Nationalisms in the European Arena : Trajectories of Transnational Party Coordination

256 Pages·2018·2.28 MB·English

by  Margarita Gómez-Reino (auth.)

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
Nationalisms in the
European Arena
Trajectories of Transnational
Party Coordination
Margarita Gómez-Reino
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
Series Editors
Carlo Ruzza
Department of Sociology and Social Research
University of Trento
Trento, Italy
Hans-Jörg Trenz
Department of Media, Cognition & Communication
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary
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Margarita Gómez-Reino
Nationalisms in the
European Arena
Trajectories of Transnational Party
Coordination
Margarita Gómez-Reino
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Dist
Madrid, Spain
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
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To my parents, Manuel and Isabel
Preface
European integration was intended to become the graveyard of national-
ism. Instead European integration has allegedly triggered the resurface
and renewal of nationalisms of all sorts. As the process of European inte-
gration unfolds, with the approval of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991
and the removal of national barriers in 1992, a variety of nationalist par-
ties have increasing gained visibility and transcended in the domestic
level. The political appeal of old and new nationalist parties was revital-
ized with third waves of mobilization of both peripheral nationalist and
national populist parties (Müller-Rommel 1998; Alonso 2012; Mudde
2012). The success of different nationalist parties in Europe, from the rise
and strengthening of minority nationalist parties in Italy, the United
Kingdom or Spain, and the rise of the populist radical right party family,
considered by some experts as the ‘most successful party family in the
postwar period’, are recent testimonies of the contemporary political
potential of identity politics (Mudde 2012: 2). Identity is increasingly
shaping contestation on the boundaries of political communities in
Europe (Hooghe and Marks 2009, 2017). At stake is a political mobiliza-
tion that shows the double-edge sword of inclusive and exclusive identity
politics at different territorial levels. While some political parties advance
the demands of independence of national minorities from nation-states,
others battle to defend the very boundaries of the nation-state in Europe
and reclaim national sovereignty.
vii
viii Preface
Nationalist political parties are firmly entrenched within old and new
cleavages in party systems, whether in the form of old and renewed antag-
onisms of territorial identities, vis-à-vis central nation-states, or in their
assertion of national identity facing new cultural and economic trends
such as globalization (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Kriesi et al. 2006, 2008).
A new additional European cleavage defines alternative partisan stances
for and against European integration across party systems (De Wilde and
Trenz 2012; Ruzza 2009Taggart and Szczerbiack 2008; Leconte 2010;
Topaloff 2012; Mudde and Kopecky 2002; Wassenberg et al. 2010).1 The
European cleavage encroaches on the main dimension of political contes-
tation of minority and populist nationalist party families: political sover-
eignty at different territorial levels (De Winter and Gómez-Reino
Cachafeiro 2002; Hooghe and Marks 2017; Kriesi et al. 2006; Bartolini
2005). The interaction between nationalist claims and European integra-
tion shapes the redefinition of the structure of political conflicts over the
jurisdictional architecture of the EU. The opposing types of minority and
populist nationalist parties examined in this book allegedly represent the
two sides of the new European cleavage between supporters of European
integration and Eurosceptics. Nationalist political parties would be pull-
ing in contrasted directions the territorial restructuring of the EU align-
ing with pro-European positions, minority nationalism, vis-à-vis the
Euroscepticism of the populist nationalist party family. The clear-cut
divide of the European cleavage overlaps with the ideological differentia-
tion between minority and populist nationalist party families. The recent
experience of the 2016 British referendum on European membership
illustrates this book. Pro-European positions are firmly entrenched in
minority nationalist parties such as the Scottish SNP and the Welsh PC
(Lynch 1996; Elias 2009; Jolly 2007, 2014). European integration is
envisioned as an opportunity to surpass and circumvent state boundaries,
and independence within the E U represents the occasion to overcome
this obstacle (Lynch 1996; Jolly 2007, 2014). In contrast, the UKIP
embodies the utmost relevance of Euroscepticism for populist nationalist
parties, the firmest defender of independence of the United Kingdom
from the EU and the clearest example of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the
EU. However, the opposition of minority and populist nationalist parties
on the position and salience of European integration and its evolution
Prefac e ix
over the past three decades is less parsimonious across time and space in
the E U than the British case might indicate.
This book builds on the impact of these structural cleavage transforma-
tions at the macro level in the EU to examine the political crafting of nation-
alisms in the European arena. The book traces the evolution of the perspectives
on European integration of nationalist party families and their process of
Europeanization. Nationalisms have progressively transcended their natural
‘domestic’ boundaries and integrated into the European multilevel political
system. The book narrows its scope from large-scale processes of political
change to describe and explain the coordination of nationalisms in the
European arena. It focuses on the determinants of transnational party coor-
dination of the different types of nationalist parties in the European party
system. The book investigates the ideological, institutional and strategic fac-
tors that influence the efforts of party elites for transnational party coordina-
tion. This study starts with the investigation of the evolution of the position
of the heterogeneous minority and populist nationalist party families on
European integration. To what extent has European integration become an
ideological baseline for heterogeneous minority and populist nationalist par-
ties? To what extent have transnational nationalisms developed and what
form has Europeanization taken? In the past three decades, both minority
and populist party families, despite being still small party families, have
achieved sufficient numbers of MEPs in the European parliament to form
political groups and Europarties. However, the political translation of
domestic nationalisms into Europeanized party families has remained lim-
ited. As minor party families, both nationalist party families have been
hunted by political invisibility within the European party system.
The book analyzes the trajectories of transnational party coordination
of minority and populist nationalist parties and their characteristic frag-
mentation describing the tensions between unifying and diversifying their
membership across political groups and Europarties. The fragmentation of
nationalisms has significant implications for the translation of political
preferences on a renewed territorial dimension of political conflict on
political sovereignty into the European party system. Nationalist party
families occupy a minor and nebulous space in the European party system
formed by national parties, European political parties and political groups
in the European parliament. In outstanding contrast to the transnational-
x Preface
ism that characterizes most party families and their symmetry in homog-
enous party groups at the EU parliament, minority and populist nationalist
party families have faced the challenge of how to achieve common trans-
national collective action. These party families have historically exhibited
an asymmetric and temporarily truncated political configuration in differ-
ent political groups and parties at the EU level.2 The historical fragmenta-
tion of nationalist party families displayed in the early 1980s, when their
presence was marginal in the European arena and mainstream party fed-
erations already existed, remained visible during the next decades and it is
still a permanent feature of their organization in the European arena.
Multiple factors allegedly contributed to the limits of the
Europeanization. Beyond the minor size and fringe character of national-
ist party families, often used as explanation for their difficult trajectories
of Europeanization, they add the particularistic nature of their demands
and their uneven territorial presence across the EU. Moreover, country
and region idiosyncrasies made the emergence of transnational coordina-
tion and political organization in Europe a difficult political endeavor.
Ultimately, as Gould and Messina argue, traditional and new varieties of
nationalism cannot be automatically transposed into the EU political
space (Gould and Messina 2014: 4). The contrasting nature of functional
and territorial-identity conflicts provides a different underlying logic for
political action (Caramani 2015: 286). If there is not automatic transpo-
sition of nationalist party families into the EU arena, then what forms or
modes of transnational party coordination can emerge?
Nationalisms in Europe
Nationalism in its muliple forms is at the heart of contemporary academic
and political debates in Europe. Concept stretching represents a real chal-
lenge in its study. Nationalism is analyzed as a political movement, a cul-
ture, a political religion, and ultimately, a feeling (Smith 2010). One of the
leading experts in the field even avoids providing a unifying definition
of nationalism (Brubaker 1996). In its most common usage, nationalism
is defined as a political ideology. Nationalism is a principle of political
legitimacy, which holds that the political and the cultural unit should be