State nationalism and territorial accommodation in Spain and India

Abstract

This article analyses the significance of polity-wide parties' understanding of state and nation for their ability and willingness to accommodate territorial diversity. To illustrate this point, we first introduce a typology containing four 'ideal-types' of state nationalism: dominant, integrationist, composite, and plurinational. Subsequently, we apply this typology to two plural and multi-level polities, Spain and India, during two critical junctures: their founding constitutional moments and more recent episodes of change associated with 'the Catalan question' in Spain and the rise of the BJP in India, respectively. Our analysis underscores how varieties of state nationalism inform the nature and evolution of the territorial constitution, in form and in practice, and the extent to which such shifts are linked to party competition and changes in the party system.

State making or state breaking?’ Crisis, COVID‐19 and the constitution in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom

“…In this article, we take forward recent work arguing that plurinational states provide an ideal space in which to explore the interaction between state nationalism and sub‐state nationalism. In recent years, a growing body of literature has attempted to explore state nationalism in a variety of contexts, both in response to demands from below (Brown Swan & Cetrà, 2020; Cetrà & Brown Swan, 2020; Cetrà & Swenden, 2021) and in theoretical and empirical accounts seeking to untangle the relationship between nationalism and populism (Brubaker, 2020; Custodi, 2021; Lobera & Roch, 2022; Varshney, 2021).…”

Thirty years of Regional and Federal Studies

“…In an innovative comparison of India and Spain, they show how party politics in both countries have transformed original constitutional compromises that worked in favour of a rather integrationist model towards dominant Hindu nationalism in India, and towards a polarization between different models in Spain ranging from plurinational to dominant Spanish nationalism. All three articles on questions of territorial autonomy and community are excellent examples of how insightful comparisons across world regions can be, whether they are qualitative as in Cetrà and Swenden (2021) and Gagnon (2021), or quantitative as in Shair-Rosenfield et al (2021).…”

Speaking for ‘our precious Union’: unionist claims in the time of Brexit, 2016–20

“…In most countries, explicit debates on the purpose of the state arise particularly during critical junctures, for example, periods of constitutional change and peaks in territorial disputes. These may lead to shifts in political actors' views on what the state is and what it is for, prompted by the urgency to make their ideology congruent with the new institutional architecture of the state and/or by challengers in the form of sub-state movements and electoral competitors (Cetrà & Swenden, 2021). We see Brexit as the latest in a succession of constitutional and territorial moments urging unionist rethinking, with the two most recent being devolution and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.…”