Abstract
This final chapter analyses the differences between plurinational, multinational, and sectional regionalisms. The analysis shows that history, intergroup relations, and economic factors do not determine the outcomes of regional mobilization but condition it to a large extent. For example, partly due to the lack of a truly regionalist historiography, Vojvodinian regionalism was tilted towards a multinational rather than a plurinational variant. The comparison also shows the importance of support for the regionalist project by the dominant minority. Apart from focusing on the cases, Stjepanović suggests potential future studies and directions where this research could be taken. He also engages with the literature and identifies where the concepts of plurinational, sectional, and multinational regionalisms can add to our understanding of territorial politics and nationalism.
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Notes
- 1.
Autonomies, regional self-government arrangements or particular territorial institutionalized divisions within a state, are not only the outcome of bottom-up processes of regionalism but are often imposed by the central state, as in the case of the Croatian counties. Conceived primarily as administrative units they can play the role of rallying points for regional projects, but can also deter the development of broader regionalist projects at the same time. Thus, it would be difficult to define autonomies or county’s establishment/existence as a clear-cut ‘dependent variable’. Outcomes therefore need to be qualified.
- 2.
Anna Cento Bull, Social Identities and Political Cultures in Italy: Catholic, Communist and ‘Leghist’ Communities between Civicness and Localism (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 99–100.
- 3.
It is worth mentioning that this was not only the strategy of the HDZ party. In December 1992, the SDP submitted amendments to the proposed law on counties, in which Split-Dalmatia county would lose its Dalmatian adjective, as the SDP MPs argued, due to the fairness to other Dalmatian counties which did not have the Dalmatian name in them. Rather than suggesting that other counties receive the Dalmatian adjective, such as, for example, Zadar-Dalmatian county, the SDP suggested that Dalmatian references were dropped altogether from the county name Prijedlog zakona br 49, 1992. Zasatupnički dom Sabora RH, Klub zastupnika SDP, archival material, Croatian Parliament.
- 4.
Excluding a few other predominantly culture-oriented organizations and institutions.
- 5.
Daniele Caramani, The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 6.
There existed (unsuccessful) proposals such as the ones in mid-2010s by the then President Josipović to merge Istria with the adjecent Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (with its seat in Rijeka). See the Večernji list, ‘Glas za Josipovića glas je za ukidanje Istre kao županije’ https://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/glas-za-josipovica-glas-je-za-ukidanje-istre-kao-zupanije-982373 (last accessed 12 April 2017).
- 7.
Johansson (1999).
- 8.
Miklós Bakk, “Romania and the Szeklerland—Historical claim and modern regionalism”, Solving Ethnic Conflict through Self-government (Bolzano/Bozen: EURAC, 2009).
- 9.
Nina Caspersen, Contested Nationalism: Serb Elite Rivalry in Croatia and Bosnia in 1990s, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). See also Chapter 4.
- 10.
It must be noted that Northern Dalmatia and Croatian Baranja/Baranya that were part of the self-proclaimed Republic of Srpska Krajina never constituted an integral part of the historic Vojna Krajina. On the other hand, the Krajina Serb political leaders did not claim some areas that used to belong to the historic Krajina with a strong Croat majority, being primarily driven by the monoethnic principles of polity formation.
- 11.
See Alex Jefferey, “Building State Capacity in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Case of Brčko District”, Political Geography 25 (2006), pp. 203–227.
- 12.
See Kenneth Morrison and Elizabeth Roberts, The Sandžak: A History (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2013).
- 13.
HDSSB program (2007).
- 14.
Konrad Pędziwiatr, “Silesian Autonomist Movement in Poland and One of its Activists”, L’Europe Rebelle (Krakow: Tischner European University, 2009).
- 15.
Alexander Maxwell, “Slavic Macedonian Nationalism: From ‘Regional’ to ‘Ethnic’”, In Klaus Roth and Ulf Brunnbauer (eds.), Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Volume 1 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2008), p. 127.
- 16.
For more on Transnistria, see Steven D Roper ‘Regionalism in Moldova: The Case of Transnistria and Gagauzia’, Regional and Federal Studies, 11(3) 2001, pp. 101–22.
- 17.
Weller (2005), p. 72.
- 18.
Admittedly, more space could have been devoted to the rationale of the central state elites resisting centripetal demands of the regionalists. This, however, could be the topic of some future volume.
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Stjepanović, D. (2018). Statehood Alternatives: Plurinational, Sectional, and Multinational Regionalisms Compared. In: Multiethnic Regionalisms in Southeastern Europe. Comparative Territorial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58585-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58585-1_6
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