Abstract
Minority nationalist parties have both ideological and strategic reasons to adopt Europhile views. Ideologically, support for European integration evolves from the defense of self-government and identities in opposition to nation-states. Strategically, minority nationalist parties aim at occupying political space as the defenders of territorial identities and interests in the European Union. This chapter treats ideological and strategic considerations as mutually reinforcing and examines the politicization of European integration through the evolution of the position and salience for minority nationalist parties. The empirical analysis shows a tepid pro-European party family gathering Europhiles, Eurocritics and Eurosceptics as a result of internal ideological differentiation and the limited salience of European integration within the party family.
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Notes
- 1.
Despite most theories considers the EU as a potential ally against the state, authors such as Jolly (2014) consider substate nationalists and supranational integration supporters as natural opponents; they are treated in his work as ‘strange bedfellows’ (Jolly 2014: 98). This stands in sharp contrast with the theoretical view, although not the reality; they are in fact, natural but bedfellows.
- 2.
The anti-imperialist position of the Galician People’s Union (UPG) vis-à-vis the European Economic Community (EEC) was based on the impact of integration for Galician socioeconomic structure and the strengthening of the differences between rich and poor regions (milk, fisheries and naval industry).
- 3.
What Mudde defines as the Sussex and North Carolina ‘schools’ differ in the interpretation of the scores. While North Carolina treats 5 in a seven-point scale as the cut-off point to define pro-Europeanness, as we do here, Mudde argues 5 could indicate instead a Soft Euroscepticism , since parties are ‘somewhat in favour of European integration’ (Ray 1999, Mudde 2012: 197). Nevertheless, regardless of different interpretations of the scale, the position of the regionalist party family seems on average rather in favour of European integration.
- 4.
The minority nationalist parties included in the regionalist party family in the different CHES expert surveys (1979–2014) do no coincide. The retrospective Expert Survey conducted by Ray 1999 covering the period 1984–1999 included 15 cases. The CHES Expert survey 2002 and 2006 included 16 and 20 cases, respectively, and 18 cases in 2014.
- 5.
- 6.
According to the authors, ‘our analysis shows very clearly that regionalist parties in relatively rich regions tend to develop a rightist ideology, while regionalist parties acting in relatively poor regions tend to adopt a leftist ideology’ (Massetti and Schakel 2015: 874).
- 7.
The extreme left also included the Corsican ANC (Corsican Nationalist Alliance).
- 8.
The European Union became the ‘Soviet Union of Europe’ (Schori Liang 2017:12)
- 9.
The prolog of the 1981 declaration states: ‘The European Free Alliance is a cooperative association of political parties which, in contrast with established traditional patterns of political thought, advocate a form of integrated regionalism (my cursives). This concept is based on meaningful interplay between the individual and national identity and is given structural form in a harmonious, democratic decision-making process on federal lines whereby decisions are taken at the lowest possible level and the greatest importance is attached to individuality’.
- 10.
The following quote illustrates the utmost importance of domestic arenas vis-à-vis the European arena to solve pending jurisdictional issues: The Basque country gives political priority to the solution of violence before moving toward a ‘soberanista’ phase again. In the Basque country, the problem of the territory is not solved yet among Basque parties themselves: the proper area for implementing the process and the decision-making. What about if Navarra is out of the process? For example, Aralar distinguished the territories but Sortu does not. In Catalonia, these issues have played a minor role and they had moved forward without Valencia and the Balearic Islands, even ERC (interview EFA 2) .
- 11.
After the end of the cease fire in 1999, Aralar was born to gather independentists from the abertzale left. It demanded the end of political violence in the Basque country.
- 12.
At the EU level, the second-order hypothesis predicts, as Hix and Marx point out (2007: 496), three related outcomes. First, parties in government at the time of EP elections obtained less votes than in national elections; second, the larger the party in national elections, the bigger losses in EP; and third, the timing of EP in national elections determines the size of the effects in the first and second outcome. Chapter 4 considers the ordering of elections.
- 13.
The nature of European elections as second-order elections dominates the literature but there are recent transformations, like the introduction of the spitzenkandidaten that might introduce changes (Corbett 2014). Neither minority nor populist nationalist parties endorse a candidate for the 2014 European elections. Against received wisdom of European elections as second-order, alternative analyses at the individual level also find support for a ‘first’ order hypothesis (Clark and Rohrscheneider 2009).
- 14.
Question 2 in the CHES Trend File : ‘relative salience of European integration in the party’s public stance’ in the year of the survey’, on an 10-point scale. Salience for the previous period (Marks and Steenbergen 2004).
- 15.
Party salience here is presented in absolute terms, salience of European integration is also relative, related to its systemic nature in party systems (Steenbergen and Scott 2004: 177).
- 16.
Combining the 2014 CHES survey with the 2012 ESS survey, most minority nationalist parties have more pro-European views than their voters (CiU , PNV, CC , SNP , Plaid Cymru and SFP ). However, parties such as N-VA show similar views. Others like ERC , BNG and LN voters have more pro-European voters than the parties.
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Gómez-Reino, M. (2018). The Minority Nationalist Party Family and the European Cleavage. In: Nationalisms in the European Arena . Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65951-0_2
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