded’ and sustainable forms of local economic development. This paper focuses on efforts to build local institutional capacity in two British regions – Wales and North East England – with a similar industrial past but dissimilar institutional structures. Addressing recent debates on the ‘new regionalism’ in economic geography, particularly in terms of the perceived neglect of exogenous forces and the failure to assess the scope for regional agencies to actually foster ‘embeddedness’, the paper examines the activities of sub-national state agencies in relation to recent efforts to attract and ‘embed’ mobile investment. We explore the process of local capacity-building according to four key themes identified from a review of recent work on regional governance and economic development. These refer to the role of the central state in structuring economic governance; the organisation of inter-institutional relations; questions of regional coherence and identity in the face of pressures of inter-regional competition and sub-regional fragmentation; and the place of inward investment within broader strategic choices regarding economic development. In conclusion, we suggest that regional agencies capacity to foster embeddedness is limited in the absence of stronger forms of regulation over FDI flows at national and international levels.

European Integration and the Maintenance of Regional Cultural Diversity: Symbiosis or Symbolism?

BISCOE A. (2001) European integration and the maintenance of regional cultural diversity: symbiosis or symbolism?, Reg. Studies 35, 57–64. This article assesses the tensions resulting from the EU's dual objectives of furthering integration whilst maintaining regional cultural diversity, and reviews the region‐related institutional developments, policies and programmes associated with counteracting the cultural homogenizing tendencies of European economic integration for sub-state nations. Utilizing the individual versus group rights debate, the article argues that the nature of European economic integration and its emphasis on individual economic freedom largely oVsets EU initiatives linked to maintaining regional cultural diversity. It concludes that the EU's efforts in this field are mainly of symbolic importance, thus further challenging the widespread notion of a symbiotic relationship between the EU and sub‐state nations.

The Institutional Foundations of Substate National Movements

Studies of states and nations have explained substate nationalism through reference to the effects of patterns of uneven economic development or industrialization.1 Their explanations are consistent with assumptions that in state modernization and political development industrialization and the market economy homogenize domestic populations and promote social mobility by downplaying the significance of linguistic, racial, and ethnic differences.2 However, some local cultures persist despite industrialization and state modernization. This phenomenon has been explained by reworking some of the assumptions in models of modernization to take account of the problem of economic backwardness outlined by Alexander Gerschenkron.3 Local cultures continue to exist at the substate level when late industrialization or uneven economic development prevent the integration of these areas into the national market. These cultures escape the homogenizing effects of the market and become the basis of a rival form of nationalism at the substate level.4 This explanation of the emergence of substate nationalism is at odds with certain theoretical assumptions in studies of nation building. In order to provide a basis of legitimacy for the centralized rule they sought to consolidate, state modernizers had to break down the segments of the traditional order to create a common culture capable of integrating all citizens.5 Rulers had to construct a common national culture in order to redirect citizen loyalty from traditional forms of local authority towards the state, thereby legitimizing the new form of centralized rule. A relationship is posited between the creation of a national culture and the legitimacy of political rule, but the conditions under which this relationship holds are not specified. Studies of states and nations provide no account of the resources required by rulers to reproduce a national culture over the state territory. Studies of substate nationalism do not explain how structural forces, such as uneven economic development, affect rulers' designs to legitimize their political rule by creating and reproducing a national culture. No theoretical attention is paid to the relationship between what rulers seek to do-create a national culture in order to direct citizen loyalty to the central state-and the structural conditions under which they can do so. Lacking is an examination of the connection between agency and structure in the construction of a national culture and the emergence of substate nationalism. An institutionalist approach to nation building can begin to fill this theoretical

The multi-level state: Canada in the semi-periphery of both continentalism and globalization

This article looks at an old subject (the state of the state) under new conditions (accelerating globalization and fragmentation), using Canada as the case in point. My first concern is linguistic: such labels as 'post-Keynesian', 'post-welfare', and even 'post-national' tell us more about what the state may have been than what it has become. These 'post-' categories do not capture the extent to which governmental functions have been redistributed – upward to international institutions, downward to sub-national states, and laterally to the private sector. Nor do they direct our attention to the dynamic interconnections that are linking evolving governmental forms with civil society. I go on to consider to what extent these difficulties can be resolved by considering the 'state' as a nested, multi-tiered set of institutions providing governance on five levels – from the municipal and the regional, through the national to the continental and global. Political economy analysis of the dynamic that links these levels of governance with civil society and transnational market forces may tell us better than the post-it labels that the present capability of the Canadian, or any other, state is less bleak than it may have seemed.

The Making of Modern Cameroon. A History of Substate Nationalism and Disparate Union, 1914-1961

The Making of Modern Cameroon. A History of Substate Nationalism and Disparate Union, 1914-1961

The Making of Modern Cameroon: A History of Substate Nationalism and Disparate Union, 1914-1961.

The Making of Modern Cameroon: A History of Substate Nationalism and Disparate Union, 1914-1961.

Political Resources and Direct State Intervention: The Adoption of Public Venture Capital Programs in the American States, 1974-1990

Discussions of policy formation have reached an impasse with accumulating support for rival theories. We address this impasse by advancing a 'political resource theory that synthesizes class-, state-centered, neocorporatist and institutional ideas to explain policy formation in advanced capitalist democracies. Political institutions constitute infrastructural resources that condition the instrumental resources of class actors and channel the effects of class mobilization. Capitalists have systemic power by virtue of the state's dependence on private capital accumulation. We use this theory to explain the direct economic intervention of state governments in the U.S. in creating public venture capital programs in the 1970s and 1980s. An event history analysis shows that the adoption of these programs was shaped by a mesocorporatist 'pact combining capital/labor peak association bargaining with administrative capacities, structural dependence on corporate profits and manufacturing industry, professionalized state legislatures pressured by deindustrialization and the loss of instrumental resources due to declining Federal transfers to state governments. In an era of globalization and economic restructuring, the subnational state has become a centerpoint for industrial policy innovations in pluralistic states like the U.S. *Both of us share equally in this paper., We thank Michael Wallace and Don Grantforproviding some of their data on state economic policies and contexts. We also thank Kurt Schock, Brian

Vertical Coordination, Producer Response, and the Locus of Control over Agricultural Production Decisions1

Abstract Structural change in U.S. agriculture in part has been characterized by shifts in control over agricultural production decisions from the farm‐level to off‐farm firms. In the past decade, this process has accelerated as increasing concentration in production and processing has led to increased vertical integration and contract production. To retain control, some farmers have formed bargaining units, have created production and marketing networks, and have petitioned subnational state governments for regulation of production contracts. Concurrently, there has been an impressive increase in alternative marketing outlets linked with smaller‐scale production based on farm‐level control over production decisions. Structural change and producer collective response has a long history in U.S. agriculture. Using Mooney's and Hunt's (1996) recent contribution on recurrent ideologies of agrarian social movements, this paper outlines recent structural changes and collective responses to those changes with reference to the shifting locus of control over agricultural production decisions.

Direct Intervention by the Subnational State: The Development of Public Venture Capital Programs in the American States

During the 1980s state governments in the United States embarked on an experiment in direct economic intervention by launching public venture capital programs. This paper examines class-, state-centered and neocorporatist theories, showing that relatively autonomous state governments responded to their fiscal dependence on corporate taxes, deindustrialization, and a mesocorporatist “pact” between capital, labor, and strong central administrations by creating and investing in these programs. Rationalization creates greater state autonomy but this is constrained by fiscal and political dependence on economic and political environments. These factors encouraged a long-term entrepreneurial perspective on economic development policy, while business power and electoral competition appear to contribute to more short-term indirect “smokestack-chasing” interventions, such as tax incentives and infrastructural investments. In comparative context, pluralistic states such as the United States appear more likely to adopt direct intervention at the meso-level, indicating the relevance of state theory to subnational interventions.

Direct Intervention by the Subnational State: The Development of Public Venture Capital Programs in the American States

Direct Intervention by the Subnational State: The Development of Public Venture Capital Programs in the American States

Urbanism and the diffusion of substate nationalist ideas in Western Europe

Urbanism and the diffusion of substate nationalist ideas in Western Europe

Nuevas y viejas formas de regulación del sistema educativo en Argentina

En este trabajo analizamos las políticas destinadas a regular el sistema educativo a partir de la transferencia de servicios educativos a los estados sub nacionales y la redefinición del rol histórico que el Estado Nacional asumió en materia educativa. Sostenemos que las políticas impulsadas desde el Estado Nacional han estado orientadas a dar respuesta a la crisis del modelo de regulación burocrático tradicional y a garantizar la gobernabilidad del sistema a través de la introducción de nuevas tecnologías de gestión y del desarrollo de políticas compensatorias al servicio de la reducción de la pobreza. Estas políticas se han propuesto como la única alternativa de construcción política viable para asentar el gobierno de la educación sobre nuevas bases.