Presentació del monogràfic. Introducció: Postpolítica i vigència del nacionalisme a l’Estat espanyol

Abstract

Since 2008, when the economic crisis triggered by the international financial system crunch brought about a political and social crisis in many countries around the world, the debate about nationalism has gained renewed attention.As in the analysis of other critical historical moments in the advance of nationalist forces, destabilisation of the material bases supporting the social order has led to the search for various national-type theoretical and political solutions. Thus, this scenario gave way to a marked social mobilisation and to displacement of political-party positions, both on the left and the right in many political systems (Kyriakos, 2015). Therefore, the hypotheses that emerged during the nineties, that assume that state systems are an obstacle to economic development-including theses on the end of history and neoliberal viewpoints on the global village (Fair, 2008)-, 1 as well as the Third Way as a remedy for social-democratic decline (Giddens, 2013), were thoroughly questioned.In the framework of a return to politics, new nationalist political projects, both at the state and substate levels, settled upon two forms of rejection of neoliberal globalisation and its social and economic effects. On the one hand, conservative populist nationalisms, led by elites that conceive the nation-state as a resource for 1 This is reflected in, for example, nation branding, which is considered to be a postmodern style of depoliticisation and social demobilisation in the domestic sphere (Lury, 2004). In contrast, from the perspective of publicity planning, it has been stated that national has scant compatibility with the marketing of state (Van Ham, 2001, p. 69), because it contains elements of political and social conflict.

Metropolitan and city-regional politics in the urban age: why does “(smart) devolution” matter?

“…The ongoing evolution of stateless nationalist parties' strategies highlights an increasing city-ness and metropolitan approach to their policy, in contrast to populist right-wing protectionist choices (Massetti, 2009;Massetti and Schakel, 2013;Iraola, 2015;McAngus, 2015;Massetti andSchakel, 2016,2017;Mylonas and Shelef, 2017;Winlow et al, 2017;Woertz, 2017). This clearly suggests the co-existence of diverse "nationalistic" approaches (Zamorano, 2017). For instance, in the United Kingdom, city-regional political responses under devolution have been researched extensively by Keating (2005: 453), who concludes that "Scotland is more committed than England to the traditional public sector model, emphasizing egalitarianism and cooperation with the public service professionals.…”