Regionalism, nationalism, integration: Central and Western European perspectives

Author: Karoly Gruber - Date: 17/1/2001

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"Let's content ourselves with noting that Poland is as big as Spain, Hungary is as big as Portugal. Let's note also that there are six million farmers in the Union of 15 and two million in Poland. And let's note that the levels of income in these countries, and other applicants, are way below the Community average. In other words, the next enlargement will have an impact on the status quo in the present Union. This is undeniable.(...)

First of all: Solidarity is an overriding principle. It is a shared vision of the European Culture that the strong have a moral obligation to support the weak, and that solidarity is not merely the result of an input-output calculation." (Monika Matthies Wulff, ex-European Commisioner for Regional Policy and Cohesion)

Regionalism – buzzwords and stereotypes

Recently, conceptions such as globalisation, regionalism and regionalisation (2)have become the buzzwords of social sciences. These terminologies have become so fashionable that quite often social scientists do not attempt at all to clarify the exact meanings of these terms, and many tend to take them as axioms. In this chapter, I will try to provide some of my own reflections on the above-mentioned topics. Some of the stereotypes and commonplaces stemming from the key conceptions above are as follows: - We are undergoing a phase of global development -the end of the nation-state-, where the nation-states are not able to play any more their previous roles as independent actors in foreign policy, security and macro-economic matters as a result of the growing number of international organisations, the unprecented degree of internationalisation and interdependence of global economics and the new methods of communications (e.g. Internet and global media).

- In these global environments, the competencies of the nation-states are undermined not only by processes that influence the state from above but also by processes below the state level. Regions do threaten the old structures and legitimacies of the nation-state in both spheres of economics and political administration.

- While most of the 'Enlightened' Western European states accepted the new challenges of globalisation and decided to give up some of the powers of the nation-state for the sake of the supranational institutions of the European Union, some Central-Eastern European nations chose the premodern, tribalistic and ethnically exclusivistic conception of the state and the nation. Following this logic, the biggest problem for a unified Europe to resolve is the huge gap between the 'post-national 'Western Europe and the 'pre-national' Eastern Europe that has not reached the stage of ' civic' nationalism and in which ethnic nationalism still prevails.

- Global culture and telecommunication will finally eliminate ethnic hatred and national controversies.

- Regional cross-border political, economic and cultural co-operation will on the one hand stop political hostility on the different sides of national frontiers and on the other hand to replace some of the outdated answers of the nation-states to the new challenges of globalisation.

Space does not permit me to elaborate on all the issues brought up above but it is worth quoting Christopher Harvie (3) who also expresses his doubts oversimplifying definitions on such key issues:

'It is difficult to separate the cultural, economic and propagandist elements, and to subject it to the same sort of critique which has come the way of the nation-state. This is partly because the ambiguity of the term means that it straddles several schools of interpretations, without interpreting them.'

The problem of definitions is clearly a methodological one for social sciences. It is simply impossible today to use our old notions for the more and more complex and multi-layered global reality. Processes such as localisation and globalisation, integration and disintegration, homogenisation and heterogenisation-, which seem to be contradictory at the first sight, are often different sides of the same coin. To describe and explain this new reality, brave methodological experiments are necessary which slowly but surely must replace our old scientific mind frames. These new scientific approaches which challenge the old methodological dogmas of various waves and schools of positivism are perhaps best illustrated by authors like Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. In our field, whose focus is studying Europe, but not only the European Union, these methodological issues also should be brought up.

Now that enlargement talks with selected Central-Eastern European states are under way, a methodological question for anyone who is researching Europe might arise: what can we do with our old methodologies which were designed either to analyse the processes of Western European integration in the context of the Cold War or to study the aftermath of communism in Central-Eastern Europe? These research topics required different research methodologies and there were very few common grounds for a comparative methodology. However, a fundamentally new situation will emerge in the very near future. We cannot say exactly when this new European political space will emerge, but we feel and know that this 'enlarged' and 'deepened' Europe will be a radically new subject for research. Accordingly, we social scientists should find topics which might offer hints about how this new Europe will look like.

Globalisation and the nation-state

The contradictory coexistence of universalisms of global economics and telecommunications and particularisms of different contemporary social movements, especially ethnic and religious ones, cause problems for modern states at the domestic level and international order at the interstate level. The modern nation-state, emerging in the 19th century as the fundamental unit to which domestic social, political and economic action is bound on the one hand and on the other hand as the primary actor in international relations, is no longer able to answer the challenges of globalisation and localisation. The changing nature of the nation-state amidst the globalising features of contemporary politics is perhaps one of the most important aspect of "post-modern" geopolitics. According to Nick Rengger (4): "For the last three hundred years or so the central political and institutional unit of European politics has been the nation-state.

(...) However, if the advocates of the rise of postmodern politics are right, this central dichotomy between the internal and the external, as well as the forms each have taken in the modern period, are increasingly problematic. If politics is becoming 'deterritorialised' then the glue that bound the territorial units- the nation-states- together (that is, the doctrine of sovereignty tied to territory) is dissolving." However much the nature of the nation-state has changed recently due to the new phase of internationalisation and interdependence, we cannot talk as yet about the 'hollowing out' of the nation-state. It is better to talk about the 'redefinition' of the nation-state.

The nation-state has been with us for centuries, as a basic form of knowledge constraining the ways how we examine our social reality. The nation-state at the end of the 20th century is not comparable even to what it was 20 years ago. The legitimacy of the nation-state both as the indivisible basic actor of international society and as a socio-economic and socio-political unit to which society is bounded, have been shattered by recent trends in global politics.

Many observers are especially interested in the changing patterns of territorial political organisation, whose central category is obviously the nation-state. These accounts argue that the nature of territoriality in international politics has changed dramatically in our globalising world, and therefore the nation-state as a modern form of territorial political organisation has been challenged by new forms of territorial administration. These new tendencies below and above the nation-state signal the the 'unbundling of territoriality' in international society. The 'unbundling of territoriality' means that in the international society there have appeared a plethora of new actors which either have a different approach to territoriality - regional states with limited or shared sovereignty or regional military blocs - or have no territorial affiliations at all - international companies, transnational NGOs etc -

. However, it does not necessarily mean the end or the decline of the nation-state, instead these trends open up new spaces for new definitions.

Following James Anderson: 'Rather than seeing the nation-state in the singular, we need to appreciate that states (in the plural) have assumed, and will continue to assume, a wide variety of forms as they adapt to changing historical and geographical circumstances.

Rumours of the nation-state's death are indeed exaggerated. The state is dead, long live its different forms!(6)

Another aspect of the nation-state as a form of knowledge was that, those who live within the boundaries of a state should create a nation. The 'one nation-one state' approach, which is fundamentally a heritage of modern universalism, has been challenged by the campaigns of stateless nations and national minorities for self-goverment in Western Europe and North America. But these campaings aiming at regional state status by accepting the principle of shared or limited sovereignty are not in accordance with the one nation-one state approach.

The new global order

The collapse of the Communist Bloc was not only significant in the sense that one of the master narratives of modernity collapsed, but in the sense that established nation-states such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union crumbled under the burden of nations redefining their identities. The long forgotten national problems of Central-Eastern Europe- which were swept under the carpet of 'Communist internationalism' - have resurfaced as a new factor of the 'New World Disorder' in the post-1989 period. As was argued elsewhere, the collapse of the bipolar world have resulted in the emergence of a more global world.

Accordingly, for instance for Western European stateless nations have recognised the importance of the 'rebirth' of Central-European nations to their own projects. As the following speech of Alex Salmond (7), the president of the Scottish National Party shows:

'Right across Europe, nations are asserting their right to self-determination- a fundamental principle enshrined in international law. The newly-liberated nations of Eastern and Central Europ- many of them smaller and all of them poorer than Scotland- are queuing up to join the European Community(...)'

In Europe, the Western European project -which is an Enlightenment project in many ways- attempting to create viable transnational authorities and long-term security on the continent has encountered the grimness and bleakness of the post-communist heritage. The European project, which once, in the 1980s, seemed a real democratic alternative in the framework of 'Cold War'

logic, today finds itself trapped between deepening and enlarging. The European Union is at cross-roads since it should decide how it shall address the afore-mentioned dilemma. There needs to be a clear-cut idea how enlargement will affect the institutional framework of the Union and long-term European security and identity.

The mishandling of the Yugoslav crisis - not understanding the different concepts of ethnonationalism and politics - by the Western-led international institutions including the European Union, has shattered the beliefs in a democratic Pan-European alternative, and generally in international institutions. The historical chance of 1989-1990 to build a genuine Europe has gone; to regain the hopes there is a need for a more dynamic policy towards enlargement. This more dynamic policy towards enlargement means a redefinition of integration and co-operation in Europe. The present attempts which aim at creating European unity according to a purely institutionalist logic should be supplemented by a logic more open logic cultural and historical diversity.

In Richard Kearney'(8)s words: 'This would entail a united Europe where cultural diversities and peripheral economics are fostered. One of the key challenges facing post-modern Europe will be to conjoin a global sense of becoming with a local sense of belonging; and this requires a revision of the inherited models national sovereignty. A decisive question, there, as we enter a postmodern Europe must surely be: how to strike the right balance between a triple fidelity to region, nation and federation.'

A Europe of the Regions?

The promotion of regionalisation by the supranational structures of the EU, the increase of the competencies of the COR in decision and policy-making and the acceptance of the claims of various regionalist movements as legitimate political claims will help our continent to achieve the programme proposed by Richard Kearney above. If we reach that stage the re-definition of the nation-state and the formation of the 'three-tier' Europe will be completed. In the following, I quote the final declaration of the ‘Pan-European’ conference of the Regions organised by COR in parallel with the Amsterdam summit of the European Union in June 1997, where substantial numbers of Central-Eastern European regions and local governments were represented: “Europe only has a future if all levels work together. Policies can only be drawn up through coordination, and not confrontation, between the local,regional, national and supranational levels. This coordination must take subsidiarity as its guiding principle, reflecting the particular features of each Member State.” “(...)The seeds of the Union were sown by six countries. Now there are fifteen of us, but the European Union is not yet complete. Enlargement to include the countries of central and eastern Europe, and Cyprus, is a historic opportunity - for them and for us. Indeed, it is a moral obligation. We helped them along the path to democracy: now our wider European democracy must accord them the place they fully deserve.”

“(...)Europe's regional, municipal and local authorities want to make a key contribution to the European ideal. Cross-border links, interregional co-operation and local partnerships also bring the reality of Europe home to its citizens.”

Regionalisation and Regionalism

For lack of space, we shall not address all the key concepts which emerged in the introductory paragraphs of this paper, however we take two of the most debated concepts, regionalisation and regionalism and limit the scope of our investigation to European processes. To start off our scrutiny, it is useful to follow an etymological approach since both of the terms we plan to examine -regionalism and regionalisation- include the word 'region'. At first sight, it seems apparent that there are more interpretations concerning regions. First of all, the difference between 'macro-regions' and 'micro-regions' should be made clear. 'Macro-regions' are regions above the nation-state level. We can call North America, north-western Europe or south-east Asia a 'macro-regions'(9) . These define themselves as an economic macro-region in the framework of

global economic competition, while 'micro-regions' define themselves as sub-state actors. Even if, as we shall see later in this chapter, the issues of macro-regions and micro-regions are sometimes rather difficult to separate, in the following section of the chapter we shall see how nation-states and micro-regions at the substate level relate to each other.

In terms of our methodological remarks above, the following questions concerning the definitions of regionalism and regionalisation might arise: What is a region in contemporary Europe? (10)

Is the southern German 'region' of Baden-Württenberg comparable to the Austrian 'region' of Burgenland or Catalonia in Spain to the South-East of England? What constitutes a 'region' ? How big territory should be included and how many people should live in geographic area for it to be to called as a region?

These questions are rather difficult to answer in a precise way; instead we should find a term to which the term 'region' could be related. Undoubtedly, this concept is the state. Micro-regions are 'below' states, they can be sometimes purely administrative units as in the case of 'départements' in France or in other cases giant economic powers such as the German region of Baden-Württenberg or 'ethnocultural' units such as Scotland and Catalonia. The key issue from our point of view is how regions are related to states. Accordingly, regionalisation-in the context of the relationship between states and micro-regions- should be understood as the attitude of states toward regions in a top-down manner. The degree of regionalisation much depends on how much the central power is able to delegate some of its administrative, political, educational and economic authority to the sub-state level. Regionalism, by contrast, could be interpreted as a group of processes in which territories, provinces and local communities define themselves toward the central powers of the state. Of course, these two notions are in a dialectic relationship: the more the state is ready to give up some parts of its competencies the more regions benefit from it and their regional aspirations grow, and the more regions claim decentralisation and devolution the more the state is pressurised to give some concessions.

To consider this state-region relationship as a zero-sum game as some European states and regions do is a grave mistake. Wolfgang Blaas (11) is possibly right when he points out that the different attitudes toward regionalisation among the member-states of the European Union could be a serious obstacle to the future of European integration and the realisation of the project of 'Europe of Regions': 'The primary reasons and motivations for the creation or strengthening of political regions vary greatly among the member states of the EU. Contrary to a general tendency to strengthen the regional level, this level has been weakened or even disintegrated in a few states. The heterogeneous picture presented by the political-administrative regions of EU countries today is due to these national developments.'

France, for instance, has been traditionally against regional aspirations for centuries now, since one of the very fundamental tenets of French republicanism was the faith in the indivisible secular state, while conservative British governments since 1979, in opposition to traditional British liberal values, insisted on the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of the Westminster parliament at the expense of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish regional aspirations. In the British context, this stubbornness on the one hand blocked the campaigns for devolution not only for Scotland and Wales but also for the Labour-dominated English regions, and on the other hand provoked Britain's European partners that wanted to go ahead with the deepening of the European Union (12). For the sake of the comparison that shall later constitute the core of this chapter, it should be noted that in the countries of the ex-Soviet empire, where the oppressive traditions of the centralising totalitarian state still persist, regionalisation is not very fashionable. Moreover, on the ruins of the Communist State, new strong states are being formed, legitimised by the force of exclusivistic nationalism.

REDEFINING THE NATION STATE

As we have seen so far, nation-states are still with us, in spite of the growing tendencies of globalisation. In the European context, the European Union with its intergovermentalist structures

is very far from what European federalists dream for. In Central-Eastern Europe, national sovereignty -which is a relatively recent phenomenon in the region- is still a very popular concept. For example in Hungary, which is one of the most likely candidates for EU membership in the region, there is a growing scepticism toward European integration as the beginning of accession talks approaches (13).

Having said this, instead of talking about the end of the nation-state, it is perhaps more beneficial to discuss the chances of the 'redefinition of the modern state' in terms of a new consensus between regions and the central powers of the state. With the emergence of the European Union as a new supranational actor on the stage of European politics the relationship was significantly modified. The European Union as a 'macro-region' in global economics altered the traditional balance of power between micro-regions and nation-states. By advocating the notion of a 'Europe of Regions', the Union appeared as a strategic partner for micro-regions.

Later in this essay, this triangular relationship between regions, states and supranational institutions -where the interwoven relationship between micro-regionalism and macro-regionalism is practically illustrated- will be explored. However, the proceeding paragraphs will be devoted to the analysis of various aspects of regionalism and regionalisation in terms of the relationship between states and micro-regions.

Quite often, regionalisation or decentralisation starts when the legitimacy of a state has been weakened or collapsed. According to democratic theory, when the domestic or external legitimacy of a state is shattered and the consensus of the social contract between the state and the citizens have been broken, regionalisation may function as a means for a state to regain its democratic legitimacy. For example, in an authoritarian or a totalitarian state that has got multiethnic population and based its power on a major ethnie and other ethnic groups were not given their share from political power, regionalisation after the collapse of the state functions as a tool to convince those citizens which were excluded from power to give their consent to the new state formation. However, devolution and regionalisation are double-edged weapons since in certain circumstances they -instead of strengthening the legitimacy of the state- tend to undermine the state's legitimacy. As George Schöpflin (14)argues:

'What happens when a particular group of people does not consent? By the principles of democracy, of consensual rule, they should be accorded the full right to determine their future. That solution, which has been employed of course, cannot be pushed too far. If it were to be, then the nature of the existing state would become completely contingent and thus unstable, thereby undermining democracy.'

This was the case after the collapse of Franco's Spain in the 197Os when the new Spanish constitution was written according to the principle of regionalisation. To win the support of the Catalans and the Basques for the creation of the new democratic Spain, the new Spanish state provided substantial self-government for Catalonia and Basque country. However, the reception of the regionalisation offers of the Spanish state was very controversial. While in Catalonia, the advocates of Catalan regionalism did accept the framework provided for regional development by the Spanish state, some circles of the Basques nationalist movement did not consider the regionalisation package satisfactory and they refused it (15). Moreover, the terrorist methods of the ETA for a more radical change in the status quo came to life roughly in the same period.

In 1945, after the collapse of Hitler's fascist totalitarianism, the victorious allies were confronted with the huge task of creating a democratic Germany. American-domination in Germany after the war determined the federal reorganisation of the country. In this way, an external power pursued the policy of regionalisation in order to enable Germany to achieve external legitimacy in the emerging post-war international system. The federalisation of West Germany proved to be an overwhelming success in country where the traditions of Bismarckian centralised state nationalism were very much inherent in the post-war period. Clearly in the German context, the processes of regionalisation urged by external foreign powers catalysed some very strong regionalist movements. Some German regions such as Baden Württenberg and Saarland maintain

permanent representation in Brussels so that they can utilise their huge economic and political lobbying potential in Brussels. Baden Württenberg also plays a leading role in high-tech cross-border regional co-operation-, which is the favourite political hobby-horse of Brussels eurocrats.

In the 'Four Motors of Europe' regional co-operation initiative, Baden-Wüttenberg, Lombardy, Rhone-Alpes and Catalonia cooperated for the dissemination and exchange of high-tech know-how in 1988. Some argue that even though regionalisation in Germany after 1945 was a perfect means to discourage expansionist German nationalism and catalyse regional economic development, this policy has also resulted in negative repercussions. Thus C. Harvie (16) argues: 'A nation reunited by provincial politicians pursuing provincial ends has emerged an introverted state whose capacity for cohesion has been significantly diminished.' Wales joined the 'Four Motors of Europe' initiative in 199O but not as a 'full motor' since, due to the already-discussed negative attitude of the British government towards regionalisation, Wales lacked the administrative power to participate in a deeper level co-operation (17).

In spite of the difficulties, Wales, as an area which previously had been seriously hit by the post-industrial decline, was a recipient of high-tech investments, for example the Baden-Württenberg based multinational company Bosch opened a plant in Miskin, close to Cardiff.

To return shortly to our initial methodological focus that aims at treating Europe in a wider conception than that of the current European Union, it is worthwhile having a look at how the questions of regionalism and regionalisation are present in the territories of the former Soviet Union.

The case of the Soviet Union

As was touched upon briefly earlier in this chapter, the Soviet Union even though nominally a federal state, none of its structures were structures of democratic federalism in any way. First of all, the legitimacy of the state was based on an oppressive totalitarian ideology and the competencies of the state were concentrated in the hands of the leaders of the Communist party. The very principle of federalism, the principle of shared competencies between regions and the central power was not realised in Communist federalism. Accordingly, memberstates of the Soviet Union did not enjoy the rights of their counterparts in the democratic Western federal states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all those republics that either had the tradition of existing as sovereign national states in the past, such as the Baltic states, or were equipped with the ideology of national self-determination, such as Georgia and Armenia, chose to leave the federation and formed their national states. The remaining republics and the mostly Russian-populated administrative units -oblasts and krais- of the Soviet Union now in the Russian Federation encountered a new situation, where the central power of the state was significantly weaker than in Communist times.

In the building of the new state a bargaining process started between the central power and the regions. It should be made clear that, even though many 'ethnic republics' (e.g. the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia) left the Soviet Union, there are still as many as 21(!) 'ethnic republics' within the Russian Federation. Basically, what was at stake in this bargaining process was the redistribution of the huge natural and economic resources of the once awesome Soviet Empire. In the absence of strong central power, the regions understandably did everything they could to obtain as much resources as possible from the central power. 'Ethnic republics' rich in oil or diamonds, such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, were successful in their negotiations with Moscow and therefore could acquire fundamental rights over their natural resources. Interestingly enough, these ethnic republics were much more successful in these negotiations over the redistribution of competencies and resources than the purely administrative districts which are mostly Russian-populated.

In the words of S.L.Solnick (18): 'In more conventional settings, ethnicity serves too conveniently to divide one group from another. For this reason, ethno-federal systems are held to be

dangerously unstable. In the Russian federal bargaining game, however, the leaders of ethnic republics have focused on preserving the republics as a privileged class of subnational actors.

(...)Ethnic claims, therefore, have served as a co-ordinating mechanism across different ethnic republics distinguishing them from Russian regions.'

Naturally, regionalism in the Russian federation differs from the Western European examples to a great extent, but these examples could be of use for our further scrutiny of regionalisation and regionalism. For example, from the economic point of view it could be noticed that Western European regions rich in natural or human resources more often than not tend to pursue regionalist campaigns ( e.g. Scotland and its huge oil wealth in the North Sea).

In Western Europe, during the 196Os and 197Os, to cope with regional economic disparities, the welfare state followed the policy of economic regionalisation by the creation of regional investment funds that were regarded as more efficient tools for managing local economic needs and interests than centralised forms of economic decision-making. The regionalisation policy of the welfare state, however, should be cited only with caution, as an example for regionalisation since the very idea of the economic policy of the welfare state was centralisation. The notions of solidarity, social cohesion and subsidiarity which originate from the ideology of the post-war welfare state were also remembered at the building of the European Union. The regional policy of the EU will be discussed in the coming section of the chapter. But the novelty of the regionalisation policy pursued by the EU lies in the very fact that, in this case a supranational institution above the state supports the development of regions below the state and Western European states -of course in different degrees- accept this new situation.

NATION STATES AND STATELESS NATIONS

So far we have paid attention to regionalisation from now on we shall focus our discussion on regionalism. As was argued earlier, the two are in a dialectic relationship, however it also should be recognised that while regionalisation is a matter of political decisions and compromises of elites, regionalism involves mass participation. The policy of regionalisation is carried out in a top-down manner, while regionalist movements can mobilise masses of citizens for grassroots activities. As John Bruton, the previous prime minister of Ireland, which is one of the most active supporters of the EU's regional policy, pointed out at a conference on European regionalism:

'It is difficult to generate loyalty to bodies created for purely administrative reasons.' In the following, we shall attempt to reflect on the different aspects of regionalism. In my estimation, the most important aspects of regionalism are the ethnocultural, the political and the economic aspect. First, the ethnocultural (19) aspect of regionalism shall be discussed.

The patterns of contemporary social and political participation have been undergoing a paradigm shift. From class-based social and political interactions we are entering the era of identity politics and new social movements. The boundaries of the political and the private, which is one of the core assumptions of modernist politics, are becoming obscure in feminist politics the private becomes politicised. The separation of the churches from the political sphere and the secularisation of politics are also amidst the key principles of the Enlightenment traditions these principles are defied for example by Muslim fundamentalism. Political participation and the ways of influencing political decisions are also changing. Party politics are combined with or sometimes replaced by lobbying and different campaigns by environmentalist, feminist, homosexual or ethnic groups. Old ideological facades fade away in the political storms of post-modern values. I use the term post-modern for this new political environment following my earlier discussion on global postmodern politics in chapter 1.

A Scottish observer of postmodern politics of identity , David McCrone (20) is worth citing at length since he, as a member of a European 'stateless nation', directly experiences every day the challenges of identity politics: 'The discussion about national identity, then properly belongs to a much broader debate about identity in general. Rapidly changing social and political structures are

having an effect on all forms of identity, including the ones which interest us here - national political identity. By the 199Os, the old agenda had changed. New Political structures, and the concomitant decline of older ones, seem to have forefronted the issue of identity. National identities became more problematic as conventional state-identities are corroded by forces of globalisation which shift the classical sociological focus away from the assumption that 'societies' are well-bounded social, economic and cultural systems.'

In this post-modern political environment, old leftist and rightist values are no longer able to answer the claims of societies. A new awareness of the dangers of societal rationalisation is also emerging under the particularistic model of post-modern politics. The rise of 'mediacracy' or the growing political influence of the media is also a distinguishing feature of 'new politics'. To return to our original discussion of regionalism and regionalisation, it should be noted that the challenges of regionalisation and regionalism to the nation-state, which is clearly a structure of modernist politics coming from the 19th century, are constitutive parts of 'new (post-modern) politics'. The various political campaigns for local democracy and decentralisation of decision-making are all part of this new political paradigm.

Following this thinking, it seems to be logical to relate the etnocultural aspect of regionalism to the above-mentioned ‘post-modern politics'. Ethnoregional groups define themselves in the context of multinational states where they constitute only the minority of the whole population of the given state but at the local and the regional level they quite often constitute the majority. Their regionalist movements campaign for the preservation of their native culture, language, and education against the homogenising effects of the nation-state, which often are the state of a major ethnie, and for more political autonomy at the regional and local level. The old definition of citizenship, as a value-neutral term indicating the purely political nature of participation in a state as a political entity, is also being questioned by ethnocultural regionalism (21).

The confrontation between the demands of ethnocultural groups and the old definition of the citizenship is rather apparent. It is hard to accept for many, but citizenship becomes the subject of identity politics. As G.Schöpflin argues:

'Hence the revival- real, apparent- of identity politics in the 199Os has been unwelcome to polities that had made a single, rather cohesive conception of citizenship as the pivot of their identities. What I shall argue is that citizenship too is a part of identity politics, that it is nothing like as universal as its proponents like to think, but that without citizenship, democracy becomes very difficult to sustain.'

A wide range of examples of ethnocultural regionalism can be easily provided from the 'stateless nations' of Western Europe (e.g. the Scots, the Basques, the Catalans, the Welsh) to national minorities in Central-Eastern Europe (e.g. Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Serbs in Croatia). Naturally, as we argued, regionalism and regionalisation are in a dialectic relationship this is also true for ethnocultural regionalism. The radicalisation of ethnocultural movements much depends on the extent to which the respective multinational states have accepted the principle of regionalisation, federalisation and consociationalism. For instance, the Spanish state consciously decided to decentralise its structures to accommodate the ethnocultural aspirations of the Catalans and Basques in the 197Os, while contemporary Croatia, Yugoslavia and Slovakia are pursuing a centralising policy at the expense of various national minority groups living in their territory.

Majorities, minorities and identities

The relationship of majority and minority in a multinational state is a rather sensitive one. In an undemocratic polity the negative effects are doubled for a national minority. Accordingly, in an oppressive state, the most fundamental resistance against this kind of states often may derive from circles of national minorities and stateless nations (e.g. the campaign of the Hungarian minority in Ceasescu's Romania or the Catalan resistance against Franco's Spain). Without underestimating the positive and democratic goals of many ethnocultural movements, it also should be stressed

that in some special cases of these movements may end up using violent means (e.g. the terror campaigns of the IRA and the ETA).

In most European regionalisms, the ethnocultural motifs are supplemented by the political claims for territorial decentralisation (political aspect of regionalism). Hungarians in Transylvania, Romania, like the Scots in Great Britain, both demand linguistic, cultural and educational survival and territorial self-government. The answers of the respective states to these claims should be examined carefully. Romania, which incorporated Transylvania with its sizeable Hungarian population in 192O after the Trianon Peace Treaty, throughout its history has defined itself as a 'unitary, indivisible national state of Romanians' following the French model of the unitary, centralised Jacobin state. In this framework of reference, there was no space for the incorporation of Hungarians into the Romanian State. The Conservative British governments since 1979 also shared the belief in the sanctity of the centralised national state. Of course, the source of this ideology was different the British Conservative Party cultivated the idea of the indivisible sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament (22). But their refusal of the ethnocultural aspirations of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish was a direct consequence of this attitude. Naturally, this parallel between Ceasescu's Romania and Thatcher's Britain is strictly confined to their reactions to territorial decentralisation and the campaigns of ethnoregional groups within their respective states.

Economic regionalism does not necessarily go together with ethnocultural or political regionalism. There are reasons beyond economic regionalism which also can be various. Some European regions simply define themselves as regions in order to receive extra funding from European structural and cohesion funds (e.g. southern Irish counties form a common regional forum to qualify for the access of European funds or western Hungarian counties are expected by European Union guidelines to ally for access to PHARE Cross-Border Co-operation programmes). Quite often wealthy provinces of a given country want to avoid the burden of paying subsidies for underdeveloped regions (e.g. La Lega, the movement of the Northern Italian provinces).

At times, these movements, even if they lack the basic tenets of the ethnocultural aspect of regionalism, tend to make efforts to build up an artificial ethnocultural identity. As Stefano Guzzini (23)argues about La Lega Nord: 'The Lega Nord is not a typical regionalist party. Its regionalism cannot refer to a language of its own. Indeed, Padania has many different dialects out of different linguistic roots. Despite hopeless attempts to retrace the history of Padania to Gallia cisalpina of the Roman Empire, it has no history which could give rise to a national identity.'

An interesting kind of economic regionalisation can be traced down in the case of the German region, Baden-Württenberg. As we argued earlier, the German Land system was the result of external pressures for large-scale regionalisation in the post-war Germany. The Allies led by the Americans proposed the federalisation of West Germany to prevent the rebirth of expansionist German nationalism. In this respect, German regions except for Bavaria, are by and large exempt from local ethnocultural aspirations. Having said this, Baden-Württenberg's regionalism is chiefly of a political and economic nature. As a high-tech zone its most important aim could be to find economic co-operation with other high-tech zones in Europe. This goal is well illustrated in the ' Four Motors of Europe' project which has been already described elsewhere in this chapter.

Conclusions

To summarise, regions with different ideologies all over Europe both in the eastern and western halves of the continent, regard European integration with its supranational structures as a strategic ally for the advancement of the cause of regionalisation and regionalism. The coming eastward enlargement of the Union will redraw the picture of the 'Europe of regions', since nearly all of the countries which wish to join are of a multinational nature on the one hand and severely hit by regional disparities on the other hand. The fact that all of the aspiring Central-Eastern European states will be less developed than the poorest member of the current Union, will only complicate the problem further.

Having said this, most of the European regionalist movements- with a few exceptions- have accepted the idea of 'shared or limited sovereignty'(24) and their ideology is free from irredentist or revisionist claims. These movements consider European integration as a chance to regain their limited self-determination, since the EU appears to weaken the traditional competences of those states that define themselves in terms of the traditional approach to national sovereignty. In a way, in the context of the European integration the boundaries between regionalism and minority nationalism are often blurred. As Peter Lynch argues (25):'(...) the goals of minority nationalist parties have also become significantly Europeanised. National or regional autonomy has therefore become reconstructed to take account of the European dimension. This fact is the strongest evidence of the impact of European integration upon minority nationalism.'

(1)Dr Károli Gruber is Senior Analyst at the Strategic Planning Department of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry

1.The author writes in his own capacity and the article does not reflect the official policy of the Hungarian Government in any way.

2.-D.Held:Democracy and Global Order,From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Govarnance,Polity, Cambridge,1995 -M.Waters:Globalisation,Routledge,London and New York, 1995 -M.Featherstone(ed.): Global Culture,Nationalism,Globalisation and Modernity, London, 199O

-M.Robertson:Globalisation,Social Theory and Global Culture,SAGE Publications,London,1992

-C.Harvie: The Rise of Regional Europe,Routledge,London and New York,1996

3.Chris Harvie, p.5

4.Nick Wenger: Beyond Liberal Politics? European Modernity and the Nation-State in M.Rhodes, P.Heywood(eds.):

Developments in West European Politics, MacMillan, Basingstoke, 1997, pp.251-252

5.The term, ' unboundling of territoriality comes from John Gerard Ruggie, who describes his concept in the following: "(...) the unbundling of territoriality is a productive venue for the exploration of contemporary international transformation (...) The terrain of unbundled (...) is the place wherein a rearticulation of international political space would be occuring today." J.G.Ruggie:Territoriality and beyond: problematizing modernity in international relations, International Organization, Vol.47.No.1, pp.139-174, p.171

6.James Anderson: The exaggerated death of the nation-state in J.Anderson, C.Brook and A.Cochrane: A Global World, Re-ordering Political Space,Open University Press, Milton Keynes,1996, pp.104-105

7.Alex Salmond :1992. Scotland: A European Nation, Edinburgh, SNP

8.Richard Kearney:Postmodernity, Nationalism and Ireland, History of European Ideas, Vol. 16 No.1-3, pp.147-155, 1993, Pergamon Press Ltd, Oxford

9.The following volumes try to explain the workings of macro-regions in global economics: -L.Fawcett and A.Hurrell(eds.):Regionalism in World Politics, Oxford University Press,1995 -M.Svetlicic and H.W.Singer(eds.):The World Economy, Challenges of Globalisation and Regionalisation,Macmillan,Basingstoke,1996 -Robin Murray:Local Space, Europe and the New Regionalism, The Centre for Local Economic Strategies,Manchester,1991

10.The very same problem arises concerning the definitions of regions in today's Europe in D.Edye:Regions and Regionalism in the EU, European Dossier Series No.38, University of North London, 1997.

11.W.Blaas:Regionalisation Processes in EU Europe, Federal Ministry of Science and Research, Vienna,1995, p.1O.

12.C.Mellors:Prospects for Regionalism:An English Perspective, A Paper presented to the seminar 'Regionalism, European Integration and Sovereignty',Kőszeg,Hungary, 22 March 1997, -John Bradbury:Conservative Goverments,Scotland and Wales:A Perspective on Territorial Management in J.Bradbury and J.Mawson(eds.):British Regionalism and Devolution, The Challenges of State Reform and European Integration,Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London,1997,pp.74-99,

13.T.Navracsics:A Missing Debate?:Hungary and the European Union, Working Papers in Contemporary European Studies,nr.21, Sussex European Institute,Brighton,1997

14.G.Schöpflin: Citizenship,Ethnicity and Cultural Reproduction, Frank Wright Memorial Lecture, Queen's University,Belfast, 1997,p.6

15.On the similarities and differences of Basque and Catalan nationalisms see:D.Coversi:The Basques,the Catalans and Spain, Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation,Hurst, London, 1997

16.Harvie,p.71.

17.About the problems of co-operation between British local goverments and the EU,see:M.Goldsmith:British Local Goverment in the European Union in J.Bradbury and John Mawson,pp.215-235,

18.S.V.Solnick:Federal Bargaining in Russia,East European Constitutional Review, Fall 1995, pp.52-6O,p.55.

19.For many observers, the term 'ethnonationalism' carries highly negative connotations. Without a precise definition of the concept , it could be related to sinister things like 'ethnic cleansing'. Therefore, I suggest using Luis Moreno's definition which tries to overcome the heated -unfortunately quite often politically driven- debates around the term. "The combination of the cultural, the social,and the psychological is reflected in the elasticity of the concepts of ethnicity, and of ethnic identity, which ensue. These three dimensions overlap and make it possible for group members to emphasize origin, collective solidarity, cultural uniqueness, unity. or territorial integrity,to varying degrees.Ethnicity, therefore manifests itself in various degrees of emotional content and forms of social organisation. Daily confusion on 'ethnic group',' culture', 'ethnic identity' can be detected. Even group members find it difficult to assess their degree of ethnic affinity. Ethnic identity is a relational construct and, consequently means little without the existence of ethnic groups and categories." L.Moreno and A.Arriba: Dual Identity in Autonomous Catalonia,Scottish Affairs, Autummn 1996,pp.78-97,pp.78-9

A.Gergely András' theory of ethnoregionalism might also offer some interesting insights concerning the ethnocultural aspect of regionalism. According to the Hungarian political scientist, the ethnocultural aspect in often is perhaps the most significant driving force behind regionalist movements. He argues: " The advocates of national minority or ethnoregionalist movements do not fight for the return of the archaic and premodern conditions, instead they campaign for political devolution or federalization in order to be able to defend their own identity against the homogenising tendencies of the centres of powers which might end up in cultural alienation."

A.Gergely András:Identity and Ethnoregionalism, Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,Budapest, 1991, p.55.

20.D.McCrone:Autonomy and National Identity in Stateless Nations: Scotland,Catalonia,Quebec, Introduction: Multiple Identitites, Scottish Affairs, Autumn 1996, pp.42-48, p.44

21.Will Kymlicka:Multicultural Citizenship,Clarendon Press,Oxford,1996

22.Interestingly, after the overwhelming 1997 general election fiasco, the Conservative Party seems to reconsider its policy toward devolution and constitutional change. As Michael Ancram, shadow constitution spokesman hints: "In four or five years time, when the Conservatives are next in position to do something about it, we may well may find that the course of devolution and regionalisation has run a very long way. So we must prepared to think the unthinkable.", Financial Times, 2 February 1998

23.S.Guzzini:Two contracts reshuffled: The Lega Nord as motor and victim of the political turmoil in Italy, A paper delivered at the conference' Regionalism,Nationalism and European Integration: Eastern and Western European Perspectives',Koszeg,Hungary, March 1997

24.N.MacCormick:Sovereignty:Myth or Reality,Scottish Affairs,Spring 1995,pp.1-14. Prof.MacCormick, a leading international lawyer and the vice-president of the Scottish National Party defines the principle of limited sovereignty in the following: "It is a serious issue whether it is possible to envisage a world 'beyond the sovereign state' in which new types of legal and political interaction come into being that exclude claims of out and out sovereignty either from old states or from new communities devised to re-order economic and politic co-existence."

25.Peter Lynch: Minority Nationalism and European Integration, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1996, p.196

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In this issue Jelena von Helldorff : Facing towards Europe - Croatia after one year

Karoly Gruber : Regionalism, nationalism, integration: Central and Western European perspectives

Albena Azmanova : The hindrances for Bulgaria's accession to the EU

Eberhard Rhein : The size of the EU Commission - A trans-Atlantic comparison

Adrian Taylor : After Nice

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