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.