The Politics of Territorial Solidarity

Abstract

Despite the recent proliferation of literature on nationalism and on social policy, little has been written to explore the possible interaction between the two. This article explores two essential aspects of the relationship between substate nationalism and welfare-state development in Canada (Québec), the United Kingdom (Scotland), and Belgium (Flanders). First, the article shows how the processes of identity formation/consolidation and territorial mobilization inherent to substate nationalism often involve a social policy dimension. Second, it analyzes the ways in which substate nationalism has affected welfare-state development in recent decades. Substate nationalism can impact social policy making in at least two ways: by reshaping the policy agenda at both the state and the substate levels and by reinforcing regional policy autonomy, which is depicted as an alternative to centralist schemes. To explain significant variations between the three empirical cases, the article underlines specific institutional, ideological, and socioeconomic factors.

The Relationship Between Group Identification and Satisfaction with Life in a Cross-Cultural Community Sample

“…However, it must be remembered that the interaction between family identification and nationality was only a marginally significant predictor of SWL, and the interaction between community identification and nationality (which one would expect to follow the same pattern as the family identification interaction) was a non-significant predictor of SWL. It is unclear why our predictions regarding Hypothesis 2 were not fully confirmed, but it may relate to the fact that while Scotland is part of Britain, it is often felt that Scotland's culture is more community-focused than that of neighboring England (e.g., Béland and Lecours 2008;Findlay and Findlay 2005). This may explain why the Global Leadership and Organization Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program (House et al 2004), which is one of the largest studies to compare nations in terms of their cultural values, only assessed the values of England, and not Britain as a whole.…”

How Does Decentralisation Affect the Welfare State? Territorial Politics and the Welfare State in the UK and US

“…This argument can be used in both directions: either arguing that parts of a state can have higher standards (which would raise standards for at least those parts, and might start races upward) (Cameron, 1978(Cameron, : 1253McEwen, 2006;Moreno, 2001), or arguing that the state is the relevant community, and that community is divided by different standards and is less able to redistribute (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004: 78). It is the divergence between Bogdanor and Keating quoted above, and is easy to see in the many arguments from the 1990s that devolution to Scotland and Wales would permit them to have a superior or at least stable welfare state in the face of attacks by Conservative governments with only English majorities (Béland and Lecours, 2008).…”

Greek University Students Describe the Role of Greece in the Balkans: From Equality to Superiority

“…That is its second element. 12 The core themes of nationalist ideology as they are presented by Anthony Smith are the following: 13 (a) humanity is naturally divided into nations, (b) each nation has its peculiar character, (c) the source of all political power is the nation, (d) for freedom and self-realization, people must identify with a nation, (e) nations can be fulfilled only in their own states, (f) loyalty to the nations overrides all other loyalties, and (g) the primary condition of global freedom and harmony is the strengthening of the nation-state. These "core themes of nationalist ideology" are widely accepted as the founding rules of legitimacy of the modern interstate system.…”