Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe: Party Politics and the Meanings of Statehood in a Supranational Context

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Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe

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Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe Party Politics and the Meanings of Statehood in a Supranational Context

Janet Laible

SEPARATISM AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE NEW EUROPE

Copyright © Janet Laible, 2008. All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60896-2 ISBN-10: 0-230-60896-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laible, Janet. Separatism and sovereignty in the new Europe : party politics and the meanings of statehood in a supranational context / Janet Laible. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-230-60896-5 1. Nationalism—European Union countries. 2. Supranationalism— European Union countries. 3. Political parties—European Union countries. 4. Europe—Politics and government—1989– I. Title. JN30.L35 2008 320.54094—dc22

2008017655

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions First edition: December 2008 10

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Printed in the United States of America.

To my mother and father, with much love


Contents

List of Tables

viii

Acknowledgments

ix

1. Introduction: Separatism and Statehood in an Integrating Europe

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Part I: Reimagining Separatism: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations 2. New Contexts and New Meanings for Strategies of Self-Government 3. The Emergence and Development of Political Nationalism in Scotland and Flanders

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Part II: Implicating Europe in Separatist Politics 4. Nationalists and Europe: Initial Encounters 5. Europeanizing the Nationalist Agenda: The Scottish National Party 6. Europeanizing the Nationalist Agenda: Vlaams Belang

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Part III: Separatism at the Heart of the European Union 7. The European Parliament: The Nationalist Presence in a European Institution 8. Lobbying for the “National Interest” 9. Conclusion: New Nationalisms in a New Europe?

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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185 205

List of Tables

3.1 General election results, Scotland 3.2 Results of Scottish Parliament elections 3.3 Belgian Chamber of Deputies and Flemish Parliament election results 7.1 European Parliament election results, Great Britain 7.2 European Parliament election results, Scotland 7.3 European Parliament election results, Flanders 7.4 Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1985–89 7.5 Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1989–94 7.6 Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1994–99

45 50 61 155 155 156 164 165 166

Acknowledgments

This book began its life as a dissertation at Yale University, and it would not have reached sturdy adulthood had it not had many mentors and friends to help it through its infancy. I was fortunate to have David Cameron as my advisor. At times, his patience with the dissertation project far exceeded mine; indeed, he had faith that the project would work even when I did not. Even after its completion he has continued to offer good advice and encouragement, for which I thank him. William Foltz and James Scott always helped to remind me why my questions matter and, along with David, remain inspirations to me of what comparative politics can, and should, be. At Yale and at Oxford I made many other friends who also, mysteriously, never doubted this project and my ability to say something in it that was worth saying. These include Dorothee Heisenberg, Melissa Michelson, Soo Yeon Kim, Katie McDermott, Amy Richmond, Cass Moseley, Jo Webb, Paul Martin, Chih Hoong Sin, Marc Stears, Richard O’Leary, Mary Duffy, Malavika Kasturi, Rohan D’Souza, Kay Mansfield, and the amazing Harold Forsythe. I am also grateful to the Fates, who one night in Oxford seated me at dinner next to Michael Keating. His inspiration in this book will no doubt be clear, but I also want to thank him for his truly generous support when I was beginning this enterprise. Manik Hinchey deserves thanks beyond measure for her friendship throughout the years and for reminding me that this is all, actually, a lot of fun. This project would not have been possible without other types of support as well. I was fortunate to receive generous financial and institutional support from a number of sources, including my parents, who probably had no idea what they were getting themselves into when I started graduate school. Lehigh University has supported me with generous funding to present my research at conferences and with research leave in 2004. I would also like to thank Yale University and the International Security Studies Program at Yale for supporting my research with fellowships that allowed me to undertake field research and to complete my dissertation. I am grateful to the Yale Center for International

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Acknowledgments

and Area Studies and European Union Studies at Yale for providing a home for me during the fall of 2004, and I would particularly like to thank Ian Shapiro and David Cameron for rewelcoming me to Yale at that time. During that stay in New Haven, I was also fortunate to meet Fiona Creed whose constant support and friendship improved my research as well as my life. An anonymous referee has greatly improved this project with thoughtful and attentive comments. Of course all flaws in this project are of my own making, but I am certain that there are fewer of them because of this person’s diligence and interest in this book. Claire Sullivan contributed gracious assistance in gathering much of the recent data on the European Parliament; the many hours she spent braving the website of the European Parliament archives surely were some kind of lesson in the “democratic deficit,” but I would not have been able to complete this project without her. Henri Barkey, Rajan Menon, Rick Matthews, and Breena Holland have all been essential to the successful completion of this project, offering intellectual support when I asked and solace when I needed it. They also provided whatever it is you call it when someone allows you to kvetch endlessly about the same thing for years on end, which is absolutely crucial for someone trying to complete a book manuscript. Matt Stahl met me at the hardest time to meet someone who is writing a book (near the end) and has reminded me that there is still a lot left to say, about many other things, in the future. Paulette Kurzer read large sections of the manuscript and has been a source of positive inspiration, and I am constantly reminding myself how lucky I am to have met her. Finally, I thank my parents, James and Elizabeth Laible, and John, Margaret, Mark, Ross, Jon, and JoAnn, who never doubted that I could do this and who never, ever asked, “When will it be done?” Janet Laible Bethlehem, Pennsylvania June 23, 2008

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Separatism and Statehood in an Integrating Europe

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he negative referendum votes on the European Union (EU) constitutional treaty in the summer of 2005 provoked an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future of European institutions and about the legitimacy of European integration as a political project. However, observers of other aspects of EU politics have been far more sanguine. The recent enlargement of the EU has led many to hail Europe’s ability to reshape the domestic political and economic structures of candidate countries for EU membership. In particular, analysts have noted the EU’s success in influencing candidate states’ policies on preserving or implementing minority rights and eliminating discriminatory measures against ethnic minorities.1 This success, along with the idea of a Europe in which state boundaries are less relevant for determining the political and economic futures of citizens, has contributed to widespread optimism that nationalist conflict is slowly but assuredly exiting the European stage: in a “borderless Europe,” fighting to create new borders makes little sense. Even observers of current and potential EU candidate countries such as the Western Balkan states, where ethnic conflict continues to flare into violence and where Kosovo Albanian demands for independence remain a challenge to stability, have voiced the belief that nationalist conflict will dissipate under the influence of the EU and European integration.2 The EU is increasingly depicted as a magic elixir that can cure the continent of separatist conflict and the political agitation of national minorities. But is this optimism justified? This book poses a fundamental challenge to the image of an integrating Europe that has vanquished nationalism, by analyzing separatist movements that are not only enduring under conditions of integration but also adapting to the challenges of integration and developing new strategies to take advantage of their situation in, and access to, EU institutions. These new strategies were heralded in 1988, when delegates to

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the annual conference of the Scottish National Party (SNP) voted overwhelmingly for a new election theme for their party—“Independence in Europe!”— which clearly resituated the drive for Scottish independence in the context of an integrating Europe. The decision at the SNP party conference bespoke a trend emerging across the member states of the European Community (EC). Major separatist and autonomist parties in Wales, Catalonia, the Basque territory, Flanders, northern Italy, and elsewhere had begun to articulate a vision of self-government that promoted a strong, positive role for their respective nations “in Europe.” Movements for regional3 autonomy or independence that had initially opposed their respective states’ joining the then EC were becoming vocal enthusiasts of self-government in the EC and later the EU. Even parties that remained wary of European integration, such as the Vlaams Blok in Flanders, whose members overtly expressed antipathy toward any form of European “federalism,” began to argue that national liberation would require the context of a European polity. At one time, nationalist parties had commonly called for the establishment of fully sovereign and at times even economically autarchic new states. However, by the late 1980s, many were claiming that the success, if not the very survival, of any independent state they might seek to establish would be inexorably linked to its situation within an integrating European polity. Yet this project—independence in Europe—initially appears paradoxical, on both empirical and theoretical grounds: What is to be gained by creating so-called independent polities in a Europe that is increasingly undermining the traditional territorial jurisdictions of the state? The creation of an “internal market characterized by the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital”4 and the introduction of a single currency seem to challenge the project of national separatism, which, at the very least, is dedicated to creating new borders. Furthermore, moves to situate nationalist projects in a European context emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s, precisely the era in which the EC and then the EU were becoming significantly more supranational. Nationalist parties advocating independence in Europe seem trapped in an inescapable contradiction: the desire to secure sovereign authority and then immediately to surrender it to anational or multinational European institutions appears to undermine the very premise of nationalism. Separatists could have chosen an obvious, and clearly more logically consistent, response: understanding “independence” to mean the creation of new sovereign states outside the borders of an integrating Europe. But numerous parties have retooled their strategies to embrace Europe at precisely the historical juncture at which state sovereignty appears to have been dealt its most severe blow.

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Given the contradictory tendencies of the “independence in Europe” project, why have separatists chosen this strategy and what do they hope to achieve with it? Why is the prospect of situating a movement for independence specifically in the context of unprecedented European supranationalism so attractive? What can the study of specific cases of separatism contribute to the analysis of nationalism and ethnic politics under conditions of regional and global integration in general, and what would such an analysis predict for the relationship between European integration and nationalism in potential future member states such as Turkey and the states of the Western Balkans? I investigate the empirical and theoretical puzzles of separatism in the context of the EU by focusing on two of the most powerful separatist parties in Europe, the SNP and Vlaams Belang.5 In particular, I analyze how and why party organization, strategy, and philosophy adapted to the European context to produce the seemingly contradictory positions that these parties now hold. To explain these positions, I argue that the EU sustains the importance of statehood, and therefore separatism, and creates new forms of political capital that nationalists can employ to support their claims for self-government. In this argument, statehood is understood not as the intrinsic end of nationalist politics but as a means for nationalists to achieve legitimacy and authority, thus opening the possibility that statehood may remain valuable to separatists even under the conditions of highly compromised sovereignty that exist in the EU. I ground my argument in the empirical record of Scottish and Flemish separatists and examine how both parties have negotiated the “sovereigntyscape”6 of the new Europe and the apparent contradictions it presents to separatist ambitions. My findings in this book run counter to much current opinion about the EU and its impact on nationalist mobilization. I provide evidence that, despite ongoing European integration, separatists have few incentives to set aside their struggles for independence and indeed may find new resources in the EU to strengthen their cases, if not fight their battles, for statehood. The Puzzles of “Independence in Europe” In this book, I focus on three theoretical and empirical problems that together suggest the importance of separatism in the EU as a subject of inquiry. While voluminous literature on nationalist movements and on states and sovereignty has emerged in recent years, the particularly complex relationship between separatists and the integrating European polity remains weakly theorized. Indeed, some scholars adopt positions that leave little room for understanding why a seemingly contradictory set of nationalist strategies has emerged and what its consequences are for nationalism as both political

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practice and a subject of academic research, and for European politics. And in much writing there is little effort to explore the extent to which separatists have included EU institutions, policies, and resources in their arguments. The (Im)possibility of Separatism in a Supranational Context The main theoretical puzzle addressed in this book is the apparent contradiction between the simultaneous quests by separatist parties for independence and for membership in the EU. The idea of self-government in the EU contradicts basic precepts about political nationalism that have established themselves as hegemonic in academic discourse in the past two decades. A dominant body of literature associates nationalism as a form of social mobilization and as doctrine with the modern, or Weberian, state. Whereas one could argue that nationalists may seek a variety of political goals,7 Ernest Gellner proposed that nationalism is “a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent,” and clearly indicated that the relevant political unit of concern is the state.8 Gellner’s work has established itself as a principal text in the contemporary study of nationalism, with his placement of the state at the core of nationalist mobilization influencing a generation of scholars.9 Analysts have established the relationship between nationalism and the modern state on a variety of grounds. Gellner viewed the modern state as the crux of the nationalist principle by definition, because the state establishes sovereign authority over clear territorial boundaries within which citizens can be distinguished from “others.”10 Some scholars, including Gellner, propose that the linkage between nationalism and the modern state is a functional requirement of successful industrialization and modernization more broadly or that nationalism provides the mechanism for building mass loyalty to the state, without which the state cannot mobilize individuals for war or other collective tasks. Hence the modern state as a form of political organization survives by legitimizing itself through nationalist practices, and nationalism emerges as an integral part of the historical development of the state.11 Others argue that nationalism is an ideological project employed by rising social classes to destroy obsolete forms of political organization (i.e., feudalism) and to legitimize their control of the state. Marxist analysis thus links nationalism to the triumph of liberal bourgeois revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the destruction of empires, and the establishment of the modern state as the norm of political organization on a global scale.12 From a variety of ideological perspectives, a consensus has developed that nationalism could only emerge, and indeed must emerge, in the era of the modern state and cannot be disengaged from the state or from the circumstances

Introduction

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that engendered it. Whether the “national unit” and the “political unit” are linked by the forces of industrialization or more specifically of Marxist historical development, these theories define nationalist mobilization in the context of an exclusive political goal: the capture of the modern state. Because the “modernist” tradition makes little provision for nationalism in any framework aside from that of the modern state, the strategy of selfgovernment in an integrating Europe is highly problematic. It does not conform to an understanding of nationalism as the effort to make the “political unit” congruent with the national unit, because the political unit at stake is ambiguous: along with the impact of economic globalization, European integration has demolished the ideal of the modern sovereign state. The constituent elements of the modern state, which were politically consolidated in the centuries following the end of the late medieval period in Europe, involved a historically unique set of claims to sovereignty and territoriality. In Hendrik Spruyt’s understanding, the modern state is sovereign in that it claims final authority and recognizes no higher source of jurisdiction. It is territorial in that rule is defined as exclusive authority over a fixed territorial space. The criterion for determining where claims to sovereign jurisdiction begin or end is thus purely a geographic one.13

As I discuss in the following chapter, the increasing supranationalism of the EU is reflected in the myriad areas in which states no longer remain sovereign, pooling or sharing sovereignty with other states and EU institutions. Nationalist movements may continue to seek states, but these states possess little of the ultimate authority over territory that states claimed in a previous era. Thus the quest for statehood by contemporary separatists seems to be an archaic crusade, leaving modernist theories at a loss to explain why stateseeking nationalism continues to exist at all. Nested within this puzzle is the paradox of the timing of the “independence in Europe” project. If integration itself poses a challenge to sovereign statehood, why have nationalists chosen to adopt Europe as the framework for their struggles at the time when winning independence would offer the lowest returns, that is, at the point in modern European history when the sovereignty of states is most under threat? For theories that emphasize the relationship between nationalism and the modern state, the logical route for separatists would have been to make arguments for independence in Europe early in the process of integration—in particular during the decades preceding the Single European Act, when member states retained greater capacity as sovereigns—or to pursue independence outside the EU explicitly to reject integrationist attacks on state sovereignty. Despite the theoretical quandaries

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of academics and despite deepening European integration, however, separatist parties persist in their efforts to create states. Some may argue that “minority nations cannot simply aspire to reproduce the state structures of another era,”14 but separatists do seem intent on “reproducing the state structures” of the present era in Europe. I will argue that reinterpreting the meanings of statehood and sovereignty for separatists is the key to breaking out of the apparent paradox. Party Family and Party Responses to European Integration The second puzzle that I consider emerges from the empirical record of separatist behavior. Despite the diversity of parties that espouse separatist and regionalist ambitions, a common thread emerges across this diversity: Europe has become the overarching context in which major nationalist movements in EU member states envision their future polities, and the “independence in Europe” project has been taken up by separatist movements that otherwise differ on numerous dimensions. Yet this observation challenges the findings of many studies on political party responses to the EU, which either predict different positions on Europe for nationalist parties or are silent on the question of nationalist interactions with the EU. Why does a wide range of nationalist parties share a similar goal in their European politics, when much current analysis suggests that they should not? Are there other aspects of their interactions with Europe that might not be predicted from the literature? Much useful recent work has analyzed the orientations of political parties toward European integration, but little of this attempts to explain the attitudes and behaviors of nationalists, or work that does consider the subject offers few means to explain why a diverse group of nationalist parties would pursue a similar goal. Comparative work has focused on the larger European party families, although some analysts examine the attitudes of smaller parties such as Greens and parties of the extreme right.15 The few studies that discuss nationalist parties conclude that party family is critical for predicting party positions on Europe and that a “regionalist” party orientation usually indicates a favorable attitude toward the EU. Furthermore, both academic and popular opinion holds that the extreme right is opposed to European integration, pointing to cases such as the French National Front, which openly advocates withdrawal from the EU.16 Yet analysts of “regionalist” behavior invariably confront problems in their attempts to generalize from a small number of cases, because the regionalist party family includes parties of strikingly different ideologies, with a variety of understandings of identity and with numerous political goals, including

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weak autonomy, full federalization, and separate statehood. For example, placing the left-of-center, independence-seeking SNP, with its long-standing suspicions of a highly centralized, supranational EU, in the same party family as the autonomist, prointegration, center-right Catalan CiU (Convergència i Unió) offers only a confused portrait of nationalist “attitudes” toward Europe, as does the categorization of Vlaams Belang with far-right parties such as the French National Front that, unlike Vlaams Belang, seek to exit the current EU entirely. Furthermore, literature that relies on static party family characteristics to explain approaches to Europe provides few means to account for changes in party approaches or to theorize about how and why change might occur. Both the SNP and Vlaams Belang have changed their policies toward Europe over time. The SNP long opposed membership but shifted its stance to favor it; Vlaams Belang initially expressed generally positive sentiments on the idea of an EC but has become increasingly disturbed by the supranational tendencies of the EU. The positions of both parties at the beginning of the twenty-first century have little in common with their positions toward Europe a couple of decades ago, and an analyst discussing these parties needs some means of explaining changes over time in the parties’ stances with regard to Europe. A related phenomenon to explain emerges from the architecture of party policy on Europe: why parties articulate policies or positions that do not appear to hold together in a coherent vision or that cannot be neatly described as “in favor of ” or “opposed to” the EU. The literature discussed above assumes that party positions can be cast along a continuum ranging from “pro-Europe” to “Euro-skeptic” or that such a continuum can explain party attitudes, policies, and interests in the EU. If one proposes that a party family, such as the regionalist party family, is largely “favorable” to Europe, what are the dimensions of this favorable attitude—favorable to what: to increased integration and supranationalism, to retaining the EU in its present institutional configuration, or to “Europe” as a concept or cultural idea? Similar questions emerge if we interrogate the meaning of party “opposition” to Europe. A pro/skeptic duality disguises the multiple meanings that Europe and integration may take on within a party: Europe may be understood as a set of institutions, policies, a political community of ideals and values, or a set of processes that unfold at different speeds. Furthermore, assigning parties to a single point, even in a multidimensional space with respect to a number of these meanings, overlooks the ways in which Europe may be contested within parties, producing contradictory responses as well as sites where struggles for power occur and where power relations within parties are defined. An investigation into the internal dynamics of the SNP and

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Vlaams Belang suggests that each party contains a complex set of positions on European integration and that Europe has become embedded in party debates about the strategies and implications of the overall nationalist project. Contrary to expectations that nationalists (or regionalists) will produce a coherent position on the EU, the SNP and Vlaams Belang demonstrate that nationalist parties respond to Europe in ways that may be contradictory, fragmented, and highly malleable over time. This project thus tackles the empirical puzzle of why separatist parties pursue the project of independence in Europe but develop this strategy from differing interests and perspectives. I suggest that current studies can predict little of the substance of nationalist party policies toward Europe, if party family is taken as the primary explanatory variable of these policies. Specifically, we are left with few tools to explain changes in party policy on Europe and, with the emergence of the independence in Europe agenda, to analyze the complex responses to Europe that separatists are producing under the framework of this agenda. Managing the New Politics of Separatism: Activists and Voters The third puzzle I address in this book concerns the internal party and external constituency consequences for separatists who adopt the strategy of independence in Europe. Nationalists who seek self-government in the EU risk appearing ready to sacrifice the national sovereignty and privileged role of the nation in governing that they claim to champion. European integration challenges the very basis of the political claims of many nationalists, the belief that statehood will hand the reins of policymaking in areas most critical to the fortunes of the nation to that nation as a collectivity. Even for autonomist parties that limit their goals to the reorganization of territorial authority within existing states, European integration presents a challenge, as it reassigns a wide range of policy areas to supranational governance by EU institutions, in which autonomous regions may have limited power to affect policy agendas and outcomes. Thus embracing a European context represents a massive transformation of the meaning of nationalist politics because it offers an explicit endorsement for sharing political authority with nonnationals. Whereas European integration may become a tool for nationalists to advance their struggles, this tool transforms nationalist politics and introduces tensions into nationalist debate about the nature of sovereignty in a supranational context. Why do parties opt to situate independence in Europe, when it entails a rejection of previous understandings of nationalism in a party? And how do parties manage the tensions that can emerge, among party activists and with voters, from advocating an approach that appears self-contradictory and at odds with party history?

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It is reasonable to assume that “independence in Europe” should introduce serious tensions into these parties, even to the extent of including threats and realities of schisms. Yet the nationalist parties in this study have managed to avoid this fate, a surprising outcome for several reasons. First, claims to sovereignty are fundamental to the existence of separatist movements, a foundational element of these parties. Walking away from the basis of a party’s existence is unlikely to happen without serious internal debate or disruption in that party. Second, these parties initially were not supportive of, and were even hostile to, EU membership (the SNP) and extensive integration (Vlaams Belang). These stances were once firmly embedded in party histories and should have militated against adopting a European framework for separatism in the first place and at least suggest that both parties should have experienced residual difficulties with activists and voters after the framework was adopted. Finally, the issue of Europe has already hobbled and even split other political parties. For example, the British Conservative Party has been effectively paralyzed by deep internal party divisions on European issues that have gone unresolved for over a decade; the rise of the UK Independence Party in addition poses a direct challenge to a Conservative Party that is perceived as too “soft” on Europe. Yet neither the SNP nor Vlaams Belang has undergone paralysis or destructive factionalization because of its European tactics, despite the fact that independence in Europe challenges the key propositions on which these parties were founded. This book seeks to explain how the SNP and Vlaams Belang have managed to avoid being destabilized as organizations by their choices on European politics and how, or whether, these parties have avoided being punished by voters because of their European policies. Explaining the Puzzles Recent writing on nationalism from a variety of perspectives acknowledges the transformation of state sovereignty in the modern world and the changing political opportunity structure that ethnic entrepreneurs and nationalist elites confront. A popular motif is the image of “the new world disorder” or “the world on fire,” in which the state is powerless or unwilling to mitigate the impact of globalization and regionalization—in particular market forces—on ethnic and national communities, which mobilize in response to state failure and weakness.17 In this perspective, the state is already passé, overwhelmed by social, technological, and economic forces it cannot contain or control and with limited, if any, relevance for solving the crises engendered by these forces. Although I cannot address the extensive globalization literature here, the subfield of work noted above offers few clues for analyzing movements

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that continue to seek independent statehood: if states are so compromised by globalization that they cannot address the substantive concerns of their citizens (ethnic minority and otherwise), how can newly independent states—especially as these are inevitably going to be smaller units than the state from which separation occurs—offer any improved capacity to do so? Arguments about the inherent weakness of the state under contemporary conditions of globalization cannot explain why, for some ethnic and nationalist actors, independent statehood remains desirable. Nor does the extant literature on self-determination movements within the EU grasp the nettle of the contradiction faced by separatists. Some of this literature offers case studies without generating comparative analysis across cases; other studies recognize that the EU represents a new environment for separatist politics but fail to explore the dynamics of party responses to it and interactions with it.18 Still other works focus on autonomist or regionalist movements as players in a new European order, in which a borderless EU reduces the value of the state in nationalist politics and offers new opportunities for transborder cooperation, cultural mobilization, and regional development.19 In contrast, this volume begins with the premise that the state retains value for separatist parties in the EU, asks why this is so, and explores the consequences of this for their negotiations of the European environment. Parties such as the SNP and Vlaams Belang challenge the assumptions of those who claim that globalization and regional integration make the state irrelevant, forcing us to shift our analytical lens to inquire about the circumstances under which states do still matter and about the ways in which they matter. Indeed, the parties at the center of this study do not themselves believe that states are powerless to protect their interests; on the contrary, they are reasserting the importance of the state in structuring political life. A main task of this study is to locate the “independence in Europe” project in such an analytical middle ground that accepts the importance of the state as a functional (and desirable) political unit but that recognizes the transformation of the state, and the sovereignty associated with the modern state, by global and regional forces. In this book, I make a case for the continuing centrality of the state in separatist politics but argue that the meaning of statehood for separatists has changed. While capturing an independent state was once the means to claim full sovereignty over a specified territory, this is no longer possible in a world where state sovereignty has been compromised by regional and global integration. However, I argue in the following chapters that achieving independence still represents the optimal means for nationalists to maximize sovereignty in the EU. While the choice for independence in Europe may represent settling

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for “compromised” sovereignty, what matters to separatists is not whether they possess the absolute sovereignty idealized in the notion of the modern state, but whether they can secure the maximum possible sovereignty in the European political system and whether they can be considered sovereign equals with other EU members. Thus the strategy of seeking independent statehood retains elements of continuity with nationalisms of an earlier era, with the novelty of current nationalists’ agendas manifesting itself in the new meanings that statehood implies in the contemporary EU. The legal political form that separatists seek—the state—has not changed; however, the possibilities for political control once thought to be inherent in this form have. In responding to the main theoretical puzzle raised in this project, this volume situates Scottish and Flemish nationalism in a framework that follows from what Michael Keating referred to as a post-sovereign era, in which sovereignty is “shared, divided and contested” and in which “sovereignty discourse persists but is detached from its previous state referent.”20 Situating my analysis in this perspective allows me to challenge the idea that political nationalism must be bound to the framework of the modern state, and instead focuses attention on the properties of the institutional and normative environment in which nationalism occurs. This approach suggests that the type of polity that nationalists seek, even what nationalists expect statehood to achieve, is conditioned by the geographical and historical context in which a movement is located and hence may change as contexts change and as nationalists themselves respond to such changes. I propose that the properties of statehood and sovereignty have historically been problematic and contingent, and that the type of nationalism depicted in modernist literature is an ideal type that may only be suitable for analyzing nationality politics during a recent brief period of history; nationalists currently may have reason to seek something other than “sovereign” statehood. With a focus on the contexts in which a nationalist project is situated and on the meanings of sovereignty within these contexts, this book proposes three hypotheses regarding separatist projects situated in the EU. First, although state sovereignty is “compromised” in the EU, statehood remains desirable for separatists because the state continues to provide the power and legitimacy they seek better than would other forms of political organization, such as autonomous or federal regions. Second, nationalists believe that compromised sovereignty within the EU best serves their interests because the alternative—statehood outside the EU—is worse: separatists see clear net gains from statehood in an integrating Europe. Third, a focus on the importance of context for structuring the meanings of nationalist politics suggests that shifts in context will create pressure for shifts in or reevaluations of party

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tactics and even of party strategy. More specifically, we can hypothesize that major shifts in state sovereignty in the EU, notably the transformation of relations among the member states and European institutions, offer “windows” in which party tactics and strategic thinking may be radically reconstituted. If these hypotheses can be supported for the cases of Scottish and Flemish separatism, the findings of this project will indicate that these parties are engaging in what I refer to as a quest for sovereign equality that represents continuity, not a break, with previous centuries of nationalist politics. The findings will also confirm the importance of establishing the distinction between the goals of nationalists (the desire to be accepted as sovereign equals, which I discuss further in Chapter 2) and their strategies (the pursuit of formal statehood). Furthermore, such findings will suggest that separatists view the context of European integration as an opportunity to enhance, not diminish, their sovereignty, leading to the conclusion that separatism is likely to remain a vibrant and thriving force in EU member states in the foreseeable future. While a post-sovereigntist framework provides new means of interpreting the behavior of parties seeking independence in Europe, it provides few clues for explaining how parties develop these tactics and the consequences for parties of adopting them. The missing link that needs to be theorized and empiricized is the connection between a context of post-sovereigntist statehood and the perceptions and actions of separatists with respect to this context. The impetus for the “Europeanization” of separatist politics in Scotland and Flanders must be sought in the dynamics of the parties themselves. Literature on political parties that is concerned with policy change offers clues for explaining the emergence and development of the European agendas of these parties. Party leadership and the relative power of party factions have been identified as critical for understanding how parties adopt new tactics and reposition themselves in competitive space.21 Questions of whether a change should be made in a party platform may turn on whether the issue is perceived as critical to such party goals as vote maximization, the preservation of an ideological or constitutional goal, the satisfaction of member demands, or through some combination of these, the preservation of party coherence. And these questions may hang on the balance of power of factions within parties, for example, between members whose interests may be more “extroverted” and concerned with vote maximization and those who are more “introverted” and concerned with internal party goals. More critically, the management of party tactics and strategy is contingent on the perceptions of leaders, their desire to act, and their ability to do so.22 A transformation to a new understanding of sovereignty in a party may be possible, but without political actors who recognize Europe as a potentially valuable context

Introduction

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13

and who are able to muster support for their ideas, European politics might never move onto, or to the top of, nationalist agendas. I work inductively in this book to demonstrate that several factors emerge as key to shaping the agendas of the SNP and Vlaams Belang with respect to the EU: the concept of the nation articulated by the party (inclusive or exclusive), the availability of political entrepreneurs who identify “Europe” as having strategic value and who can win internal party support for their ideas, and the structure of domestic party competition (i.e., the extent to which European integration is a salient political issue and to which there is an opening in party issue space for nationalists to take a position on it). Ideological disposition strongly influences party attitudes toward European integration, but ideology alone does a poor job of explaining how, why, and when Europe is mobilized for the nationalist cause. Despite the differences that produce specific party approaches to Europe, I argue that these parties share common tactics in their European politics. They seek to use Europe as a set of resources to help question the legitimacy of their respective states and as a new participatory arena in which to publicize their struggles and to mobilize domestic support. Nationalist parties use the context of an integrating Europe for strategic positioning in their domestic electoral campaigns and as an intellectual framework in which to situate their demands for self-government. They participate formally and informally in European institutions in a quest for tangible and symbolic benefits for their constituents, in order to demonstrate commitment to a self-described “national interest.” Nationalists also use the European arena to publicize their struggles to international and domestic audiences, to assert their right to be recognized as national leaders, and to challenge the legitimacy of present constitutional arrangements. Yet participation in EU politics itself alters nationalist tactics. Whereas European integration has become a tool for nationalists to advance their struggles, this tool transforms nationalist politics and introduces tensions into nationalist debate about the nature of sovereignty in a supranational context. Party leaders therefore attempt to manage this apparent tension by asserting that self-government with limited sovereignty in the EU is preferable to the constitutional status quo. They focus on the benefits of EU membership for small states, with an emphasis on the power the future polity will have to shape the course of integration. Research Design This book is a study of two separatist parties that, in many ways, are responding to circumstances beyond their control. Separatists in Flanders and Scotland

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have watched, sometimes with apprehension and at other times with anticipation, as more powerful actors in the arena of EU politics have recast the relationship between the EU and its member states and have redefined the meaning of sovereignty in contemporary Europe. Yet this does not mean that these parties have been passive in the face of integration. An initial motivation for this project was to understand how political actors and political communities that have frequently been ignored in studies of European integration and policymaking have reacted to the transformation of their political opportunity structures, how they have acted to protect their interests in a rapidly changing European context, and how they have sought to create possibilities to promote their respective political agendas within the institutions and processes of EU politics. This book is intended to offer a general understanding of the parameters of separatist politics in the context of European integration. Although I use the Scottish and Flemish cases to evaluate a number of hypotheses about the impact of integration on separatist parties, I cannot claim to offer a definitive test of these hypotheses, given the small number of cases I explore. I hypothesize about the behavior of the parties in this study by resituating independence movements in the EU in a new understanding of statehood and sovereignty, not by offering a rigorous set of causal propositions to explain party behavior. To the extent that I do seek to explain the conditions under which party positions and tactics are recast in the context of the EU, my approach is largely probabilistic, not directly causal. Much of this project draws on inductive logic to assess the specific mechanisms that shape party responses to European integration. Although this approach is more descriptive than predictive, it does serve to illuminate the conditions under which nationalists might be more likely to recognize tactical opportunities in the context of European integration. And, with its detailed exploration of two separatist parties, this book allows for a richly textured understanding of how developments in an integrating Europe are refracted through domestic institutions, political party apparatuses, and nationalist intellectual frameworks. Furthermore, this book does not represent an effort to produce a new theory of the state or a new definition of sovereignty, nor does it seek to explain the trajectory of these parties in general or their electoral fortunes specifically. Instead, I draw on existing debates about the state and sovereignty in comparative politics and international relations literature, with a goal of reframing these debates to build a framework with which to understand the actions of separatists in the contemporary European context. I am not attempting to do formal political theory in this study; rather, my approach is more in line with normative theorizing that is informed by descriptive social science research. This theorizing is intended to improve how we, as social scientists,

Introduction

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think and reason about nationalism and nationalist practices: it proposes a reorientation of how scholars view the role of the state in nationalist struggles and draws on descriptive research to evaluate the meaning and logic of nationalism.23 This study covers the years 1985 to 2002, a critical period in which to study the trajectory of nationalism in the EU.24 These years encompass institutional and normative changes in the European environment that radically altered understandings of sovereignty in the member states of the EU and that created new possibilities and incentives for mobilization by actors who had previously played little or no role in European politics. The autumn of 1985 marked the beginning of the intergovernmental conference that culminated in the drafting of the Single European Act; in January 2002, the euro was introduced in eleven EU member states. During the intervening decade and a half, the creation of the Single Market, the shifting of power among European-level institutions, and legislation and policymaking processes that extended sovereignty to nonstate actors transformed Europe as a political opportunity structure for nationalists. It is not my intention to hold institutions constant at the European or domestic levels for this study. Rather, this study will evaluate how political actors respond to, and take advantage of, transformation and upheaval in their political environments. Choosing a definition of nationalism inevitably invites questions as to whether I am simply adopting a definition that will allow me to make a tidy argument against a theoretical straw man. However, my main interest is not in whether nationalism is “really” one type of politics or another; nor am I entering into debates about whether nationalism is an ideology, a form of collective action, or a type of group consciousness.25 Instead, I am concerned with how a dominant interpretation of nationalism, noted earlier, serves or does not serve to explain the behavior of contemporary separatist parties in the EU. In this project, I focus on nationalism in the form of political parties that seek formal statehood for their nation, ethnic group, or region—nationalism as embodied in Gellner’s definition—through electoral processes.26 I choose to focus my inquiry on such parties because they are likely to find the tensions created by the project of self-government in an integrating Europe the most complex to navigate and because they raise the most intriguing questions about the meanings of separatism and statehood in contemporary Europe. In addition, from a standpoint of policy relevance, separatist parties have the greatest potential to reshape the distribution of power among member states, regional populations, and the institutions of the EU. The independence of a region represents an extreme form of “political change”—destruction—for any state, and it is a worthwhile task to ask whether, and how, the EU itself is involved in such politics.

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Among the separatist parties in EU member states that could serve as cases for this study, the SNP and Vlaams Belang display the widest variation along a number of dimensions that might be presumed to have an impact on their strategies and actions with respect to Europe. The SNP and Vlaams Belang both seek to liberate their regions from their current states and both have had to confront the challenges produced by European integration to the ideal of the modern state. Yet the ideologies that these parties espouse differ significantly, they conceptualize their nations in different terms, they have different long-term constitutional visions of their desired polities, and they compete with the constitutional “status quo” parties of their regions under very different institutionally structured circumstances, differences that I explore further in Chapter 3. The SNP was founded specifically to seek independence for Scotland. In the 2005 general elections in the United Kingdom, the SNP won six seats in the House of Commons out of fifty-nine total Scottish seats, and won 17.7 percent of the Scottish vote, a slight decline from the previous general election. Although its polling figures at general elections have trended slightly downward since 1997, the SNP remains the third Scottish party at Westminster in terms of number of Scottish seats, trailing Labour (41 seats) and the Liberal Democrats (eleven seats). However, in the 2007 elections to the devolved Scottish Parliament, the SNP won 47 of 129 seats, one more than the second-place Labour Party, and the SNP formed a minority government to govern for the first time in its history.27 Vlaams Belang began life as the Vlaams Blok, emerging from a split with the Volksunie (People’s Union) in the late 1970s. Initially concerned primarily with winning independence for Flanders, by the late 1980s the Vlaams Blok adopted a number of policy stances that placed it on the far right of the political spectrum. The electoral breakthrough of the party occurred in the 1991 general elections, when the Vlaams Blok won 10.3 percent of the Flemish vote and won 12 seats out of 122 Dutch community seats in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies, surpassing the Volksunie (9.3%) in the share of the Flemish vote for the first time.28 Since then, the party’s support has increased in every regional and federal election, and in a result that shocked many Belgians, the renamed Vlaams Belang won the second-largest share of the vote (24.15%) for the Flemish regional elections in June 2004, as well as the second-largest number of seats, 32 out of 124 seats in the Flemish Parliament.29 Vlaams Belang’s electoral success continued in the Belgian elections of 2007, when the party’s share of the Flemish vote increased to 19.2 percent, its highest level ever at a federal election. This project is a qualitative study based on interviews conducted in 1996 and 1997 and on a wide range of written sources. I conducted interviews

Introduction

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17

with senior elected officials of the SNP and Vlaams Belang to probe the opinions of party elites about the impact of European integration on nationalist politics and to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics underlying key decisions in party history with respect to the EU. Individuals interviewed were (or are) important activists on European issues within their respective parties and in domestic or European institutions. I also interviewed regional lobbyists in Brussels whose mandates covered domestic territories with a strong nationalist presence, in order to garner additional information about nationalist behavior in the European arena. Other party members, including intellectuals and academics, offered important insight into the development of party positions on Europe.30 The publications of the EU provided detailed information concerning nationalist activism in the European Parliament. EU publications also offered data and background on policy areas such as regional development funding, to flesh out the changing incentive structure that European integration presented to nationalists. In addition, I relied on party publications, regional and national press, and secondary sources. European integration has been heralded by some as signaling the end of national separatist movements; integration, similar to globalization, undermines aspects of state sovereignty that have long been at the heart of nationalist struggles, reducing the incentives to create new states. The “debordering” of the EU member states is thus regarded optimistically by those who anticipate its contributing to a diminution of separatist—particularly, violent separatist—agitation. But this optimism may be misplaced. The findings of this book indicate that the EU itself, as a context, a set of resources, and a participatory arena, is in fact deeply implicated in the arguments and tactics of nationalists. States may be weakened in an integrating Europe, but this does not necessarily devalue them as targets for nationalists. If incentives continue to exist to create states in an integrating Europe, the EU may be generating new forms of political capital that nationalists can employ to support their claims for self-government, ultimately helping to undermine the territorial integrity of EU member states.


PART I

Reimagining Separatism: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations


CHAPTER 2

New Contexts and New Meanings for Strategies of Self-Government

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cholars who invoke understandings of nationalism as “parasitic on a prior and assumed definition of the [modern] state”1 argue that separatism is a useless endeavor in a world where the sovereignty of the modern state has been called into question. European integration appears to confirm many of the trends that are postulated to reduce incentives for national separatism. Originally envisioned by statesmen who argued that nationalism was antithetical to stability and prosperity in Europe, the EU by the late 1980s seemed to be ushering in an era that would, indeed, move it beyond nationalism. The creation of the Single Market and the growing authority of supranational2 institutions and decision-making procedures are argued to have transformed state sovereignty to an extent that many question the value of a separatist agenda in this context. Analysts who posit that self-government in the EU cannot be understood in the same terms as previous nationalisms base their arguments on an assumption that the European environment has changed to the extent that older forms of nationalism are no longer available and therefore that the nation-state paradigm is no longer achievable or desirable. The notion of “independence in Europe,” or self-government in the EU, thus appears paradoxical, a challenge to conventional understandings of nationalism and its goals and contrary to the empirical possibilities for political organization in the EU. For a nationalist party to seek a separate state and an overarching political and economic regulatory framework might seem nothing more than a surrender of the sovereignty that nationalists demand rightly belongs in the hands of the nation. This form of political mobilization arguably stretches the very definition of nationalism if we accept that nationalism involves the effort to make the national and political units congruent.

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In this chapter, I assess arguments about the impact of European integration on the possibilities for state-seeking nationalisms. While I agree that the qualities of statehood and sovereignty in the EU have changed in the past decades, I will also argue that the quest for self-government in an integrating Europe is neither an unresolvable paradox in the study of nationalism nor an unnecessary or self-defeating form of politics. I suggest that, in the contemporary era of globalization and regional integration, nationalists whose demands might once have required sovereign statehood to be fulfilled can now be satisfied with new forms of political organization and even with new understandings of the state. More generally, those who believe that we have entered what can be described as a “post-sovereign” world propose that the qualities of the polity that nationalists seek are conditioned by the geographical and historical context in which a movement is located, and hence may change as nationalists respond to alterations in context, detaching nationalism from its long-assumed “host”—the modern state. Thus the EU may represent a historically novel political opportunity structure in which nationalist movements need no longer opt for modern, sovereign statehood. Yet we are left to explain why nationalists might choose statehood at all in the EU, albeit statehood with weakened or compromised sovereignty, over other forms of polity. Why does statehood retain meaning for nationalists, even as sovereignty is being undermined by European integration? I foreground an aspect of the post-sovereignty paradigm that has, to this point, been undertheorized, namely, that what drives nationalists’ choices of polity is not their geographical and historical context per se, but their perceptions of what type of polity in a given context can best allow them to fulfill the fundamental objectives that drive their movements in the first place. Some nationalists may have goals that can be satisfied without the creation of new states. However, others may have more complex goals: I draw on understandings of nationalism as a struggle for international recognition, dignity, and equality and suggest that in a previous “modern” era of nationalism, these goals could be met only with the capture of a territorially sovereign state. Yet, if nationalists continue to espouse these goals, what options remain for them in an era and location where the modern state has lost much of its former meaning? I bring together the idea of a post-sovereign European order, which allows for the expression of nationalism in forms other than that of the modern state, with a reinterpretation of the role of the state in nationalist politics, to theorize about the meanings of statehood for separatist parties and to explore the conditions that have contributed to the endurance of these parties in an integrating Europe. I will argue that we should understand the type of polity that nationalists seek as a means for them to achieve their goals, not

Strategies of Self-Government

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as the end itself, and, in agreement with post-sovereigntist perspectives, that this means can change over time. But I will look to international relations literatures to argue that what makes a particular form of polity desirable for nationalists in a specific context is the norm of sovereignty that prevails in that context. Statehood in the EU, I will argue, retains meaning for nationalists because it still remains the sole means by which nationalists can be recognized as sovereign equals in the European political system. Regardless of the transformations of sovereignty that have occurred in EU member states over the past five decades, the state itself is still the primary means for some nationalists to achieve their goal: recognition under current EU norms as the legitimate authority over their respective territories. European Integration and the “Compromise” of State Sovereignty It has become commonplace to observe that the primary features of globalization—including its challenges to state sovereignty—take on their sharpest expression in the context of the EU. If globalization involves the movement of capital, labor, goods, and ideas “largely without regard for political borders,” the so-called four freedoms of the Single European Market mirror processes happening on a global scale.3 Indeed, at the time of the signing of the Single European Act in the mid-1980s, many Europeans viewed European integration as a form of globalization, imposing economic liberalization and the opening of markets to international goods, services, and culture.4 There is general agreement that significant powers once under the control of state governments are now exercised at the European level. However, some policy fields in which the EU now exercises extensive authority are often claimed to represent challenges to, or diminutions of, state sovereignty, because authority in these fields is traditionally associated with the sovereign authority of states over their populations and territories. The revised Treaty Establishing the European Community (TEC) in 1992 granted EU citizenship to every citizen of EU member states: with some limitations, EU citizenship conferred the right to vote and run for office in local and EP elections anywhere in the territory of the member states. While the TEC did not empower the EU itself to grant citizenship, the implications of Union citizenship intruded into norms about the sole prerogatives of states in decision making about residency and voting rights.5 Voting rights have thus been partially deterritorialized from the state (or reterritorialized to the EU). Similarly, the impact of European integration on removing barriers to the movement of workers across the EU suggests that the ability of states to

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regulate population flows across their borders has been diminished and that states can no longer claim sovereignty—the final source of authority and jurisdiction—over their territory. Efforts to complete the Single Market entailed the extension of European-level governance over individuals as economic citizens: to secure their freedom of movement across member states as producers, consumers, and workers. For some observers, the consequences of the Single Market thus included questions about economic citizenship and national immigration law, constraining state sovereignty and “undermin[ing] old notions about immigration control.”6 The EU shares jurisdiction over immigration policy with member states, but EU institutions have become increasingly involved in visa regimes, family reunification policy, and even consular affairs, with regard to EU citizens and immigrants from non-EU states, with a growing body of case law by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) attesting to the validity of EU jurisdiction in these areas. Yet shifts in sovereignty should be understood less as a question of what the EU does, or of what policy jurisdictions over which it has been granted authority by its member states, than as a matter of its claims to be the legally binding authority in these areas, that is, its assertion of hierarchical authority over member state territory. The areas in which we can imagine claims of territorial sovereignty by the EU are limited: the EU monopolizes governance in only a limited range of policy areas, depending on member states to enforce policy.7 However, the very act of accession to the Union compels political actors to accept limitations on their respective states’ sovereignty and to recognize the sovereign authority of the EU in at least some areas. The ECJ has played a key role in asserting the scope and form of EU sovereignty, moving in the early 1960s to establish that the Treaty of Rome imposed direct obligations on member states and took precedence over member state law. The principle of direct effect, established in the case of Van Gend en Loos (case 26/62, 1963), asserted that EU law could create rights and obligations for member state citizens that national courts were bound to recognize and uphold. The following year, the ECJ explicitly used the vocabulary of sovereignty to assert the supremacy of EU law (a principle that had not been articulated in the Treaty of Rome). Costa v. ENEL (case 6/64, 1964) confirmed the primacy of EU law, with the Court ruling: By creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity of representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the states to the Community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their individuals and themselves.


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That is, EU law must take precedence over national law in those areas where EU law applies, a doctrine confirmed in additional rulings such as Simmenthal v. Commission (case 92/78, 1978). Hence, Simon Hix concludes that the ECJ has contributed to the development of “state-like” properties for the EU, including dimensions of external sovereignty and internal coercion.8 And as integration has progressed over time, the obligations on new member states have increased. All new members are required to accept the acquis communautaire, the body of European law, policies, and resolutions that ran to eighty thousand pages at the time of the 2004 accession of ten new member states. Critical perspectives on the integrity of state sovereignty in the EU also come from proponents of the “multi-level governance” approach to European integration, who argue that state actors are no longer the only ones seeking, and able, to influence the direction of EU policy and integration: Europeanlevel, regional, and local actors (along with nonstate interest groups in some cases) frequently share ultimate decision-making authority over member state territory.9 This reconceptualization of state power in the EU suggests that sovereignty is diffuse, with noncentral state actors increasingly influential in numerous policy sectors. For multi-level governance theorists, a main factor contributing to the diminution of state territorial control in the EU has been the foregrounding of regional, or substate, actors in the EU since the Single European Act of 1987. This has contributed to an attack “from below” on the traditional central state monopolization of access to the international arena and has challenged domestic territorial control by the state. This attack has occurred on several fronts. First, beginning in the 1980s, numerous regional (and municipal) governments established information offices in Brussels, which served as informal routes for these localities to gain access to information networks in the EU and to attempt to influence policy outcomes.10 Second, reforms of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in 1988 introduced the “partnership principle” by which the European Commission would interact directly with local actors to plan and implement a portion of the development funding. This directly challenged the capacity of central state governments to play their traditional role as “gatekeepers” between domestic interest groups and the international arena.11 Third, the Maastricht Treaty institutionalized a formal role for regions in EU policymaking, creating the consultative Committee of the Regions (CoR) and authorizing regional ministers to stand in for national ministers in votes of the Council of Ministers (Article 146, Title II). With new avenues for regions to participate in EU politics, the supposedly once-clear congruence of state territory and state control began to slip, with the remit of the state increasingly challenged.

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These developments have led observers to argue that the EU and its member states constitute a radical reconceptualization of sovereignty, away from the hierarchical, territorial understanding associated with the modern state and toward something new, although there is little agreement on how to define this new understanding of sovereignty. Few accept that the EU itself has become a state or is fully sovereign over its members, instead arguing that the role of the state with regard to European institutions has been redefined, with the EU possessing some of the sovereignty once claimed by states.12 Sovereignty is thus “decentered and territory partly denationalized,” with sovereignty located not just in the EU but also in global regimes in which the EU is embedded (e.g., the WTO and international human rights law).13 Or, state sovereignty has been “diminished,” with the EU offering an image of variable sovereignty, possessing more robust claims to sovereignty in some functional or policy-specific realms than in others.14 These interpretations do not imply that states have surrendered all sovereignty, only that the understanding of sovereignty is no longer solely bound to state territory or state authority. Even intergovernmentalist theorists recognize that many aspects of European policymaking have supranational elements, although these theorists argue that such elements are the product of bargaining among states and ultimately reflect the preferences of state governmental actors. However, the argument that the partial sovereignty of the EU can be rejected, on the grounds that member states can simply reassert sovereignty over their respective territories if they choose, is difficult to sustain. In part, the rules for amending treaties militate in favor of the status quo, that is, the delegation of power to European institutions is unlikely to be overturned in successive treaty reforms.15 Geoffrey Garrett concedes, “The institutional structures underpinning the internal market are more constraining on the behavior of sovereign states than has been the case for other international regimes.”16 Yet many nationalist movements pin their arguments for self-government on claims that their present states have denied support to regional economies and have discriminated against regional interests, practices that nationalists will change by taking over the machinery of an independent state. With many of these tools unavailable, or available only in restricted forms, the appeal of separatism should be greatly reduced. The literature on European integration rarely refers directly to separatist nationalism, but the implications of the above arguments dovetail with the broader consequences of globalization sketched in the previous chapter: state institutions are no longer the primary actors in international politics and have been compromised domestically by subnational and supranational forces. Even before the Maastricht Treaty, some were suggesting that integration had already led to a “decay of nationalism


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and national sovereignty, if not national identity” in the EU.17 Others argue that the transformation of the EU has led nationalists to recognize that full self-government is unnecessary. The state, with declining capacity to respond to the political and economic grievances of nationalists, ceases to be their target. Instead, according to Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, As policy-making has shifted away from national executives up to the supranational level and down to subnational governments, so the issue of nationality appears separable from the demand for an independent state. In reducing the stateness of the European polity, the development of the EU has diverted ethnic groups away from a focus on forging a separate state as their ultimate goal.18

In the new European political environment, nationality can be expressed politically without the need for separate statehood as its institutional framework. While some may view a “separate state” as an unnecessary goal for contemporary nationalist movements, others argue that independent statehood is no longer possible in the EU, denuding European nationalism of the political potential that it held in the past. Eric Hobsbawm has suggested that even the leaders of nationalist movements recognize that their parties cannot accomplish what nationalist parties of the past could, and that if they view their goal as establishing themselves as “sub-units of a larger politicoeconomic entity [i.e., the EU] … they are in practice abandoning the classical aim of such movements, which is to establish independent or sovereign states.”19 In this sense, these movements are not “true” nationalisms, because nationalism is premised on the quest for sovereign statehood, which is no longer an option in the world political system or in the EU. Ironically, though, Hobsbawm argues that much of contemporary nationalism is in effect “separatist,” based on language or ethnicity, as opposed to the revolutionary and liberal nationalisms of earlier centuries that sought to “extend the scale of human social, political and cultural units: to unify and expand rather than to restrict and separate.”20 He argues that in the industrialized west, socalled nationalist movements should be viewed as regional interests cloaking themselves in the language of nationalism in a quest for legitimacy.21 Thus, for some analysts, European integration has intensified global trends concerning the state and sovereignty. EU member states have given up their authority in numerous policy areas, primarily “upward” to European institutions and to the pooled authority of the member states, but also “downward” to substate actors mobilizing to take advantage of opportunities created by integration. “Modernist” literature portrays the state as synonymous with total

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sovereignty; the modern state is the political unit to which nationalists aspire. As state authority is compromised by supranational and substate forces, nationalism as a means of empowering nations and ethnic groups to control the economics and politics of a bounded territory no longer makes sense. The phenomenon of self-government in the EU itself falls outside the parameters of Gellner’s work and is therefore rejected as not being “real” nationalism or as being an obsolete form of political expression. Modernist literature, in the event, presents no tools with which to investigate the phenomenon. Instead, it offers us a portrait of nationalism in absolutes: either nationalism is linked to the modern state or it is, by definition, no longer nationalism. “Post-sovereign” European Nationalisms? Regardless of whether we agree that it is appropriate to deem “nationalist” those political parties seeking to create new states in the EU, their actions do raise questions about the meaningfulness of their pursuits in a context where integration has diminished state sovereignty. Yet moving away from perspectives that rigidly harness nationalism to the modern state, we find interpretations of nationalism that draw our attention to new possibilities for political expression in an integrating Europe and in which nationalists negotiate the complex dynamics of sovereignty in the EU with varying strategies. These interpretations use the vocabulary of a post-sovereign political order to point out that the realities of the current global economy and regional integration in the EU imply such a transformation of state sovereignty that leaders of nationalist movements seek new ways to ensure that their constituents’ interests can be protected and represented, and that such strategies will not necessarily involve claims to modern or sovereign statehood. Post-sovereign approaches agree with the proposition that the sovereignty of the modern state has long been challenged and compromised. Instead of claiming the monopoly on sovereignty, states in the contemporary global order, and most significantly in the EU, “must share their prerogatives with supra-state, sub-state and trans-state systems.” In this understanding, the components of sovereignty—hierarchical authority and territory—are not only dispersed from states to other organizations and systems but are argued to be problematic on their own terms. Hierarchical authority itself loses its meaning in a European system that promotes legal pluralism, or in which claims to sovereignty are made that predate modern statehood and that are argued to coexist with it or even to preempt it.22 Furthermore, the meanings of territory have shifted in the European context. Territory and borders retain functional importance for the exercise of political power and as the basis for political institutions, but states must coexist with new forms of


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authority at the “supra-state, sub-state and trans-state” levels, that also imbue territory with meaning. However, the implications of these developments do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that nationalism is dying or is obsolete as a form of political mobilization. On the contrary, this transformation may be a context in which new types of nationalism are being expressed around new types of polities, and may not be the “end” of nationalism. Although states still exist and have meaning, what Michael Keating describes as the emerging transnational and European orders are “new opportunities for nations to project themselves without becoming states … [and] a complex opportunity structure, to which stateless nations have responded in different ways.”23 Some of this new European order in which nationalists operate was noted previously; for example, the development of regional representation in a variety of EU institutions, including the CoR and the ability of regional ministers to vote in meetings of the Council of Ministers, indicates that regional governments, including those controlled by nationalist parties, have new modes of access to European institutions, officials, and resources that did not exist previously. This understanding of the new EU opportunity structure echoes the previous comment from Marks and McAdam in suggesting that some nationalists will be sufficiently attracted to participating in the European political order through substate institutions that the draw of statehood will be reduced. Yet Europe has restructured the possibilities for nationalists in less direct ways as well. John McGarry, Michael Keating, and Margaret Moore suggest that the norms and practices of EU governance may have reshaped the attitudes of state actors toward territorial authority in ways that have shifted the incentives of nationalists away from claims to statehood. In some cases, EU initiatives have promoted interstate and cross-border cooperation among ethnic conationals, in contexts that are politically acceptable to member state leaders. The EU has also developed some minority rights measures, including support for lesser-used languages, although it does not recognize the principle of self-determination, and minority rights are limited to those who do not appear to threaten state integrity. These and other changes offer possibilities for some nationalists to achieve substantive policy goals without the constitutional trauma of creating new states. Nationalists with concerns about language rights, about community building among ethnic groups dispersed across EU member states, and about enhancing their authority at the regional level in their respective states can engage new political arenas, in which “nationalist issues are no longer zero-sum matters, but questions of normal politics, amenable to negotiation and compromise.”24 The grounds on which post-sovereign claims about political order have inspired the most optimism are those of resolving long-term nationalist

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conflict based on irredentism or demands for new states. Analysts of violent irredentist and separatist movements have found particular hope in reevaluating the impact of European integration and globalization on claims for statehood. If these trends are undermining the sovereign state, statehood may no longer be necessary to satisfy the demands of nationalists, allowing for new ways to resolve conflict. Within the EU, the idea of a post-sovereign political order has been invoked specifically in regard to Northern Ireland and the possibility that the communities of the province could exercise a great deal of authority in affairs—including cross-border affairs—previously reserved for London or Dublin, without formal “sovereignty” ever being granted by these capitals.25 Some point to the leadership of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland as having developed an alternate vision to statehood in order to address the complications that would ensue either from uniting Northern Ireland and the Republic or from attempts to create an independent state. Former SDLP leader John Hume thus envisioned a new form of polity, in which the people of Northern Ireland would share sovereignty with the EU, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. This vision was argued to be more feasible with an increasingly supranational EU, where fewer powers that different nationalist and state-based actors struggle over remained under the jurisdiction of member states.26 Furthermore, the Single Market motivated political parties on both sides of the border to recognize the value of public intervention to promote all-Ireland economic interests in the EU. Although a commitment to “national” politics prevails in the main political parties, by the early 1990s integration had “challenged concepts of monolithic ‘national’ state sovereignty, to a significant degree transforming the ways in which sovereignty [was] being exercised” in Ireland and creating new arenas for regionalist political struggle.27 In contrast to arguments that define nationalism in terms of struggles to create sovereign or “modern” states, the idea of a post-sovereign European order allows that nationalists may have reason to seek something other than sovereign statehood. What emerges from these discussions of nationalism in the post-sovereign era is not that states no longer matter in legitimizing political rule, a point to which I return below, but rather that a sovereign state should not be seen as the obligatory ends of nationalism, or even as the ends of nationalism at all. Rather, nationalists have substantive agendas (e.g., concerning economic development, cultural expression, and so on) that polity creation is supposed to address, and the polity that will be appropriate for such a task can change, given changes in the context in which nationalism operates: geographical, historical, and institutional circumstances influence nationalists’ decisions about the kind of polity they seek. Whereas


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post-sovereigntists might agree with modernist approaches that state sovereignty is being challenged by globalization and European integration, the former claim that this transformation is not making nationalism obsolete, but is instead ushering in new modes of nationality politics. While some nationalist movements have drawn on the new opportunity structure of European integration to reconsider the type of polity that will allow for the expression of their goals, other nationalists still seem firmly wedded to the idea of creating new states. If arguments about a post-sovereign European (or global) order can explain why nationalists might seek constitutional settlements other than independent statehood, can they also explain why nationalists might continue to pursue states, even in contexts where states have divested themselves of some of the sovereign authority they once claimed? The previous section suggests that nationalist claims for the creation of polities, or for the reconfiguration of territorial authority, emerge from substantive interests and goals. This observation suggests a way of thinking about the relationship between nationalism and polity creation far different from that espoused by those who link nationalism with the modern state. Drawing on arguments about a post-sovereign order, we may interpret the form of territorial authority that nationalists argue for not as their goal, or as the ends to which their struggles aspire, but as the means or strategy to achieve their goals. In some cases, these may be economic, cultural, humanitarian, or other goals; however, some nationalists may continue to espouse goals that require the formal components of statehood to achieve. In particular, nationalists whose movements continue to articulate demands for international recognition, equality, or respect in both their domestic and international environments may continue to assert that statehood is the sole tool that can enable them to achieve these goals. Describing the claims that drive nationality politics, Michael Keating has referred to the assertion of the right to self-determination, but unlike those who situate this claim specifically with relation to the modern state, Keating reinterprets self-determination as “the right to negotiate one’s position within the state and supranational order,” a right that may involve claims to statehood but need not.28 But what does this negotiation entail? At its foundation, it involves claims to dignity, self-respect, and recognition, particularly in what Ashutosh Varshney has described as the nationalism of resistance.29 Clifford Geertz made a similar observation more than four decades ago, when he famously described one of the aspirations of peoples in the newly independent states of the ex-colonial world as “the desire to be recognized as responsible agents whose wishes, acts, hopes and opinions ‘matter’ … a demand that that identity be publicly acknowledged as having import.” Geertz situated his comments in the context of earlier nationalist intellectuals, explicitly

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restating what Mazzini referred to as “the demand to exist and have a name [that] is to such a great extent fired by a humiliating sense of exclusion from the important centers of power in world society.”30 Yet the pursuit of claims to dignity and recognition and the aspiration to “have a name” are dialogical, as Varshney notes; they take place in social contexts in which their lack can be argued to inflict real harm on the individuals and groups to whom they are denied.31 Nationalists are thus making claims for public acknowledgement, for recognition of “being someone in the world.” Furthermore, inherent in nationalist demands for recognition are claims to equality, not simply to “being someone,” but to being recognized as an equal in one’s rights to participate in the social and political world. Tom Nairn has argued that the roots of contemporary Scottish nationalism lie in precisely these grounds: Scottish nationalism emerged not as a set of particular economic or cultural grievances, but from demands for recognition as equal partners in the Union with England. From the Scottish perspective, claims for a Scottish Parliament, he suggests, were less about capturing policymaking authority than they were claims for “something more like equality, ‘their due’ in the sense of what the [Union] Treaty should have meant.” Thus, nationalists, regardless of their particular policy concerns or ideological inclinations, are grounded in more fundamental questions about the meanings of their, and their purported nation’s, identities in the world: claims for self-determination are not simply claims for a say in politics but are claims for recognition, dignity, and equality. As Nairn states, “In sovereignty questions, voice is all.”32 New Forms of the State; New Forms of Nationalism Arguments about a post-sovereign order imply that explanations of nationalists’ preferences regarding the organization of territorial authority cannot ignore context. If nationalists’ pursuit of self-determination includes demands for dignity and recognition as equals, the type of polity that will enable them to achieve these goals may depend on the political contexts in which these demands are being expressed. In a previous era, the modern state may have served this function, but post-sovereign perspectives suggest that this form of polity is no longer available. More fundamentally, statehood and sovereignty are inherently problematic: not only are they not the ideal types asserted in literatures that link nationalism to the modern state, but even as ideal types, they are anchored to particular historical moments. Instead of assuming that nationalism must be expressed in the context of the modern state, a post-sovereign approach suggests that nationalists can adopt a variety of “constitutional strategies” to achieve their goals.


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But which strategy will nationalists choose? If nationalists are pursuing recognition, dignity, and equality, I propose that their choice reflects the form of polity that seems best suited to achieving these outcomes. In other words, nationalists will seek the means appropriate for these ends in a given historical and political context, and this means may not necessarily be the modern state. Instead, we may argue that constructions of statehood have varied over time and are historically contingent. In this respect, the post-sovereigntist literature agrees with constructivist arguments in international relations literature that the Weberian state represents only one among many potential conceptions of the state, and that the ideal-type “modern state” has never actually existed.33 As Miles Kahler notes, the Westphalian or “modern” state of “precisely delimited borders and exclusive, congruent jurisdictions within those borders has been an exception rather than a norm even within Western Europe,” an image that was successfully consolidated in empirical terms only in the nineteenth century, and highly imperfectly so even then.34 Some further argue that sovereignty is not necessarily a fixed property of states; instead it comprises a set of components (territory, authority, population, recognition) that have been reorganized and redelineated over time and space.35 However, any given historical period and place will privilege a specific norm or hegemonic form of sovereignty.36 And, regardless of what the norm of sovereignty is in a given context, it is sustained by behavior that follows “the ‘logics of appropriateness’ which ‘understand political action as a product of rules, roles and identities that stipulate appropriate behavior in given situations.’”37 One of the types of action, or “appropriate behavior,” that is identified as a means of upholding the norm of sovereignty is an understanding of equality among the recognized sovereign actors in the system: sovereignty is a property shared by equals, and those organizations that possess the norm of sovereignty engage in practices that recognize equality among themselves and that marginalize perceived “nonsovereigns.” Friedrich Kratochwil has emphasized that sovereignty by definition involves internal hierarchy and “external equality”; this is not to deny that differences in power may exist among sovereign actors but to indicate that sovereignty implies juridical equality.38 In the era of modern states, this equality has been underpinned by international organizations that legally recognize sovereign territorial organizations, that is, states, as juridical equals. In a post-sovereign era, recognition of equality among actors that exhibit the norm of sovereignty remains a necessary “appropriate behavior” for sustaining the norm itself, even if we agree that sovereignty is no longer solely located in territorial states. If nationalists seek acceptance and recognition as equals, what they thus need to possess is the norm of sovereignty in their respective historical contexts: in an era where sovereignty is no longer entirely concentrated in

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the modern state, they may find that recognition and equality stem not from claiming the norm of sovereignty that existed in a previous era, but from new types of political claims. The historical record suggests that nationality politics before the consolidation of the modern state was premised on very similar claims, albeit expressed around a different articulation of political authority and sovereignty. Historians working to counter modernist claims about nationalism have looked to periods not usually considered in the modern state-based literature to argue for the existence of nationalism outside the era of the modern state, arguing that modernist approaches neglect any consideration of nationalism in the early centuries of state development. Adrian Hastings argues that despite the minimalism of the early European state and the fact that nationalism had not yet been articulated as an ideology, “nation” and “nationalism” are appropriate categories for understanding some political behavior in the late medieval period.39 Nationalism in this era implied the construction of a polity that would allow for competition with and protection from, for example, an expansionist England with a fledgling state. Several centuries later, European monarchs drew on local ethnic imagery and symbolism to build “core groups” of supporters, and similarly used the exclusion of others to “unify and cohere a sufficient core constituency to preserve the state and make it governable.” Although the modern state had not yet been fully articulated as an ideology, let alone consolidated empirically, nationalism had already been implicated in the politics of early state-builders seeking to establish their legitimacy as sovereigns in the European political order.40 Therefore, while Eric Hobsbawm may be correct that by the nineteenth century, the state had become “the machine which had to be manipulated if a ‘nationality’ was to turn into a ‘nation,’”41 “nationalities” seeking selfdetermination were availing themselves of other types of machines, including the fledgling institutions of statehood, long before this. If other forms of state are theoretically available, nationalism as a form of social mobilization can exist in such varied contexts as late medieval societies with their minimal states and in the contemporary era of the post-sovereign state. We err conceptually by linking nationalism to the narrow historically contingent ideology of the modern state and its concomitant doctrine of sovereignty, as opposed to linking it to claims to hegemonic forms of sovereignty and, when contextually appropriate, to practices of state formation. In this respect, I concur with Alex Motyl’s observation that nationalism can exist wherever its defining characteristics exist, and I would add that in the same way, aspects of the state existed before the ideal of territorial sovereignty became hegemonic. Regardless of whether the “self-styled ideal called nationalism is modern,” there can be “nationalism before nationalism,” and, I propose,


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nationalism after nationalism, and statehood beyond the state.42 The polities sought by—even the ideal types imagined by—nationalists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries do not delineate the universe of constitutional options available to nationalists, past or present. Thus the creation of states, even in a highly weakened form, might be the focus of nationalist strategies. Hastings’ argument suggests that a weak state (or, in its historical context, a premodern state) was once valuable to nationalists: what mattered was sovereignty, given the norms of the then international system and the recognition of sovereign status by other key actors in the system. Both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggest that capturing “weak” states, or states far different from the Weberian ideal type, may be in the interests of nationalists because such states may be the norm in the political system in which nationalists are competing. Describing the most valuable polity for nationalists in a given context thus requires a closer examination of both the system in which nationalists pursue their goals and the nature of these goals. I argue that nationalists pursuing self-government will try to capture the particular hegemonic form of sovereignty for the context in which they have mobilized, because this norm will confer the recognition and equality that are their primary goals. In the context of the contemporary EU, the polity that will allow nationalists best to achieve dignity, equality, and recognition remains the state, regardless of how “compromised” or dispersed its sovereignty is or how weak its territorial authority has become. Despite the diffusion or dispersion of sovereignty away from states that many analysts have identified, the international arena still privileges states as legitimate sovereigns. International organizations themselves strengthen states, “enshrining their integrity, inviolability, and sovereignty in founding acts that transform these notions into international norms that may be violated only if some overriding security threat can plausibly be identified.”43 Even those who offer some of the most radical and critical perspectives on the reconfiguration of territorial authority and sovereignty submit that this process is partial, that states remain highly significant, if not the “most sovereign” actors in the international system, and that no other organizations yet offer an alternative bundling of sovereignty that can challenge territorial states.44 Furthermore, states continue to support states: Motyl wonders whether this is because state elites have normative reasons for doing so or because their own stability depends on this action; Spruyt suggests that territorial authority, even in the contemporary era, delineates the “domestic” from the “international” and renders interaction among units in the international system more “predictable and organized.”45 Regardless, organizations that are deemed nonsovereign in the present system face barriers if they wish to be

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recognized as legitimate participants in the international arena, a condition that creates incentives for many such organizations, including nationalist movements, to seek territorial states.46 The conditions of legitimacy that prevail in the international arena do so in the EU as well, despite fifty years of integration, a proposition that I explore further with empirical evidence in the following chapters. The EU asserts the importance of statehood by institutionalizing states as the dominant sovereigns in its legal and political order: regardless of the unbundling of state sovereignty to European, transnational, and substate institutions, the weakened, post-Weberian, or post-sovereign state embodies the hegemonic form of sovereignty in the EU. European integration, regardless of its challenges to the internal hierarchy and territorial authority of states, should not lead us to conclude that states have ceased to be important actors in EU politics or that states have no instrumental value for nationalists. There is in fact a broad consensus that states remain the most important actors, at the same time that integration has complicated the notion of sovereignty. Literature on European integration supports post-sovereign perspectives that this complex form of sovereignty is creating the possibility for new forms of nationalist mobilization to emerge. The approaches to European integration discussed above, including intergovernmentalist and multi-level governance approaches, recognize the growing importance of supranational and subnational authority. But these literatures do not reject the continuing importance, if not predominance, of state governments in shaping EU affairs. On the contrary, intergovernmentalist approaches to the EU specifically highlight the salience of state governments in shaping the major reforms of the EU, including those leading to greater supranationalism.47 Multi-level governance approaches, in contrast, propose that states no longer control important aspects of EU decision making. However, an interpretation of multi-level governance as signifying the end of state power is a misreading of the literature. The authors of this literature argue that individual state sovereignty is “diluted,” but they do “not reject the view that state executives and state arenas are important, or that these remain the most important pieces of the European puzzle.”48 Furthermore, despite the mobilization of substate actors in the EU and the apparent challenge this poses to sovereign statehood, many observers point not to the strength of regions in EU policymaking, but to their weakness. Even before the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, analysts were suggesting that the notion of a “Europe of the Regions” was premature; post-Maastricht developments have not altered this perception.49 The “rise of regional Europe” does not, therefore, by itself obviate the value of statehood, although it has to an extent reshaped the traditional position of states as sole “gatekeepers” to the institutions of the EU.


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Nor would independent statehood outside the EU necessarily make such states “more” sovereign than they would be if they were located within the EU. Rather, state leaders may believe that membership in the EU permits them to maximize sovereignty in the context of globalization.50 In her discussion of the eastern enlargement of the EU in 2004, Milada Vachudova emphasizes that the benefits of EU membership include the protection of EU rules for weak states. Her observations may be equally germane for the small states that would be created as a result of successful nationalist mobilization: institutional rules would help prevent domination by stronger EU states by binding all member states to generalized rules, a somewhat different perspective on my earlier discussion of nationalists’ desire to capture the relevant norm of sovereignty and to be recognized as equals.51 Self-government outside the EU might not help nationalists capture the maximum possible degree of sovereignty if the resulting polities—small polities, in the case of European separatists—cannot effectively manage globalization or the challenges of engagement with larger states. In light of these factors, choosing self-government in the EU may provide the optimal means for nationalists to maximize sovereignty or to capture the norm of sovereignty in the European political order, regardless of the challenges to claims to ultimate territorial authority that states face. There are compelling reasons to believe that states and state sovereignty are alive and well in the EU, even though both may be weaker than previously understood. It may be necessary to find new ways of defining sovereignty, such that it is no longer “strict external delimitation from other claims to authority,” and new ways of conceptualizing the state in the EU.52 However, Motyl notes, “even a weaker state rests on, and presupposes, the continued legitimation of the nation [sic] state principle, and not some alternative.”53 A reassessment of European integration suggests that, contrary to the expectations of some analysts, nationalists continue to have incentives to seek statehood. Linking Context to the Contingencies of Nationalist Party Politics This project must therefore ask why nationalists themselves, in certain cases, come to recognize these transformations of the state and sovereignty and adopt new ideas of the polity as the focal points of their claims. I set out two hypotheses concerning party decisions to seek compromised sovereignty and weak statehood in an integrating Europe. Modernist interpretations of nationalism approach the idea of selfgovernment in an integrating Europe from the perspective that the state is currently neither a relevant nor a useful target for nationalists. This implies either that such movements are not “true” nationalisms (i.e., nationalist

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rhetoric is used to disguise other interests) or that nationalist leaders are either irrational or unaware that statehood cannot help them achieve their goals. From a post-sovereign perspective, however, an alternate hypothesis emerges: the state continues to provide the authority and legitimacy nationalists seek better than would other forms of political organization. To support this position, evidence should indicate that nationalists believe their interests are still best served by winning statehood (or that, at the least, they reject that the state is irrelevant for achieving their goals).54 The rhetoric and actions of nationalists should confirm that, even in the era of the supposed decline of the state, statehood is recognized as important for the success of the nationalist movement, and other institutional arrangements (such as regional autonomy) have not replaced self-government as the goal of parties that were founded with this goal. However, finding such support for statehood does not explain why nationalists choose to be part of an integrating Europe in the first place. On the contrary, modernist literature claims that nationalists cannot, and do not, embrace both policies simultaneously. Statehood outside the EU is the option that most closely reflects Gellner’s principle of the national and political unit requiring congruence. In defense of this principle, modernists might propose two explanations for why nationalists seek self-government in the EU. First, nationalists may be unaware of the extent to which state sovereignty is compromised in the EU. Or, second, nationalists may believe that having won statehood, they will be able to reclaim sovereignty, either by leaving the EU or by reforming its institutions and practices to restore earlier forms of state sovereignty. Post-sovereigntism allows that even very weak statehood and “compromised sovereignty” may in certain circumstances be the choice of rational nationalists. According to this literature, nationalists should believe that compromised sovereignty within the EU best serves their interests and that the alternatives (such as statehood outside the EU) are worse: nationalists see clear net gains from statehood in an integrating Europe. Evidence should therefore demonstrate that nationalists are aware of alternatives and have rejected them. In addition, I must show that nationalists explicitly link the project of European integration to substantive issues on their agendas and argue that specific benefits accrue from weak statehood with “unbundled” sovereignty in the EU that are otherwise unavailable. Doing so supports the hypothesis that nationalists recognize, accept, and even actively pursue limitations on state sovereignty as a condition for achieving their goals. The post sovereigntist focus on the importance of context for nationalist strategy, however, is insufficient on its own to explain the specific timing of strategic choices, differences among parties with respect to the perceived


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value of “Europe” for the nationalist cause, and the broader consequences for parties of reinterpreting their strategies.55 Instead, we must turn to discussions of party philosophy and interests to explain these outcomes. The two parties that are the subject of this study have both adopted the objective of independence in the EU, but they have done so at different times; their official positions on European integration diverge; they present different views on how far the compromising of sovereignty should go (i.e., on what the limits of the jurisdictions of the EU should be); they justify their acceptance of compromised sovereignty by appealing to different ideals and values; and they participate in EU institutions with varying degrees of commitment. I argue that the value of context for suggesting the parameters of nationalists’ constitutional demands must be fleshed out by incorporating an analysis of the dynamics of nationalist parties as parties; that is, as complex organizations that recognize, evaluate, and act on shifts in European and global contexts, not as “black boxes” that respond automatically to these shifts. Explanations of party strategy cannot be divorced from the electoral or organizational interests of parties, or from the constitutive aspects of party philosophy that drive policy choices more generally. Explanations of the adoption of selfgovernment in the EU as a short-term constitutional strategy and of the consequences of this strategy should therefore consider the electoral space in which a party competes, party ideology and understandings of national identity, questions of power within parties and leaders’ responses to European integration, and the long-term constitutional preferences of a party. These questions invite explanation because the parties in this study were established before integration restructured the political landscape of Western Europe in the 1980s: “European” politics was a minor, or nonexistent, theme for each party when it was founded. Indeed Vlaams Belang and the Scottish National Party continue to differ radically from each other in a number of aspects. Yet these differences ultimately make the problem of short-term strategic convergence compelling: why and how did two such different parties come to adopt a similar strategy? Have the consequences of adopting it been similar across parties, and if not, why not? To answer these questions we turn to the origins and characteristics of these parties. Each party established itself as an organization and developed political tendencies and interests that, along with its external environment, would condition how its members interpreted and responded to the impact of European integration.


CHAPTER 3

The Emergence and Development of Political Nationalism in Scotland and Flanders

A

significant European dimension of politics came late to the agendas of Scottish and Flemish nationalists. Questions of European integration and European policymaking neither motivated the establishment of these parties nor figured prominently in their initial plans: party formation was driven largely by domestic political circumstances. European integration and politics emerged as concerns for these nationalists only after their parties had become established in electoral politics and after nationalist elites and substantial activist bases had developed. Each party had already embraced a distinct understanding of the nation, a preference for the long-term constitutional arrangement that would best empower this nation, and a number of substantive policy positions deriving from ideological preferences and from these ideals of nation and polity. The rationales behind these movements, their ideals of nation and polity, and the main policy concerns of each party became critical factors that explained how each party interpreted the meaning of European integration and responded to it. The electoral breakthroughs and consolidations of the SNP and Vlaams Blok/Belang at the end of the twentieth century suggest that these parties, despite their many differences, share the broader experiences of nationalism in the postindustrial West and, in particular, of nationalist parties situated in contexts of free trade or of increasing openness to economic and social globalization. Both parties (or, with Vlaams Belang, its precursor, the Flemish nationalist Volksunie party) experienced their initial burst of electoral support in the 1960s, in the environment of a wider resurgence of nationalism in Western democracies. This rise of nationalism has been described as a response to the efforts of centralized states to recognize regional aspects of social and

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economic policy concerns engendered (or not addressed) by national-level policymaking; these efforts drew attention to regional dimensions of politics and helped legitimize political movements organized around regional issues or identities.1 As postwar Western European social compacts and welfare state politics experienced further crises in the 1970s and 1980s, nationalism emerged as one mechanism to build and protect collective identity. In some intellectual traditions, so-called civic nationalism (a term to which I return later in this chapter) emerged with new constitutional responses to manage the complexity and uncertainty of contemporary societies.2 Others also note that the rise of nationalist parties represents fallout from the social and political atomization that characterizes postindustrial societies but suggest that this fallout has contributed to the rise of ethnic and xenophobic parties. Extreme right-wing parties reassert “traditional” values, social hierarchies, and morality as a challenge to postmaterialism and to the perceived undermining of national, cultural, and economic communities.3 This chapter charts the emergence and development of political nationalism in Scotland and Flanders, situating the success of Scottish and Flemish nationalist parties in the late twentieth century in contexts of the new legitimacy of regional-level mobilization and identity and of crises in the norms and practices governing the inclusion of regional populations into the social and economic agendas of the state. The chapter is divided into two sections: the first is dedicated to the SNP and the second examines the Vlaams Blok/Belang. Each section begins by exploring the founding of the party, setting out the main political problems and questions that inspired the creation of nationalist movements. I trace the development of the party as an electoral force and highlight how it “broke through” to become a serious contender in elections, with a focus on nationalist performances in general and regional elections. In each section, I then bring the discussion of the party to the present, sketching its main attributes since its establishment in the electoral arena: its vision of the nation, long-term constitutional interests, ideology, and major policy concerns. A discussion of the electoral space in which the parties currently operate concludes each section, delineating the party competition that the nationalists confront and the context into which debates about European integration would be incorporated. The Scottish National Party Although dissatisfaction with the governance of Scotland had been articulated by various political groups ever since the Treaty of Union4 between Scotland and England in 1707, it was only in the twentieth century that a political party devoted specifically to independence for Scotland became a visible

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force in Scottish politics. Yet, contemporary Scottish nationalism does draw on the institutional and ideological legacies of the treaty. The emergence of the SNP in 1934 and the later growth of the party in electoral politics were in part a response to specific economic, political, and social grievances of these times. But the normative underpinnings of these grievances are rooted in understandings—or what many Scots believed to be understandings—about the organization of political power in Great Britain and about the management of Scottish affairs that flowed from the implementation of the Treaty of Union. These understandings constructed an idea of just governance in Scotland; the subversion of these understandings in recent centuries inspired debate about whether Scotland could ever be justly governed within the Union. The 1707 treaty included provisions to guarantee the existence of several distinctively Scottish institutions. Scots law remained separate and autonomous from the English legal system; the Scottish (Presbyterian) church remained independent; the country retained its own education system; and the privileges of the royal burghs were guaranteed. Hence, Scotland immediately possessed unique regional characteristics under the terms of union, despite lacking its own regional representative structure. The formal institutional provisions of the treaty stimulated the development of a number of important norms concerning the governance of Scotland, specifically with respect to its relations with central government. The administration of Scottish affairs in general was to be left to Scottish institutions, with the British state intervening directly only in times of crisis or security threats (as with the suppression of the Jacobite threat in the early and mideighteenth century). The middle classes of Scotland were understood to have a privileged role in running the institutions of government, including the local councils and professional boards that administered Scottish social legislation in the nineteenth century.5 Thus the British state had a minimal presence in the lives of the Scottish population and indeed was not expected to have one, according greater concern to running the Empire.6 Underpinning the autonomy of the Scottish middle class in governance and the hands-off approach of the British state to the particulars of Scottish administration was a sense of partnership shared by Scottish and English elites. Scotland was seen by both parties to the treaty not as a colony but as a partner that “would be allowed to do what it wanted, provided always that it did not threaten the security of England.”7 Yet the consensus about how the union ought to function faced challenges in the late nineteenth century as the British state began to centralize, impinging on the local character of Scottish politics. Local actors in Scotland feared that the norm of equality between Scotland and England in the union was

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breaking down, concerned in particular that Scottish business was being neglected by British administration. In addition, Scottish MPs were demanding that a Scottish secretaryship be created with responsibility for local boards that were increasing their spending of central government funds.8 The formal remit of the Scottish Office, created in 1885, expanded considerably over time. In the decade after its creation, it took over the role of central government in main areas of Scottish administration and gradually absorbed most of the boards created in Scotland during the nineteenth century. At the outset, education was the principal responsibility of the Scottish Office; law and order, much of agricultural policy, and health were later added, with the functions of the office growing concomitantly with the development of the British welfare state.9 Dissatisfaction with Scottish governance was not, however, contained with the creation of the Scottish Office. During the nineteenth century, political nationalism emerged in the form of clubs supporting the Home Rule movement, although nationalism did not emerge as a strong popular political force at this time.10 Home Rule had its supporters within the Liberal Party, which Gladstone committed to Home Rule for Ireland in 1885, and the numerous independent organizations and clubs in Scotland that promoted the same cause for their country felt certain that their goal would soon be achieved. But the increasing violence of Irish nationalists forced the Irish question to the top of the political agenda at Westminster, and the arrival of war in 1914 effectively resolved the problem. Scottish Home Rule was forgotten as patriotism united Britain’s political leaders, and after the First World War, the Liberal Party collapsed as a party capable of forming a government. Although the Labour Party initially advocated an Edinburgh parliament, there was little interest at Westminster, and the issue was eventually dropped in the face of the continuing Irish crisis.11 Until this point, Scottish nationalists had worked within the Britain-wide parties to press their demands. However, the calamity of war, the severity of the industrial decline that followed it in Scotland combined with the subsequent depression, and the recognition that other small European nations were winning independence in an era in which arguments about “selfdetermination” had new normative force were powerful factors in contributing to the rise of new autonomy and independence movements.12 The numerous associations in Scotland that supported “nationalism” held a variety of beliefs, making their unification behind a single agenda difficult. Some supported immediate independence for Scotland; others sought autonomy within the United Kingdom. The National Party of Scotland (NPS) was formed in 1928 with the goal of independence, yet it eventually came to advocate autonomy; a more right-wing party supporting autonomy had also


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emerged, the Scottish Party. A contingent of the more radical NPS members, including many seeking outright independence, were expelled, and the NPS and the Scottish Party then merged to form the Scottish National Party in 1934. The early SNP attempted to fashion itself as a mainstream political party, capturing support from the moderate political establishment. Although the party attracted the support of some members of the Scottish cultural elite, the party was primarily concerned with self-government, with cultural issues secondary.13 The SNP drew few supporters from the Conservative Party (despite its efforts to move toward the political right) and equally did not pose a challenge to the left.14 The SNP initially had little electoral success. In 1935, the party contested eight of the seventy-one Scottish seats but failed to win any, with only 1.3 percent of the Scottish vote (see Table 3.1). It won Table 3.1 General election results, Scotland Percentage of vote (number of seats) Year

1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb.) 1974 (Oct.) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005

Labour

47.6 1.8 46.2 47.9 46.7 46.7 48.7 49.9 44.5 36.6 36.3 41.5 35.1 42.4 39.0 45.6 43.9 39.5

(37) (3) ILP (37) (35) (34) (38) (43) (46) (44) (41) (41) (44) (41) (50) (49) (56) (56) (41)

Conservative

41.1 (27) 44.8 48.6 50.1 47.2 40.6 37.7 38.0 32.9 24.7 31.4 28.4 24.0 25.6 17.5 15.6 15.8

(32) (35) (36) (31) (24) (20) (23) (21) (16) (22) (21) (10) (11) (0) (1) (1)

Liberal

5.0 6.6 2.7 1.9 4.1 7.6 6.8 5.5 8.0 8.3 9.0 24.5 19.2 13.1 13.0 16.4 22.6

(2) (1) (1) (1) (4) (5) (3) (3) (3) (3) (8) (9) (9) (10) (10) (11)

SNP

Total number of seats

1.2

71

0.4 0.3 0.5 0.5 2.4 5.0 11.4 21.9 30.4 17.3 11.7 14.0 21.5 22.1 20.1 17.7

71 71 71 71 71 71 71 71 71 71 72 72 72 72 72 59

(7) (11) (2) (2) (3) (3) (6) (5) (6)

Note: ILP ⫽ Independent Labour Party (Members of Parliament joined Labour in 1947). Scottish Universities seat (abolished 1948) excluded. Figures in the “Liberal” column include support for the LiberalSocial Democratic Party Alliance and for the current Liberal Democrat Party. Percentages may not total 100 percent owing to exclusion of totals for other small parties. Boundary changes after the 2001 general elections reduced the number of Scottish seats at Westminster. Sources: Alice Brown, David McCrone, and Lindsay Paterson, Politics and Society in Scotland (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan Press, 1998), 8–9. For the 2001 and 2005 election results, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/ vote2001/hi/english/scotland (accessed July 20, 2001); and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/ region_7.stm (accessed August 15, 2007).

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a by-election in 1945, but this result was overturned a couple of weeks later at the general election. The 1949 constitution of the SNP elaborated the priorities of the party and was a response to the schism in the party between those who believed in a transitional form of limited autonomy before independence and those who believed that independence was “non-negotiable.”15 The formal goals elaborated in the 1949 party constitution were, in order of priority: (A) Self-Government for Scotland—that is, the restoration of Scottish National Sovereignty by the establishment of a democratic Scottish Government, freely elected by the Scottish people and whose authority will be limited only by such agreement as will be freely entered into with other nations or states for the purpose of furthering international cooperation and world peace. (B) The furtherance of all Scottish interests.16

Few responded to the nationalist message in the first three decades of the existence of the SNP. Until the general elections of 1964, the party never won more than its 1935 share of the vote, and its vote slid even further in the 1950s, bottoming out at 0.3 percent of the Scottish vote in 1951 when the SNP contested only two seats. The 1964 elections marked the beginning of a spectacular climb in support for the party, buoyed by what is usually described as the SNP “breakthrough” with a victory of its candidate at a byelection in Hamilton—traditionally a Labour seat—in 1967. Although Labour retook the seat in 1970, the SNP doubled its vote over its 1965 results, winning 11.4 percent of the Scottish vote and winning its first seat in a general election. The party’s climb continued with its successes in the two general elections of 1974: in February, the party won 21.9 percent of the Scottish vote and seven seats, contesting seventy out of seventy-one constituencies; in October, it won 30.4 percent of the Scottish vote and eleven seats, contesting all seventy-one constituencies. The rise of the SNP has been attributed to the breakdown of the postwar welfare politics of the major parties, linked to the rise of a regional consciousness stimulated to a large extent by the institutions of the UK state itself. The “consensus politics” of the postwar United Kingdom promised government that would be responsible for full employment, prices, and economic growth, but sustained growth failed to materialize in Scotland (as in other parts of the United Kingdom in the 1960s). In addition, beginning in the 1950s, the regions were becoming a locus for economic planning and state intervention, and the Scottish Office was playing a lead role in efforts to restructure the Scottish economy; the Labour Party contributed to popularizing the image of Scotland as “a unit of economic management” with special policy needs.17


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Hence, Scottish citizens had begun to perceive Scotland as a “unit” of management because, as far as the British state was concerned, it was. The SNP was already beginning to build itself as an organization in the early 1960s, drawing in new leftist activists, capturing seats in local elections, and gaining access to statewide media.18 It was therefore well positioned to take advantage of economic criticisms of the state and to appeal to the idea of Scotland as a viable polity.19 Furthermore, the discovery of North Sea oil fields had become an issue on which the SNP capitalized with great success. Linking oil prosperity to the ability of Scotland to be economically viable as an independent state, the SNP concentrated on how an oil-rich independent Scotland could both reduce taxes and increase social spending, helping it to make inroads into traditional Conservative constituencies. Yet the successes of the SNP in 1974 immediately brought to the fore numerous weaknesses in the party as an organization. After the elections, SNP members of parliament suddenly had constituents who demanded shortterm policy solutions, not simply the long-term goal of independence. This brought into the open debates that had been avoided by the party and that highlighted its organizational weaknesses, leading to paralysis in its campaign strategies into the early 1980s.20 At the general election in 1979, SNP fortunes took a dive. The party received a disappointing 17.3 percent of the Scottish vote and retained only two seats in the House of Commons. In the aftermath of the dismal election results, the SNP suffered from internal division over strategy and ideology. Division solidified around the old problem of whether to support the devolution of power (a referendum on which had failed to secure sufficient support in 1979 and on which the SNP executive did not adopt an official position) as a means to independence or whether only a direct move to independence would suffice. Furthermore, ideological rifts opened in the party, with some socialist members expelled (temporarily) when the party voted in its 1982 conference to disband all internal groups. The continuing fall of support for the SNP in the 1983 elections and its weak showing in 1987 convinced the party to rally around a moderate left-wing ideology and to assert a clear position as the party of independence, not of devolution or autonomy.21 A by-election victory in 1988 ended the electoral slump of the SNP; yet the party would never again capture as many seats or as great a share of the vote as it did in October 1974, and it has proven unable to make substantial inroads into the urban Labour heartlands in general elections. But from the 1992 general elections, the SNP has consistently won around a fifth of the Scottish vote: it won three, six, five, and six seats respectively in general elections in 1992, 1997, 2001, and 2005.

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Discussions of the rise of SNP fortunes in the late 1980s emphasize the impact of Thatcherism on Scotland as an important explanatory variable.22 Margaret Thatcher’s decisions challenged understandings of how Scottish local and regional institutions were linked to the center and how the Scottish middle and working classes interpreted their relationship to the state, and did so in a manner that was perceived in distinctly national terms, that is, as English politics intruding on Scotland. In many ways, the impact of Thatcher’s policies on Scotland was interpreted through the normative frameworks that had developed in the centuries since the Treaty of Union. Michael Keating notes that Conservative policy in Scotland was based on the idea that a “dependency culture” had been fostered by too much support from government and that a dose of neoliberalism was needed to liberate individuals.23 But at the same time, Thatcherite Conservatives centralized state power in ways that infringed on the powers of local agencies and that clashed with norms in Scotland about the autonomy of these agencies, for example, in education and housing, policy areas with a long history of local involvement that were viewed as the “basis of Scottish autonomy in the welfare state.”24 Nowhere was resistance more apparent than with the introduction of the community charge (poll tax), which many argued to be illegal under the terms of the Treaty of Union because it was applied to Scotland before taking effect in England. Furthermore, Conservatives created new “quangos” (quasi-nongovernmental organizations), frequently staffed by ideological sympathizers and private sector representatives, who removed key aspects of local policymaking such as health, economic development, and training from the remit of elected officials. Many in Scotland perceived this as an assault on the norms of government in the union.25 The Scottish Office itself was becoming a focus for questioning the legitimacy of the government and the functioning of the Union. From being the institution that could give voice to Scottish society in government, the Office “became more obviously the instrument of the Westminster Government.”26 The staffing of the Scottish Office in the 1980s and 1990s served to focus greater attention on the fact that the Conservative Party, while entrenched in England, was losing support in Scotland. One of the conventions of the Union was that government in Scotland would operate through regionally based elites, not English politicians.27 But when Conservative parliamentary seats dwindled to ten in 1987, it became difficult to follow the conventional practice of staffing important positions in the Scottish Office with Scottish members of the governing party. Observers note that the autonomy of Scottish administration was more critical as the political preferences of Scottish voters began to diverge from those of the English.28 Without autonomy, the political space in which Scottish preferences could


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be expressed was diminishing. Thatcher did, ultimately, succeed in restructuring the institutions of Scottish governance, but Conservatives apparently “had forgotten a sense of the Union as a partnership.”29 Yet the SNP failed to break through with results similar to those it achieved in 1974. The party may have stumbled in the eyes of the public by not participating in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which first met in 1989 and later provided pressure on, and ideas for, Labour’s devolution policy. The members of the Convention came from groups across the spectrum of Scottish society and included representatives from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, and Communists. The SNP, on the other hand, walked out of the Convention on the grounds that independence was not one of the options up for discussion.30 Nonetheless, the SNP campaigned for a “yes” vote in the 1997 referendum on devolution; party leader Alex Salmond had long since stated that, given the right circumstances, the SNP “would vote for something less than Scottish independence,” a strategy signaled by the willingness of the SNP to take the Scottish Parliament seriously in the wake of its establishment.31 In the Scottish elections of May 1999, it received 28.7 percent of the vote and captured 35 seats out of 129, making it the second-largest party in Scotland in terms of seats and share of the vote (see Table 3.2). With Labour failing to capture a majority of the vote, the Liberal Democrats were invited to form a coalition government, making the SNP the main opposition party in Scotland. Furthermore, several senior SNP members, including Salmond, were elected to the Scottish Parliament and chose not to stand for Westminster elections in 2001, indicating the interest of the party in playing a committed role in the Scottish legislature. Although the SNP failed to capitalize on public discontent with the Labour Party in the 2003 Scottish elections, it still secured 27 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, retaining its status as the dominant party in the opposition. In a triumphant moment in party history, the SNP emerged as the leader in number of seats won in the 2007 Scottish elections and for the first time in its history was invited to form a government, despite its failure to secure a parliamentary majority. Survey data suggest that the SNP benefited from negative voter opinion about the performance of Labour in Scotland and from optimism about the competence of the SNP in a variety of policy areas, including law and order, health, transport, and education: voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Blair government had some effect on the election outcome, but largely the results were shaped by Scottish issues.32 Furthermore, the party won support from those who favor independence for Scotland, as well as from voters who want the Scottish Parliament to have additional devolved powers, a position that Labour in Scotland has been unwilling to

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Table 3.2

Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe Results of Scottish Parliament elections

Scottish Parliament election, May 6, 1999

Total seats Top-up seats Direct seats Top-up vote Direct vote

Con.

Labour

Lib Dem.

SNP

Other

18 18 0 15.5% 15.6%

56 3 53 34.0% 38.8%

17 5 12 12.6% 14.2%

35 28 7 27.6% 28.7%

3 2 1 10.3% 2.7%



Con.

Labour

Lib Dem

SNP

SSP

18 15 3 15.5% 16.6%

50 4 46 29.3% 34.6%

17 4 13 11.8% 15.4%

27 18 9 20.9% 23.8%

6 6 0 6.7% 6.2%

Green 7 7 0 6.9% 0%

Other 3 1 2 8.9% 3.4%



Con.

Labour

Lib Dem

SNP

Green

Other

17 13 4 13.9% 16.6%

46 9 37 29.2% 32.2%

16 5 11 11.3% 16.2%

47 26 21 31.0% 32.9%

2 2 0 4.0% 0.2%

1 1 0 10.6% 1.9%

SSP ⫽ Scottish Socialist Party. Note: Each elector has two votes: seventy-three members are chosen directly, first-past-the-post, from the existing (or, in the case of the 2007 elections and afterward, former) Westminster constituencies; fifty-six are elected on top-up lists from the eight Euro constituencies. Sources: David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts, 1900-2000 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 459; Ross Burnside, Stephen Herbert, and Stephen Curtis, Election 2003, Briefing 03/25 (Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 2003), 4; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/scottish_parliment/ html/scoreboard_99999.stm, accessed on August 15, 2007.

advocate. The promise by the new First Minister, Alex Salmond, to hold a referendum by 2010 on commencing negotiations for Scottish independence also may have calmed fears of some voters, who could now vote SNP with the recognition that an SNP victory would not automatically lead to independence. While its lack of a majority will make it difficult for the party to move ahead with policies that do not command a broad consensus in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP in its first few months of government managed to maintain high approval ratings and to establish an initial reputation as a credible party of government.


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Ideology and Politics The Nation Theorists of nationalism have long traded in dichotomies to characterize the nature of national bonds: “Eastern and Western,” liberal and illiberal, and civic and ethnic (or cultural) tendencies have been argued to categorize the world of national identity, with some categories clearly bearing substantial normative freight in implying atavistic, irrational, or premodern forms of behavior. While David Brown has artfully challenged the meanings that these dichotomies evoke, arguing that all nationalisms construct boundaries of inclusion and exclusion and therefore possess illiberal foundations and express cultural preferences, I suggest that categories retain some power as ideal types against which movements define themselves.33 Regardless of the interests of academic observers, the SNP (and, as we will see below, Vlaams Belang) clearly attempt to categorize themselves as movements with particular tendencies: while Brown’s criticisms may be analytically valid, the SNP’s and Vlaams Belang’s efforts to define themselves suggest the preferences within the parties about organizing social and political life, and the categories they invoke speak to their constitutional and policy aspirations. Drawing on Raymond Breton and recognizing the problems inherent in these categories, I propose that the ideal types of national identity described as “ethnic” and “civic” can illuminate the dominant understandings of how individuals are linked to the social order in the two parties that are the subject of this study. In the ideal-type cultural or ethnic nationalism, “The basis of inclusion and exclusion is ethnic (e.g., ancestry, language, religion, ‘cultural distinctiveness’) … A central preoccupation is with the cultural character of the community and its preservation.” Elites are concerned with maintaining cultural integrity, and the ideal society is based on the coincidence of cultural and political boundaries. In territorial or civic nationalism, individuals have a utilitarian attachment to society, which is seen as instrumental for achieving policy goals. The main question for nationalists is the struggle over “the domain or territory over which societal institutions have jurisdiction”; inclusion in the nation is defined on civic principles. These include birth or “legally established criteria and procedures. Theoretically, anyone who meets the criteria can be a member.”34 Breton notes that although nationalisms are rarely pure types in reality, nationalists do emphasize one type over the other; furthermore, this emphasis can change over time. Yet the “type” of nationalism articulated at any given time has consequences for policies, as noted above, concerning whether a movement will focus on questions of cultural integrity or territorial jurisdiction.

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The linguistic and culturally based nationalisms that arose in many parts of nineteenth-century Europe had no counterpart in Scotland. The idea of the Scottish nation that has consistently been articulated by the SNP is one that asserts a Scottish identity in regional or constitutional terms, that is, as the “identity” of those who live within the boundaries of Scotland, if they so choose it. The 1997 general election manifesto of the party offers an image that draws on Breton’s ideal-type civic nationalism: An [i]ndependent Scotland will protect in its written constitution residency rights for all those living here, or entitled to live here, at the time of independence whether or not they become Scottish citizens. Citizenship will be established on the basis of residency or birth. Membership of the European Union will also permit residence from citizens from other European Union members. The rights of citizens in an independent Scotland will be at least as wideranging as those offered under the European Convention on Human Rights.35

Although the party discusses cultural issues with respect to education and the arts, it does not attempt to define a “Scottish culture,” instead describing Scotland as a multicultural society. In addition, the SNP actively supports a variety of organizations designed to draw different cultural groups into nationalist politics, including Asian Scots for Independence. However, as later chapters demonstrate, by the 1980s the party had begun to assert that Scottish identity implied a certain perspective on British (and Scottish) relations with the EU. Party tactics shifted to claims that “Scottishness” implied a recognition of the European context of this identity and a positive engagement with European institutions, a strategy that could cast other parties’ approaches to the EU as contrary to the interests of Scots. Constitutional Preferences Although the 1949 constitution committed the SNP to “self-government,” throughout its history the party has contained supporters of immediate independence as well as supporters who are willing to countenance devolution as a step toward independence. Lynn Bennie, Jack Brand, and James Mitchell point out that the use of the ambiguous term “self-government” was intentional, employed to create an acceptable umbrella for the different constitutional tendencies, and that even the party’s current strategy of “independence in Europe” has not been formalized in its constitution.36 Yet the tension between constitutional factions that proved disastrous to the party in the late 1970s and early 1980s has calmed. In the late 1980s, and then more clearly under Alex Salmond’s leadership beginning in 1990, the SNP has positioned itself as the party seeking independence for Scotland, and its manifesto equates independence with statehood.37


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With the advent of devolution, it became difficult for the SNP to reject the autonomous Scottish Parliament without seriously risking its credibility. The party initially attempted to use devolution and its participation in the Parliament to bolster its arguments for independence, similar to its decision to use Westminster politics to fight for independence, using these institutions to promote SNP policy interests while arguing that the institutions were ultimately inadequate for Scotland. Yet Alice Brown, David McCrone, and Lindsay Paterson suggested that party “fundamentalists” (i.e., those seeking immediate independence) were “biding their time in the expectation that the contradiction of a separatist party supporting devolution will become increasingly apparent.”38 The arrival of an SNP government in Scotland may mute this tension. Yet although the SNP still holds onto independent statehood as its constitutional preference, in later chapters we will see how the idea of independence has been complicated by the party decision to situate the struggle for self-government in the EU. Ideology and Policy Interests Until the mid-1980s, there was considerable resistance within the SNP to presenting the party program in ideological terms. It had grown from a fusion of parties with various ideologies and continued to have members with diverging political preferences. Furthermore, many in the party still believed that the SNP should function primarily as a vehicle for self-government: “ideology” would alienate potential voters and the actual policies of an independent Scotland would be worked out after separation, when presumably the SNP would no longer be necessary.39 By the late 1980s, as the party sought to pull out of its electoral slump, it moved toward moderate left-wing politics, consolidating this stance in the 1990s. The 1997 SNP manifesto dedicated the party to the “protection of basic human rights, including the right to free-expression and assembly, the right to housing, education and free health care and the right to decent working conditions and a minimum wage.”40 In addition, the party sought a full employment economy, promoted labor union rights, and prioritized social justice. The SNP has long opposed nuclear weapons and continues to emphasize that an independent Scotland will banish nuclear weapons; as it did in the 1990s, the party states that an SNP government will not participate in a NATO with nuclear commitments. However, the party continues to foreground the role Scotland would play in international organizations, particularly those promoting humanitarian goals. Although the party has moderated or modified many of its policies since the 1990s, SNP manifestoes remain socially progressive, at the same time that the party seeks to create the image of a “business-friendly” independent Scotland that would reduce corporate taxes.41

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Electoral Competition With its shift leftward in the 1980s, the SNP found itself altering the dynamics of electoral competition in Scotland. The working-class vote for the party was increasing, although the nationalists failed to make significant gains in Labour-held constituencies in general elections (and largely succeeded only in the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections). Given the emergence of an SNP government at Holyrood, the relevance of electoral competition in Westminster elections may soon be transformed, with the SNP focus shifting to the Scottish Parliament. Labour has dominated Scottish politics since the Second World War and has been returned with the greatest share of the vote and the most seats in Scotland in every general election since 1959. Postwar centralized economic planning stood in opposition to the logic of Home Rule, and only when the SNP appeared to be a threat in the aftermath of the February 1974 elections did Labour put devolution on its platform. Despite the presence of outspoken critics of the policy, Labour officially maintained its support for the issue and, soon after its 1997 election success, authorized referendums in Scotland and Wales. The conversion of Labour to the devolutionist cause and its increased recognition of the value of a Scottish dimension to its politics led to the observation that it had taken on a “proto-nationalist mantle.”42 With the establishment of an SNP minority government in the Scottish Parliament, it remains to be seen, however, how the Labour Party at Westminster will respond to a Scottish executive that takes a markedly different line from its policies. The recent story of the Conservative Party in Scotland (formally known as the Conservative and Unionist Party) has been one of electoral decline, although the party vote stabilized somewhat recently. The Conservative share of Scottish votes and seats began to slip in the late 1950s, recovered slightly in 1979, and then declined (with a slight increase in 1992). In the 1997 general elections the party hit its lowest level of support since 1868, with 17.5 percent of the vote, and every Conservative seat in Scotland (and Wales) was lost. The party regained a single seat (from the SNP) in 2001 and retained one seat in 2005, but its support dwindled to 15.6 percent of the Scottish vote. Part of the Conservative “problem” in Scotland was Thatcher herself, who was described in an internal party document after the 1987 elections as being perceived in Scotland as “English and anti-Scottish.”43 But the ongoing unpopularity of the party in the 1990s could also be attributed to its refusal to support any constitutional change for Scotland or even to participate in the Constitutional Convention. In the 1999 Scottish elections (having been on the losing side of the referendum vote), the Conservatives won 15.5 percent of the vote and 18 of 129 seats, enough to make them the third


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party in Scotland, behind Labour and the SNP (see table 3.2). Their performance in the 2003 Scottish elections was almost exactly the same, with only slightly improved results in their share of the direct (constituency) vote, and the 2007 elections appeared to confirm the stability of the Conservative vote. The Liberal Party nurtured Scottish Home Rule in the nineteenth century, when it dominated the Scottish political scene. Arthur Midwinter, Michael Keating, and James Mitchell remarked that the “Liberals’ distinctive contribution to postwar Scottish politics was their consistent advocacy of Home Rule at a time when the two major parties were opposed.”44 The Liberal Party interest in Scottish Home Rule formed part of a broader agenda to federalize the United Kingdom, and although the party occasionally considered tactical alliances with the SNP, it rejected independence as harmful to Scotland, denying Scots a voice in the British politics that would continue to affect them and damaging the Scottish economy.45 The new Liberal Democrat Party was thus an early and consistent participant in the Constitutional Convention. Although the smallest of the four main parties represented in the Scottish Parliament after the 1999 elections, the Liberal Democrats formed part of the coalition government until 2007 and were able to move some of their substantive policy concerns onto the legislative agenda. The politics of the SNP suggests the characteristics of civic nationalism, recognizing that this category represents an ideal type: the party vision of the Scottish nation is an inclusive one, with “nationality” deriving from legal residence or birth. With its long-term commitment to independent statehood for Scotland, the SNP distinguishes itself from the other major parties in Scotland, although since the 1980s, Labour has increasingly taken on a “national” hue in Scotland. Furthermore, with the SNP situating itself on the ideological left, its policy agenda has moved closer to that of Labour. SNP responses to European integration must therefore be seen in the context of the party’s long-standing debates over ideology and constitutional politics, which by the late 1980s appeared (at least temporarily) to have been resolved in favor of leftist politics and an acceptance of devolution as a stepping-stone toward independence. The Vlaams Blok and Vlaams Belang While the expressions “radical right” or “extreme right” remain contentious descriptors for a category of political parties emerging in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the politics of the Vlaams Blok and later Vlaams Belang seems clearly to resonate with the concerns of analysts who explore the far right of electoral space.46 The identity politics articulated by these parties appeals to an exclusive, ethnic understanding of the political community. Along with

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numerous other far right parties in Europe, the Vlaams Blok and Belang “display a strong reliance on a romanticized ‘imagined community’ and a related atavistic scapegoatism”: while these qualities did not dominate Vlaams Blok politics at the time the party was founded, they were soon pushed to the foreground.47 Like other successful right-wing parties, the Vlaams Blok/ Belang would propel itself forward in the electoral arena with what Elizabeth Ivarsflaten has called the “winning formula” of anti-immigration policies and expressions of dissatisfaction with purportedly corrupt establishment politics.48 The Vlaams Blok was created in 1978 as an electoral coalition of two small parties of Flemish nationalists disillusioned by the recent politics of the Flemish People’s Union, or Volksunie. The Vlaams Blok, which officially became a single party in 1979, is heir to a tradition of Flemish political parties and movements seeking constitutional reform and Flemish rights. Unlike the SNP, the Vlaams Blok emerged in an arena of highly fluid constitutional politics, in which the mobilization of Flemish nationalist sentiment had already helped transform the structures and practices of the Belgian state. Belgium emerged from the failure of European great powers to establish a buffer state along the borders of post-Napoleonic France. The Second Treaty of Paris (1815) created a greater United Netherlands, including all of modern Belgium, the Netherlands, and parts of Luxembourg. But the new polity, governed under the Dutch constitution, soon alienated Belgian Catholics over questions of religious freedom and education. Language policies implemented by the Dutch crown alarmed both Flemish elites whose cultural formation had been in the French language and Walloons who feared that the imposition of Dutch might soon be extended to the south of Belgium. Furthermore, the Dutch king refused calls from Belgian parliamentarians to create a “representative constitutional state.” The July Revolution in France stimulated a coalition of Belgian Liberals and Catholics to act; with support from Walloon volunteers, a provisional government was set up and declared Belgian independence on October 4, 1830.49 Within a year, the Belgian state was legislating with bias toward the French language. Only the French versions of parliamentary acts and royal decrees were official, and Dutch could not be used in Parliament or in courts. Furthermore, Dutch-speaking elites had long opted to use the more socially prestigious of the two languages, French, in public life; thus the status of Dutch and its speakers in the new state were seen to be under threat by those unwilling to adopt French.50 The Flemish Movement was created to press for the equality of Dutch under the law, but the relative lack of success of the movement in the nineteenth century demonstrated the alreadypowerful institutional and normative slant of the Belgian state and population toward French. Language per se was not the primary question; more critical


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was what John Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning refer to as “the Flemish perception of second-class citizenship,” rooted in part in the continued agrarian decline of Flanders while Wallonia, in the south of Belgium, industrialized.51 Flemish cultural bodies flourished in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Vlaamsch Verbond (Flemish Union) was founded in 1861, although Flemish cultural activists also worked within existing parties, such as the Belgian Workers Party. But even though the equality of the languages of Belgium was set down in law in 1898, it would be decades before this was achieved in practice. Progress was made for Flemish interests in education, where the use of Dutch was growing, but Flemish activists were not satisfied with the “mother tongue” basis of a 1913 law. By the second decade of the twentieth century, language activists sought a territorial basis for Dutch language use.52 The salience of language issues during the First World War gave postwar governments incentives to improve the position of Dutch, because language politics had been implicated in the near destruction of the Belgian state. Although Dutch by law had been accorded equal status in the military, orders still had to be given in French, which proved a serious impediment to the functioning of the Belgian army; Flemish activists after the war worked successfully to create Dutch-speaking regiments. Furthermore, some Flemish had supported German occupation as a means of advancing their cause, with collaborators creating a wartime Flemish Council that declared Flanders independent.53 The message was not lost on the government in exile in Le Havre. Furthermore, in the 1919 elections, a Flemish nationalist party, the Frontpartij (named after the war front) won five seats and a small percent of the vote. As it radicalized its agenda in the 1920s and 1930s, embracing separatism and Catholic politics, moderate Flemish nationalists chose instead to work for reform within the traditional parties and achieved some success. By the end of the 1930s, Dutch had become the exclusive language of public administration and education in Flanders.54 The Second World War disrupted the positive developments in Flemish cultural nationalism. The Frontpartij renamed itself the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV), moved toward fascism, and saw collaboration as a means of realizing aspirations for a Greater Netherlands, to include Flanders, parts of northern France, and the Netherlands.55 Thus, in the postwar period, collaboration by a minority of Flemish nationalists tainted the Flemish Movement as a whole and fragmented its leadership: there was little stomach for overtly nationalist politics after a war whose instigators had articulated their demands in virulently nationalistic terms. And in the early 1950s, the very idea of “nationalism” itself—Flemish, Belgian or otherwise—was increasingly

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questioned, as Belgium joined first the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and then signed the Treaty of Rome to become a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. At this time, radical attacks on the Belgian state declined in the rhetoric of the Flemish Movement, which by the early 1950s had rejected separatism in favor of federalism within Belgium and cultural linkages with the Netherlands. The founding of the Volksunie (People’s Union) party in 1954 created a platform from which cultural ties with the Netherlands could be fostered as a means to help Flanders regain what was described as cultural respect in Europe.56 The main intent of the party was to advance the political goals of the Flemish Movement: support for the Dutch language was critical to the agenda of the party, but the constitutional focus of its platform was the creation of a federal Belgium to give the Flemish autonomy in all policy areas that affected them. By the 1960s the Volksunie in addition had adopted an agenda of social and economic development for Flanders.57 The Volksunie increased its support steadily through the 1960s into the 1970s: its greatest success came in 1971, when it won 18.8 percent of the Flemish vote and twenty-one seats in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies.58 Volksunie support grew during a decade in which popular mobilization along linguistic lines surged in Belgium. This mobilization initiated debates about the structure of the state and the representation of language interests that would culminate in the full federalization of Belgium in 1993. But debate over constitutional reform also opened the door for the creation of an extreme right-wing Flemish separatist party in the late 1970s—the Vlaams Blok. Although the Volksunie was established as a democratic nationalist party, it contained some members from the extreme right who shared its cultural goals but who had different political and constitutional interests, a tension that would fracture the party as soon as it had the chance to enter government. The 1960 Belgian census revealed linguistic demographics that set off discussion about the language “frontier” that had been established by law in 1932. This law had divided the country into two regions along a linguistic borderline that had been relatively stable. North of the line, Dutch was to be used in public administration, schools, the army and courts; south of it, French was to be used; Brussels would be bilingual. Yet the law allowed for changes in the frontier to accommodate population shifts. In the early 1960s, Flemish fears that Dutch-speaking villages around Brussels were becoming Frenchspeaking (thus requiring the provision of public services, including education, in French) led the government to fix the frontier with a new law.59 However, this “solution” immediately created new problems. Both north and south of the new frontier, small populations speaking the “wrong” language had been stranded. The status of Brussels was even more problematic.


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Brussels is located within Flanders, although the population of the city is now predominantly French speaking. The linguistic laws of 1962–63 led to protest by French speakers who saw themselves emerging with little likelihood of ever winning public services in French in some of the suburbs of Brussels.60 At the same time, the census revealed that population increases in Flanders left Flemings underrepresented in the Chamber of Deputies. The reallocation of seats in 1965 to reflect the relative weight of the Flemish population led to Walloon demands for safeguards against becoming permanently “marginalized inside a unitary state with the Flemish majority controlling executive and legislative power.”61 Disruptions at the (Flemish) University of Leuven by French-speaking students led to the downfall of the government in 1968, as well as to the permanent split of the University into Dutch- and Frenchspeaking campuses. The same year marked the beginning of the fragmentation of Belgium’s political parties along linguistic lines.62 In 1970, in a succession of constitutional reforms that continued in 1980, 1988, 1993, and 2001, policy jurisdictions were parceled out to the regions and communities of Belgium. These first reforms provided for a degree of cultural autonomy and decentralization to the regions; the reforms also created two cultural commissions within Brussels and allowed for a choice of language of instruction.63 Yet aspects of the “Brussels question” remained unresolved: Brussels had an executive within the national government, not an executive of its own. Major reforms were enacted in 1980, marking the beginning of the move toward federalism. These reforms created regions (Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels) with a high degree of autonomy in economic affairs and communities (Dutch, French, and German speaking) with power over cultural affairs; a separate legislative body was established for each, except for Brussels.64 In 1988 Belgium acquired its third and final region, Brussels, with its own government and elected parliament. A large number of policies were transferred to the jurisdiction of the communities and regions, including education, public works, and industrial policy.65 An additional phase of constitutional reform in 1993 provided for the separate election of federal chambers and regional parliaments, the reform of the federal Senate, and the transfer of some additional powers from the federal to the regional level of government.66 Reforms left the federal government with few powers, primarily in the area of “high politics” such as defense and foreign affairs, as well as federal finance, justice, internal security, social security, and some aspects of public health. The regional jurisdictions now include land use and planning, environment, transport, and agriculture; the jurisdictions of the communities include culture, media, use of languages, and the protection of young people.67 Reforms in 2001 extended some powers to Francophones in the Flemish region and

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included an increase in the quota that guarantees the Flemish minority a certain number of seats on the Brussels regional council.68 The Volksunie had played a role in launching the reforms of the Belgian state, and in 1973, the party began to moderate its politics, moving toward the center. Some far-right members had already left the party, and some developed a new movement with the aim of radicalizing the Volksunie to the right, rejecting federalism and arguing for the repatriation of immigrants. Through the mid-1970s, tensions grew between the Volksunie and right-wing Flemish nationalists.69 By the late 1970s, the Volksunie had achieved sufficient strength to be invited to participate in drafting proposals for the first round of significant devolution to the Belgian regions. But support for the 1978 Egmont Pact and Volksunie participation in government led to a crisis within the party and to massive opposition by the Flemish Movement. Of particular sensitivity was the proposed bilingual status of Brussels and new voting rights for French speakers in the Flemish periphery of the city, which was seen as a sellout by some Flemish nationalists. Pressure on the Volksunie led to dissent among the parties of the coalition government, resulting in its collapse in October 1978 and the end of the pact. Defectors from the Volksunie formed two new parties, the Vlaamse-Nationaal Partij (VNP) and the Vlaamse Volkspartij (VVP), which joined to compete in the 1978 elections as the Vlaams Blok. Karel Dillen, the founder of the VNP who had left the Volksunie in the early 1970s, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and the Blok won 2 percent of the Flemish vote (see Table 3.3). Dillen quickly won over support from the VVP and established the Vlaams Blok as a party to replace the VNP and the VVP in 1979. Initially, the program of the Vlaams Blok emphasized independence for Flanders (including Brussels), but it also argued for a number of substantive policy goals that situated it on the political right. The party argued for respect for the family and for life “under all its forms” (that is, it opposed abortion), the expulsion of migrant workers, amnesty for Nazi collaborators, and economic liberalism.70 However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, these issues were secondary to the question of independence. Overall the party attracted few voters during this period. Dillen responded with wholesale changes to the Vlaams Blok leadership. “Operation Rejuvenation” brought new, young party members into the party leadership, and the party created an official Vlaams Blok Youth group to channel young members into the party.71 In 1987, the party began to make gains as it foregrounded the radical policy elements of its program. The success of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in the French communal elections of March 1983 provided the impetus for the Blok to turn its attention to

Table 3.3

Belgian Chamber of Deputies and Flemish Parliament election results

Flemish parties and Flemish totals Percentage of vote (number of seats)

Chamber 1978 1981 1985 1987 1991 1995 1999

2003

2007

CVP

43.5 32.0 34.6 31.4 26.9 27.6 22.2

(57) (43) (49) (43) (39) (29) (22)

SP

20.9 20.6 23.7 24.2 19.4 20.7 15.0

(26) (26) (32) (32) (28) (20) (14)

VLD

17.2 21.1 17.4 18.5 19.0 20.9 22.5

(22) (28) (22) (25) (26) (21) (23)

VU

11.5 15.6 12.7 12.9 9.3 7.3 8.8

(14) (20) (16) (16) (10) (5) (8)

Vlaams Blok

2.1 1.8 2.2 3.0 10.3 12.3 15.3

(1) (1) (1) (2) (12) (11) (15)

Agalev

Total seats

– 4.0 (2) 6.1 (4) 7.3 (6) 7.8 (7) 7.2 (5) 11.0 (9)

120 120 124 124 122 91 91

CD&V

SP.A-Spirit

VLD

N-VA

Vlaams Blok

Agalev

21.0 (21)

23.5 (23)

24.2 (25)

4.8 (1)

17.9 (18)

3.9 (0)

CD&V/N-VA

SP.A-Spirit

Open VLD

–

Vlaams Belang

Groen!

Lijst Dedecker

31.4 (30)

16.2 (14)

20.1 (18)

–

19.2 (17)

(4)

5.5 (5)

88

88 (Continued)


Year

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62 ●

(Continued)

Flemish parties and Flemish totals Percentage of vote (number of seats) Year

CVP

SP

VLD

VU

Vlaams Blok

Agalev

Total seats

Flemish Parl’t 1995

26.8 (35)

19.4 (25)

20.2 (26)

9.0 (9)

12.3 (15)

7.1 (7)

124

1999

22.1 (28)

15.0 (19)

22.0 (27)

9.3 (11)

15.5 (22)

11.6 (12)

124

CD&V-N-VA

SP.A-Spirit

VLD-Vivant

–

Vlaams Blok

Groen!

Union des francophones

26.3 (35)

19.7 (25)

19.8 (25)

–

24.0 (32)

7.6 (6)

1.1 (1)

2004

124

* Directly elected seats only. See text for explanations of constitutional reform that have altered seat totals. Senate results are excluded because the Senate has relatively little power and is not—even at the present time—entirely directly elected. CVP ⫽ Christian Democrat Party; SP ⫽ Socialist Party; VLD ⫽ Flemish Liberals and Democrats (name of the Flemish liberals since 1991); VU ⫽ Volksunie (reconstituted as the VU-ID in 1999); Agalev ⫽ Ecology/green party. The Volksunie disappeared in 2003, splintering into the N-VA and Spirit; each of these joined a list with a larger party for the 2004 regional elections. Vivant is a small list that joined with the VLD for the 2004 regional elections. Percentages may not equal one hundred owing to the exclusion of smaller parties or spoiled ballots (voting is compulsory in Belgium). Brussels region votes are not included in the percent of vote for each party. Sources: William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 17 décembre 1979,” Res Publica 21, no. 2 (1979): 309–38; William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 13 octobre 1985,” Res Publica 28, no. 2 (1986): 213–33; William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 24 novembre 1991,” Res Publica 34, no. 2 (1992): 131–53; and William Fraeys, “Les élections régionales et européennes du 13 juin 2004: analyse et résultats,” Res Publica 46, nos. 2 and 3 (2004): 357–76.


Table 3.3


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immigrant issues in Flanders. The Vlaams Blok parliamentary campaign in 1987 introduced the slogan, Eigen Volk Eerst! or “[One’s] Own people first!”72 Recognizing the potential for success from campaigning on immigrant questions, Blok leaders took their long-standing interest in defining the Flemish nation along linguistic and blood lines and turned this into a comprehensive immigration policy for Flanders. Along with its turn toward anti-immigrant policies, the Blok was embracing what John Fitzmaurice refers to as “the common themes of the European far right,” calling for the defense of European culture, strong government, and opposition to Marxism while situating its demands for Flemish independence in the context of a Europe of the Volk (ethnically based states).73 Filip Dewinter, who in 1987 at the age of twenty-five became the youngest deputy ever elected to the Belgian Chamber, is generally credited with bringing the immigrant question to the top of the Vlaams Blok platform as part of a concerted effort to find a winning electoral formula for the party.74 Representing the so-called LePeniste tendency within the party, Dewinter’s publication 70 Solutions to the Immigrant Problem became enormously influential in party policy. It established the broad outlines of Vlaams Blok concerns about foreign residents and workers and offered detailed discussion of why certain “foreign” cultures, in particular Islam, were incompatible with the Flemish way of life envisioned by the party. The “solutions” were plans for repatriating non-Europeans and for “creating a dual society, or state of social apartheid, in which immigrants and Flemings would live completely separated.”75 The focus on immigration that was proving to be the key to electoral success for extreme right parties across Europe also began to boost Vlaams Blok fortunes.76 Immigration issues helped lift the party campaign in 1987, but the Vlaams Blok won only 3 percent of the Flemish vote. It did, however, win its first seat in the Belgian Senate and picked up a second representative in the Chamber of Deputies. The 1988 communal elections represented a breakthrough for the party at the local level: in Antwerp canton, where the party has always been relatively more successful than at the Flemish level, the Vlaams Blok won 17.7 percent of the vote and elected ten members to the city council. Until 1987, in fact, the party had won little support elsewhere.77 The increasing emphasis on immigration issues in the party platform had an impact not only on the Belgian government, which set up a Royal Commission after the 1988 elections to examine immigrant issues in the country, but also within the Vlaams Blok. Several long-term prominent members denounced Filip Dewinter’s circle of supporters as “LePenists,” more interested in immigration issues than constitutional questions and Flemish independence. However, party leader Karel Dillen sided with

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Dewinter, and the dissenters, including the national party secretary, left the Vlaams Blok.78 In 1991, the Vlaams Blok strategy paid off. The party won 10.5 percent of the Flemish vote, returning 12 deputies out of the 212 for Belgium, and for the first time it won a greater share of the Flemish vote than did the Volksunie (9.4 percent), support for which had peaked in 1981. Most remarkable was the high level of support that party had in Antwerp, where one in four cast a vote for the Vlaams Blok. The 1991 campaign highlighted immigration questions; the title of the manifesto published by the party was “Uit zelfverdediging” (Out of self-defense) and the party used the image of boxing gloves on the cover. The 1991 program also devoted some space to economic issues. The party indicated its support for a free market economy and the privatization of public services but also advocated support for small- and medium-sized Flemish companies and for Flemish farmers. The party economic program has been described as “a kind of corporatist capitalism” that, in the words of the election manifesto, rejected “class warfare and all forms of exploitation” and posited a third way between “individualized and egoistic liberalism” and collectivism.79 The language used to describe the results of the 1991 elections suggests the significance of these results for the Vlaams Blok. The success of the party has been described as “enormous,” the year was labeled a “turning point in the history of Flemish nationalism,” and the 10.5 percent of the Flemish vote secured by the party has been described as pushing the Blok—and the country—“over a psychological threshold.”80 The Vlaams Blok became the fourth-largest party in Flanders. Analyses of the party vote reveal that support for the Vlaams Blok came from industrial “decaying areas,” from the young, the nonreligious, and those of low occupational status, with the Vlaams Blok drawing votes away from almost all the other Flemish parties.81 In the aftermath of the 1991 elections, members of all the other major parties agreed on a cordon sanitaire for local, regional, and statewide government to prevent any governing coalition forming that would include the Vlaams Blok. Even when the Blok won 28 percent of the vote in Antwerp in local elections in 1994, it was prevented from taking power in city government by a cordon of all the other parties.82 Although the Vlaams Blok did not make the major gains in the 1995 elections that many had expected, it increased its share of the vote slightly: it won 7.8 percent of the Flemish vote for the Chamber of Deputies and 12.3 percent of the vote for the Flemish Parliament in the first elections in which the regional and federal chambers were separately elected. The decline of the Volksunie continued, with the party winning only 4.7 percent of


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the Flemish vote for the federal Chamber and 9 percent of the vote for the Flemish Parliament. With the federalization of Belgium that the Volksunie had long called for complete, many wondered about the rationale for the party’s continued existence. Yet although the growth of the Vlaams Blok vote seemed to have slowed, the party demonstrated in 1999 that it still had the potential to attract new supporters. Scandals continued to haunt Belgian politics: the so-called Dutroux affair concerning the botched investigations of a number of pedophile murders cast doubt on the ability of the political system overall to protect its citizens, as did food and health scares. The results of the 1999 elections were, in the words of one observer, “a true waterloo for the Flemish governmental parties.”83 The Christian Democrats were replaced by the Flemish Liberals and Democrats (VLD) as the largest party in the region; support for the Socialists also slipped. The Vlaams Blok increased its vote to 9.9 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and gained four seats, to bring its total to fifteen in the one hundred and fifty-seat Chamber. In the Flemish Parliament, the Blok vote grew to 15.5 percent, securing the party twenty seats and making it the third-largest party in Flanders, slightly ahead of the Socialists. Even the Volksunie benefited from the widespread rejection of the status quo governing parties, increasing its share of the vote slightly. The results of the 2003 Belgian federal elections and the 2004 Flemish regional elections affirmed that support for the Blok continued to grow. In the June 2004 elections, the Vlaams Blok became the second-largest party in Flanders in terms of votes and seats, second only to an electoral coalition of the Christian Democrats and a fragment of the Volksunie, which had ceased to exist and produced several splinter parties. Indeed, without the support of former Volksunie voters, the Christian Democrats might have been overtaken by the Blok: the Christian Democrat grouping won 26.3 percent of the Flemish vote, but the Vlaams Blok was close behind with 24.0 percent, more than an 8 percent rise over its tally in 1999. The Vlaams Blok added ten seats to its position in the Flemish Parliament, giving it thirty-two to the thirty-five of the Christian Democratic grouping—with the Blok winning over a quarter of the seats, and with the collapse of the Flemish Liberals (who led the Belgian federal government coalition) to third place, the 2004 elections represented a new watershed in the history of the Vlaams Blok.84 The rise of the Vlaams Blok has been explained with reference to crises in the “pillars” that have historically structured Belgian politics and society and to the Blok’s initiative in emphasizing anti-immigrant politics. The three traditional pillars of Catholicism, socialism, and liberalism once dominated Belgium, structuring individuals’ participation in much of social life, including education, labor union activity, social organizations, and party politics.

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However, as in other Western European states that were once structured around similar tendencies, secularization and the ebb of radical socialism have undermined the clout of the traditional pillars in Belgium. Nonetheless, the parties affiliated with the historic cleavages have continued to dominate Belgian politics through coalition governments, patronage, and control of administrative careers.85 By the 1980s, economic crisis—in particular the need for austerity measures to reduce the country’s massive debt—seriously cut into the ability of the traditional parties to continue to deliver benefits to their constituents. “Pillarization” could be blamed for inefficiency and corruption; in addition, the major parties continued to practice a “politics of exclusion” that allowed for little input from those who felt that the traditional parties did not serve their interests.86 The Vlaams Blok may have drawn support from popular frustration with the rigidity of party politics and from the lack of response by the major parties to economic decline. John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning argue that the demands of Flemish ethnopolitics (the Volksunie and the Vlaams Blok) were “geared to breaking open this relatively closed system of elite interconnectedness, thus providing greater opportunities for upward mobility for an emerging Flemish middle class.”87 The Vlaams Blok and Vlaams Belang promote themselves as playing such a role, that is, as combating a closed political system that no longer serves the interests of the Flemish people, but their argument is not primarily targeted at the middle class. One study notes that the Blok attracted “the generations who missed their chances between two periods of economic growth.”88 Analysis of the motives of the Vlaams Blok and Belang voters indicates that the party’s emphasis on identity politics and immigration issues found a receptive audience: voters are most attracted to the party by its stances on immigration, while constitutional politics (i.e., separatism) is a far less important factor.89

Ideology and Politics The Nation In its self-representation, Vlaams Belang closely approximates Breton’s ideal type of ethnic nationalism. The party presents a solidaristic view of society based on the Volk: membership in the nation is based on blood, or Flemish descent, not language (which allows the party to claim that French speakers in Brussels, if descended from Flemings, are actually “Flemish”). Neither birth in Flemish territory nor marriage can make one Flemish. According to Cas Mudde, the 1990 party program describes volksnationalisme as “based


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on the ethnic community being a naturally occurring entity whose cultural, material, ethical and intellectual interests need to be preserved.”90 These interests must be protected not solely by the creation of ethnic states (discussed below), but by a vanguard elite within the ethnic group. The party distinguishes between the “ethnically committed” and “nonethnically committed” Flemish: the former are the elite, with “higher moral values such as a perception of responsibility, self-sacrifice, social justice, solidarity and tolerance”; the latter, the masses, need to be shown the “right path.”91 The defense of the ethnic nation is not articulated as a form of racism by the party. Instead, the ethnic community is presented as the key to human self-fulfillment. An article in the official party paper noted: “[O]utside of the group [one] can neither exist nor even grow up and live. It is natural groups like the family, the ethnic community, which in their turn, like man himself, are equal and different.”92 Within such communities, the party argues that there will be little of the conflict that plagues contemporary (multicultural) societies. Social problems such as crime and drug addiction emerge when individuals are “deracinated” from their respective cultures. Hence the problems that the party attributes to immigrants in Flanders are the fault not of immigrants themselves, but of the politicians who want them to integrate. The party does not excuse foreigners who commit crimes but notes that it “does not here reach backward toward simple racial ‘explanations.’ … Crimes [go] together with the cultural uprooting of which foreigners are the victim,” arguing that foreigners are “alienated from their original culture” and that the creation of separate societies within Flanders for the Flemish and for nonEuropean immigrants is necessary before the eventual repatriation of these immigrants.93 Constitutional Preferences The protection of Flemish identity forms the basis of Vlaams Belang constitutional politics, ideology, and policy interests. Vlaams Belang was founded to continue the struggle for radical constitutional reform, that is, for independence, and continues to place “an independent Flanders” at the beginning of its electoral programs. This goal is driven by the ethnic nationalism of the party and the belief that only with independent ethnic states can social order be maintained and the culture of nations be protected. The primacy of ethnic identity in Vlaams Belang ideology underpins the party’s rejection of federalism in favor of independent statehood. Belgium is portrayed as anathema to Flemish interests, an “artificial state dominated by the French speakers” that seeks to regulate the relations of different “peoples” within a single political entity. The party argues that despite decades of

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constitutional reform, “Federalism did not provide a solution. The Vlaams Blok advocates a completely independent Flanders, with Brussels as its capital.”94 Vlaams Belang seeks a peaceful breakup of Belgium, pointing to the example of the Czech-Slovak “velvet divorce” and arguing that its task must be to remain “diligent and exert pressure on the other political parties so that these finally take steps toward independence.”95 The ethnic basis of party politics also shapes the party vision of the EU, which it argues must be a “Europe of the Peoples” and a confederation of ethnic states, a subject to which I return in later chapters. Party members point to the failures of Belgium with respect to Flemish culture as an example of what the EU must not become, namely, a polity that brings ethnic groups together in a federation that is, ultimately, dominated by one group (the French speakers in Belgium). After achieving independence for Flanders, Vlaams Belang envisions a state that would incorporate all Dutch-speaking Europe, including the Flemings living in northern France and the Netherlands, recalling a theme that has been present in right-wing Flemish nationalism for almost a century. However, this theme is downplayed in current party literature. Although a Dutch “union” remains a long-term goal of Vlaams Belang, the party is concerned about what it refers to as the “ethical and societal evolution in North Netherlands,” referring to various liberal aspects of Dutch society.96 Ideology and Policy Interests Within a decade of its founding, the Vlaams Blok had shifted its focus away from the constitutional agenda to emphasize the repatriation of immigrants and political refugees, Catholic family life and values, action against crime and drugs, reduction of the state’s role in society (“a strong but light state”), rejection of the Maastricht-based EU, and an end to political corruption.97 Based on early party documents, the Vlaams Belang worldview was once described as organic solidarism, recalling the corporatist philosophy of Mussolini. This represented a “middle way” between capitalism and socialism that rejected class struggle. Socially, there was no need for unions or other labor organizations, because workers identified with the interests of their companies; economically, the free market was preferable, although it could not be allowed to harm the interests of the ethnic community; politically, parties were unnecessary, if not harmful to the social good, appearing in early Vlaams Blok literature as “corrupt and unreliable forms of ‘political gangsterism.’” Socioeconomic concerns remain in the background in party politics. Although the Vlaams Blok and Belang increasingly adopted neoliberal rhetoric to describe policy preferences, Mudde proposes that socioeconomic policy


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in the party has always “had a clear and dominant nationalist welfare chauvinist component” to support the Flemish ethnic community.98 Vlaams Belang policies on immigration have become the most publicly salient aspect of party politics and, as noted above, are the most important factor motivating the vote for the party. The future Flemish state would be closed to non-European immigrants, and only assimilated European immigrants would have the opportunity to be naturalized. However, the party’s 70 Solutions to the Immigrant Problem sets out a detailed plan for the repatriation of non-European immigrants who, the party claims, are not able to assimilate.99 Above all, Vlaams Belang seeks to position itself as an alternative to the parties of the establishment. It points to both the traditional tight control of Belgian government and administration by the three “pillars” and the recent plague of scandals in Belgian politics as evidence that a “clean sweep” of the political landscape is necessary.100 The major parties are argued to ignore Flemish interests (Flemish parties including Volksunie are accused of serving Belgian—and therefore French-language—interests); to cut compromise deals to secure their own power; and to promote the massive influx of non-European immigrants.101 Although Vlaams Belang does not rule out working with other parties to achieve specific policy goals, it ultimately rejects that any other party is able to represent Flemish interests or to seek the constitutional option— independence—that would best enable the Flemish community to flourish. Electoral Competition Because there are no Belgium-wide parties, Vlaams Belang competes only with other Dutch-speaking parties for the Belgian (federal) Chamber and Senate, the Flemish Parliament, and for the Dutch-speaking electorate in the Brussels Region. Ishiyama and Breuning have remarked that “Flemish ethnopolitics now affects all Flemish political parties. All have been forced to pay attention to ethnopolitical issues.” Despite the federalization of Belgium, demands to reform the state by devolving additional powers from the center have not ceased and are voiced by radical separatists and by the traditional “Belgicist” parties. In recent years, many Belgian parties have attempted to reposition themselves with the electorate, creating new electoral alliances with smaller parties, renaming themselves, fragmenting and even disappearing. But the major parties of postwar Belgium and Flanders remain relatively stable and continue to shape the contours of electoral competitions. The Christian Democrats represent one of the three historic “pillars” of Belgian society, Catholicism, and until 1999 had been the largest party in Belgium for two decades.

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However, Christian Democracy in Flanders has taken on a specifically ethnopolitical hue. Luc Van den Brande, the former CVP leader and minister president of Flanders, called for such significant policy areas as social security and other residual federal powers in foreign trade and fiscal policy to be transferred to the regions. Van den Brande was keen to promote Flemish economic and cultural interests internationally, including pushing closer cooperation between the Netherlands and Flanders.102 Furthermore, the cause of increased autonomy in Flanders has widespread appeal based on the perception that Walloon welfare is overly dependent on transfers of Flemish wealth and that greater control over taxation and spending would benefit Flemish economic performance.103 Whereas the Flemish Socialist Party appeared to escape from the scandals of the early 1990s with relatively little loss of support in the 1995 elections, the SP suffered a blow in 1999, falling to fourth place in Flanders behind the Vlaams Blok. Following the breakthrough of the Vlaams Blok in 1991, the Flemish and Walloon Socialists had been part of the government coalition that had made a “contract with the citizen” in response to the threat from the far right: immigration and refugee policies were tightened in the subsequent years. Yet, as the Vlaams Blok increasingly began to take up the issues of unemployment and poverty in the mid-1980s, it intentionally stepped directly into the electoral space of the Socialists. Analyses of Blok support in 1988, 1989 (the European elections), and 1991 point to the party winning support in areas where socialists and liberals had previously done well, particularly in public housing.104 Although in 1995 the Vlaams Blok lost some support to other parties, Marc Swyngedouw emphasized that the party continued to fight for support in working-class districts, where its “activists fill[ed] the void left by the Social Democrats and to some extent the Christian Democrats.”105 The 1999 Belgian elections brought the Flemish Liberals to power at the head of a new coalition government, where they remained until 2007. The Liberals long criticized “regionalization,” seeing it as inefficient and as contributing to waste in the budget. Yet the VLD leader in the Flemish Parliament called for greater autonomy for Flanders, even though the party overtly rejected separatism. The transformation of the Liberals to greater support of the Flemish autonomist agenda moved it into the electoral space of the Volksunie; indeed, the VLD succeeded in wooing some moderate Flemish nationalists to its ranks, as noted below.106 The decline of support for the Volksunie in the 1980s and 1990s, combined with the federalization of the Belgian state, stimulated efforts to rejuvenate the party ideologically and organizationally. Under new and younger leadership in the 1990s, the Volksunie sought to redefine itself as the socially progressive, tolerant face of Flemish nationalism. This was not simply a reaction to the


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efforts of the Vlaams Blok to monopolize a definition of the Flemish nation: the leadership of the Volksunie consistently reaffirmed that the party should be the expression of democratic volksnationalisme (popular nationalism), emphasizing pluralism, tolerance, social justice, and pacifism.107 The inclusiveness of this type of Flemish nationalism was seen by some party members as a means of bridging the gaps between traditional cleavages in Belgian politics. In the early 1990s, a permanent “fusion” with the Flemish Liberal Party was considered by some Volksunie members, and a few senior party members left to join the VLD. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Volksunie was being squeezed from every corner of the electoral arena—by other nationalists, autonomists, Flemish culture proponents, and progressive lifestyle parties. The party fractured—fatally—before the 2003 Belgian elections, in which one fragment stubbornly fought the election alone and another joined with the newly renamed Christian Democrats (now the CD&V) to contest seats. The Volksunie finally collapsed as the meanings of regionalism and nationalism in Flanders changed and electoral space shifted. As it had previously, the Volksunie in some ways became a victim of its own success, falling to forces in Flemish politics that it had, knowingly or not, unleashed and fostered. Vlaams Belang can be characterized as an ethnic nationalist and separatist party and as such is distinguished from all competitor parties that equally embrace Flemish regionalism and identity. Its ideology, policy stances, and constitutional interests derive from a vision of the nation as a natural and necessary community. The Flemish nation, the party argues, is under threat from the Belgian state, which encourages French-language interests; from immigration that threatens the integrity of the Flemish nation; and from a corrupt political system that cannot address the needs of the Flemish community and that cannot, as a federation, allow sufficient freedom for Flemings to govern themselves. Hence separatism and the creation of an ethnic state, in an EU of ethnic states, are the only means by which Flemish identity will be protected. Nationalist Party Dynamics: the Groundwork for Engaging European Integration The SNP and Vlaams Belang are in many ways paradigmatic nationalist parties. The promotion of political nationalism by these parties is based on grievances concerning the willingness and ability of actors at the center to govern the “regions” of Scotland and Flanders in a manner seen as appropriate to their respective inhabitants. Each party emerged after the perceived failure of other political parties to pressure the state for reforms believed necessary to protect

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the interests of the nation or region. Ultimately, each proposes that the destruction of the state is the only means to assure the protection, promotion, and representation of these interests. Yet, within the parameters of nationalism, the SNP and Vlaams Belang differ greatly. The SNP represents a moderate left-of-center party that has historically shown little interest in defining the “content” of the Scottish nation. It seeks independent statehood for Scotland and proposes a Scottish “nationality” that is civic and inclusive. Vlaams Belang presents a strikingly different case. Like the SNP, the party seeks independent statehood. But unlike the SNP, Vlaams Belang is a right-wing party that bases its claims on an ethnic nationalism: the protection of an ethnic community defined on exclusive terms is the basis of party policy. Nationalist party responses to European integration would not, therefore, be drawn on a blank canvas. The above factors—the constitutional agenda of each party, the understanding of the nation that it endorses, its members’ electoral strategies, issue interests, and ideological leanings—have not necessarily remained static. And, as I discuss in later chapters, changes in party interests at times led to a dramatic reorientation of party policy on European integration. But “Europe” as a new context for nationalism and as a set of policy issues would intersect with parties that had agendas and strategies already in place. European integration had to be negotiated by individuals with specific concerns about the achievement of policy goals, the fulfillment of constitutional agendas, and realization of their own power within a given party organization. The characteristics of party philosophy and policy outlined above suggest that each party was likely to have specific concerns about, and enthusiasms for, European integration and the EU. To the extent that integration undercuts the traditional functions and authority of the state, we should expect the SNP and Vlaams Belang, with their long-standing emphasis on independent statehood, to be wary of or hostile toward the EU. Prioritizing the ethnic community, Vlaams Belang would be particularly likely to be sensitive to any impact of the EU and integration on cultural issues. Both parties could be expected to use their respective ideological and policy preferences as “yardsticks” against which to judge the practices of EU institutions and the impact of integration, reacting favorably when the EU supported the arguments and practices of the party and criticizing the EU when it did not. The dynamics of nationalist party politics suggests that one cannot comprehend party responses to the EU simply through the category of “nationalism”: the SNP and Vlaams Belang have historically constituted very different types of nationalist parties, and their responses to European integration would differ as well.

PART II

Implicating Europe in Separatist Politics


CHAPTER 4

Nationalists and Europe: Initial Encounters

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ationalism emerged in Scotland and Flanders as a critique of the legitimate right of the central state to govern these regions. Nationalists argued that only by achieving self-government could their regions successfully undo the consequences of lengthy histories of mismanagement, apathy, and even abuse directed against their economies, cultures, and resources. The nation or region, it was argued, should be sovereign over its own affairs. However, early in the histories of the SNP and Vlaams Belang, a new facet of nationalism began to be crafted that gave a radical twist to the idea that self-government was primarily a question of domestic politics. The introduction of a European dimension to nationalism placed the issue of selfgovernment in a supranational context, making notions of sovereignty and national liberation problematic. Given the crucial significance of “sovereignty” to nationalist politics, why was the European context introduced? In this chapter, I explore the emergence of the EC as a salient aspect of nationalist party politics, examining the function that the context of Europe initially served for nationalist parties and the factors that are key to understanding how nationalist parties positioned themselves in the debates over European integration. I first describe how small numbers of party1 intellectuals introduced European integration into nationalist politics. Postwar developments in European political and economic cooperation were argued to justify and even require national liberation: the question of self-government could no longer be considered simply as one of domestic political struggle but was situated in an international, even supranational, context. These arguments received little attention. However, they introduced a potential source of external support for nationalism into debate and provided a basis for discussion within parties as the issue of Europe grew in importance.

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Europe then moved from being a minor aspect of nationalist theorizing to a more significant component of the nationalist project. As both European and domestic contexts changed, new nationalist activists in the SNP and what was then the Vlaams Blok found reasons to employ the EC as part of electoral strategy. Although not at first the dominant theme in party politics, European integration began to be recognized as a development that nationalists could not ignore and would likely need to address pragmatically even if it raised difficult questions about the sovereignty of a future self-governing polity. The incorporation of Europe into nationalist tactical considerations represents the first step toward the Europeanization of these parties. While this term has been defined in numerous ways, here it indicates the process by which EU “political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policymaking.”2 Some observers emphasize the interactive qualities of Europeanization, pointing out that while European integration shapes domestic actors’ (here, parties’) tactics, interests, and even organization, domestic actors “also project themselves by seeking to shape the trajectory of European integration in ways that suit their own interests.”3 Yet the cases of the SNP and Vlaams Blok, and later Vlaams Belang, illustrate the challenges that smaller, weaker political actors face when seeking to project influence in the European arena: in the early years of party engagement with Europe, although these parties adapted their tactics pragmatically to address the context of European integration, there was little chance that nationalists would be able to shape the path of European integration to meet their ideals. Early Discussions of Europe and European Integration Within the ranks of Scottish and Flemish nationalist parties, debate about European integration and about Europe as a context for self-determination has a considerable history. In the early years of these parties, discussion about Europe was the territory of intellectuals and small numbers of activists. However, from these discussions several themes emerged that would grow in importance to shape nationalist debates about European integration in later years. First, with European integration taking form in the late 1940s and 1950s, nationalist elites began to realize that it was occurring without the direct participation of their nations or regions. Self-government was therefore argued to be necessary if the nation was to have any influence on the future of Europe. This raised a second point: how could nationalists reconcile participation in an integrating Europe with independence? Early responses were both pragmatic and philosophical. Along with arguing that the nation’s interests would be harmed without self-government in a European polity, intellectuals suggested that the European context should be interpreted as


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liberating for the nation, and that the nation as a collective had both a right and a duty to participate in the creation of a “new” Europe. In its first decade of existence, the members of the SNP revealed little interest in European politics. Peter Lynch has suggested that with the context of “empire” still available as a framework for a potentially self-governing Scotland, the idea of “Europe” took a back seat; independence for Scotland was only one of several possible goals, among which were also a federal solution for the United Kingdom and dominion status for Scotland within the British Empire, a status similar to that of Canada. The idea of Home Rule within a federal Europe attracted only marginal support, and more generally, few outside the party elite took an interest in the European dimension of politics in the 1930s.4 Yet, by the end of the 1940s, the empire was being transformed and the SNP came under the leadership of two individuals who believed that greater European unity could provide a positive context for a self-governing Scotland. Douglas Young, party chair in 1942, and his successor, Robert McIntyre, brought European politics to greater prominence in the SNP. Young influenced party members to accept an internationalist position on Europe, a position that, in the words of Lynch, “pragmatically accepted the limits of national sovereignty.”5 By the latter half of the decade, McIntyre recognized that steps toward greater European integration were already being taken by state governments, and that without self-government, Scotland would play no role in deciding the future political and economic shape of Western Europe. By the time of the SNP annual conference in 1948, McIntyre’s ideas were having an impact on party activists. A motion for greater European unity was adopted at the conference, but support for a future European Federation was predicated on the equality of the countries cooperating within it, including a self-governing Scotland with direct representation.6 This position was followed a few years later with demands for Scottish representation in the ECSC, accompanied by criticism of the British decision not to join. Furthermore, party policy was beginning to frame the culture and identity of the Scottish people in a broader European context beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. SNP leaders, including McIntyre, issued a policy statement in December 1946 that was intended to set out anew the aims of the party. The statement began, “The people of Scotland, as members of one of the oldest nations in Europe, are the inheritors, bearers and transmitters of an historic tradition of liberty,”7 an assertion that if the projects of postwar Europe were to be based on fostering democracy and “liberty,” Scotland had the right to be included. As European integration progressed in the 1950s, some discussion was emerging within the party concerning the utility of self-government in Europe,

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with criticism that a free Scotland would simply be dominated in a European context as it had been in the United Kingdom. One response to this criticism was that forming part of a “community” of European states was not the same as forming a union with England, in which a single state with its own interests was able to dominate Scotland. In addition, the SNP sought to portray the British government as isolationist, preventing the people of Scotland from joining a European project that could advance Scottish interests.8 These arguments prefigured party discussion about European politics that would emerge in the 1980s. Yet at this time the party barely registered a blip on the radar of electoral politics, and its support remained mired in the low single digits at general elections, dipping from a high of 1.2 percent of the Scottish vote in 1945 to 0.3 percent in 1951; SNP fortunes would not begin to look up until the middle of the 1960s.9 Barely topping the tiny Communist Party vote in Scotland in the late 1950s, the SNP and its policies had little relevance in the wider political debates of the nation. Even in internal party discussion, despite the occasional motion in support of European integration at party conferences, Europe was of minimal significance and Europe played little role in how the party attempted to portray itself to the electorate.10 In its electorally weak early years, few were paying attention to SNP policy on Europe. Yet it was during this period, before the nationalist electoral breakthrough of the 1960s, that small numbers of SNP members were beginning to make the connection between Scottish self-government and Europe, and some were already recognizing and attempting to grapple with the thorny question of what, precisely, could be meant by “self-government” in the context of a fledgling supranational European Community. In the early years of the Vlaams Blok, European integration was not per se an issue of great importance; an idea of Europe, however, played a role in the philosophies of party leaders about what the international context of an independent Flanders would resemble and how Flanders could and should play a role on the world stage. There has long been an international perspective in Flemish nationalism, although in the first half of the twentieth century this primarily took the form of support for the unification of Dutch-speaking peoples; with the establishment of the Volksunie, support for Dutch cultural integration began to be superseded by calls for European political integration. In both cases, an international perspective served to support demands from the Flemish Movement for the reconstruction of the Belgian state to serve Flemish interests better. In the early 1960s, the Volksunie began to embrace the idea of a Europe where minority national cultures would form the basis of a political and social community. At the party congress in 1961, Volksunie activists sought


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to tie their demands for reform of the Belgian state to European integration by explicitly linking the new institutions of Europe to the creation of federal structures in Belgium. National or ethnic communities were to be the basis of the European system, but federalism was then a necessary step in the evolution of Belgium, to ensure that European institutions were democratically linked to these communities.11 Lynch points out that Europe was not a very important issue in Volksunie politics in the 1960s compared to the reform of the state and linguistic rights, but that by the 1970s, proposals for a federal Europe based on “peoples and regions” with a stronger supranational dimension had become “fairly predictable” fare from the Volksunie.12 At a time when new ideas about a European economic and monetary union were being heard from Brussels, the Volksunie had already positioned itself as supportive of these efforts at integration, provided they were accompanied by greater popular involvement in European decision making, a reduction of the role of states in European politics and a new role for communities. This view was developed by intellectuals such as Maurits Vanhaegendoren, a Volksunie senator, who argued that contemporary global realities left the state increasingly incapable of acting in important policy areas such as the economy or security policy. A Europe that was essentially an intergovernmental union would not itself be effective in these areas, and only a decentralized European polity with common policies for a community of linguistic, ethnic, and economic regions and nations would be able to address these problems.13 The Volksunie embraced the EP elections of 1979 as a means to promote its idea of the creation of a “Europe of the Regions” along with its agenda of reform for the Belgian state. Yet, by 1979, the Volksunie had splintered: the Vlaams Blok had emerged as an electoral competitor, and Vlaams Blok leaders had been developing quite different ideas about European integration and the role of Flanders in Europe. After the Second World War, Flemish nationalists on the extreme right began to link the idea of a Greater Netherlands to a Europe that would provide a supportive environment for Flemish culture, as had some moderate activists in the Flemish Movement. Karel Dillen, the dominant figure in the Flemish extreme right in the second half of the twentieth century and the founder of the Vlaams Blok, joined with the Jong Nederlandse Gemeenschap (Dutch Youth Association) to create the journal Dietsland-Europa in 1956.14 This monthly became a critical vehicle for formulating and transmitting ideas about Flanders and Europe that would underpin Vlaams Blok philosophy twenty years later. Dillen sought to link Dietsland to a heroic past, to contemporary Flemish nationalism, and to a future “new Europe.” He frequently mentioned Dietsland and Europe together in his appeals to mobilize support for nationalism. In 1951, at a memorial for Ghent combatants who

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had fallen on the Eastern front, Dillen asked for a general amnesty for collaborators, a cause that remained important to him until his death in 2007. Speaking with reference to recent collaborators, some executed, he urged his audience: Struggle with relentlessness and fanaticism for Dietsland and for Europe, for the Flemish national movement and for a new spirit in the West. Struggle in the spirit of the former leaders, on the trail of idealists who have sacrificed all … Loyalty to Flanders until death.15

In these early years of the Flemish nationalist right retooling itself after being discredited by collaboration, Europe was portrayed less as a potential political arena or set of institutions than as an ideal that had to be struggled for along with the nation and the broader Diets community. For activists in the Flemish Movement generally, the threat to Flanders seemed clear: domination by the French language and the social, political, and economic downgrading of Flemish interests. But for Dillen and his colleagues, Flemish nationalism represented not merely the fight to establish a Flemish polity protecting Flemish culture and embodying these values, but a means of contributing to a broader struggle to protect Europe against perceived threats. In the decades following the emergence of the Volksunie and the beginning of European integration, the Flemish extreme right articulated a vision of Europe based on the struggle against communism, the promotion of values based on conservative Catholic traditions, and the preservation of the dominant role of the white race. By the middle of the 1960s, Dillen and other extreme right Volksunie members were espousing views of Europe and European integration that went beyond the vision of a “Europe of nationalities” developing among more moderate Volksunie intellectuals and activists. The far right of the Flemish Movement believed that postwar Europe must become a bulwark against communism, and many were prepared to advocate extreme forms of politics in order to defend this view of Europe. The editorial staff of Dietsland-Europa (including Dillen) hoped for the establishment of a strong Europe that was capable of defending itself against the Soviet Union.16 Flemish nationalists defined themselves predominantly as Catholic, which in “pillarized” Belgian politics suggested that they were likely to have little affinity with liberal, socialist, or communist politics. Yet the anticommunism of the extreme right emerged in part from sympathy with a particularly authoritarian view of Catholic politics that rejected class politics as a threat to social peace, as much as it rejected communism as a threat to religion and religious values.17 For Dillen in particular, this threat to perceived cultural values and social stability


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implied that communism was a threat to all cultures; nationalism was therefore not merely a struggle against an oppressive state, but against global forces that menaced cultural integrity. If the nations of Europe were to survive, “Europe” itself had to be made strong enough to fight the threat of communism by any means necessary. The ideology that would allow Europe to maintain and foster its cultural values (and that would therefore allow Flemish culture to be protected and to thrive) was thus emerging. But who “Europeans” were was becoming clear in right-wing ideology by the 1960s as well. The liberation of the Belgian Congo in 1960 brought some former colonial officials with racist ideas into extreme right-wing francophone groups in Belgium. Flemish groups, too, began to advocate racially based views of Europe. Some writers in DietslandEuropa had long suggested that Europe faced a “biological” threat from nonwhites. In 1956, Albert van Boghout, freed from prison after serving five years of a life sentence for his wartime activities, wrote in the minor farright journal Opstanding (Uprising) that Europe faced the threat of “biological decline,” and in Dietsland-Europa in 1960, he urged his readers to make common cause with other Europeans to save white civilization: “We must establish contacts with people abroad who think as we do. Europe is the fatherland of the white man. If current evolution continues, Europe will soon become the land of café au lait.”18 European integration seemed to receive little attention from the Flemish extreme right in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather, from the 1950s to the late 1970s, right-wing Flemish nationalist intellectuals increasingly saw their national struggle framed in terms of contributing to the preservation of European civilization and European cultures. Similarly, they saw the strengthening of Europe as integral to creating a supportive framework in which Flemish national identity could be cultivated and Flemish political sovereignty exercised. After the split of the Volksunie and the electoral launch of the Vlaams Blok, the latter was initially more concerned with differentiating itself based on its constitutional position (independence) than on its stances on immigration, communism, or Europe. The Vlaams Blok did not itself present candidates for the EP in 1979. The two parties that had formed the Vlaams Blok common list in the 1978 Belgian elections—the Vlaamse Volkspartij (VVP) under Lode Claes and the Vlaams Nationale Partij (VNP) under Karel Dillen—took different approaches to the EP elections. The VVP presented its own candidates and fared poorly, leading to the departure of Claes from politics. The VNP did not present its own candidates but supported the list of a candidate who favored amnesty for collaborators. The institutions of Europe were not terribly important in these first few years of the Vlaams Blok, and European integration had little impact on the philosophies of the

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Flemish nationalists who emerged from the Volksunie to form the Blok. Yet the ideas that these nationalists developed about what purposes Europe ought to serve, and about the importance of the European context for the fulfillment of Flemish nationalist objectives, would underpin Vlaams Blok approaches to Europe when the party did eventually begin to speak more directly to questions related to European integration. The early positions of the SNP and the Volksunie/Vlaams Blok on Europe can be described as generally favorable to integration in some form. Intellectuals and activists recognized that Europe provided a powerful motivation, and justification, for self-government, because integration appeared likely to occur only on the terms of the states of Western Europe, terms that might run counter to those of the nation or region. Furthermore, whereas the state was argued to stifle or neglect regional interests, Europe would liberate the region’s citizens to express their interests and would better protect these interests. In the SNP, some voiced concerns that integration and national liberation were incompatible projects. Yet, in the initial stages, discussion remained primarily an intellectual preoccupation and was not significant or problematic either within parties or in party-constituency relations. Arguments about European integration had a limited audience, although they provided foundations for new party tactics when integration later became a more important issue. Europe and the Transformation of Party Tactics Elite discussion of Europe as an ideal and as a framework for national selfdetermination evolved in both cases into broader party interest in the European dimension of politics. Each party experienced an influx of new members whose ideas and influence shook up previously articulated ideas about European integration; as parties sought to professionalize and to develop as office-seeking organizations, intellectual constructions of Europe were not always appropriate or compatible with overall party goals. Furthermore, changes in Europe itself led some influential party members to recognize that incorporating EC politics into nationalist party tactics could prove beneficial. Where European politics emerged as a source of conflict in domestic politics, as in the United Kingdom, nationalists found opportunities to bring their ideas about integration and self-government into statewide political debate. In both cases, parties began to view Europe as a tactical resource in electoral competition and sought to use debates about European politics to build support for the nationalist agenda. For the SNP, the 1975 UK referendum on EC membership marked a turning point in the development of Europe as a strategically significant issue.


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Europe had been growing in salience in nationalist politics for a decade, beginning at the same time that the nationalists had started to make gains at the ballot box. In the early 1960s, questions about Europe and European integration in which only party intellectuals and activists had previously taken any interest began to receive wider attention in nationalist circles and to receive serious criticism, as a party that was starting to be more electorally successful and to attract new members with new ideas reevaluated European and international policy concerns. For Scottish nationalists, the result was a move away from the “Europhile” positions that had characterized elite discourse earlier, toward a more critical, even hostile, stance with respect to European institutions and the Common Market. In the 1960s, the SNP experienced significant electoral growth and won a breakthrough by-election in 1967 that put the party on the radar of the British media and the public: from winning only 0.8 percent of the Scottish vote in 1959, the SNP reached 11.4 percent in the general elections of 1970.19 Although this brought the party only one parliamentary seat, that of Donald Stewart in the Western Isles, it was a key win for the party in a general election, and Stewart’s opinions on the EC would carry weight in party politics. Yet the 1960s also represented a period in which the SNP reversed its previous position on European integration. First, developments in global politics and in Europe itself encouraged nationalists to reform their attitudes toward the EC. Pacifist members in the party strongly opposed government decisions to build a Polaris base and to site a U.S. nuclear base in Scotland. New party members attracted to the SNP by its opposition to nuclear weapons had an impact on the party position on Europe. Described by James Mitchell as “[s]uspicious of anything in any way associated with the Cold War,” party conference attendees in 1962, including some of this new generation of Scottish nationalists, opposed government support for further European integration.20 Furthermore, the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the subsequent debate about EC membership in British government circles brought home to many nationalists the possibility that the United Kingdom would negotiate terms of accession to the Community without concern for Scottish interests. The fact that European institutions finally possessed tangible form, as opposed to being merely a potential set of institutions, meant that the EC could be held up to the light of early party elite ideals, and many nationalists found Europe wanting. The EC was seen as “centralist and elitist, with little concern for democracy and participation,” an image that won few supporters in a party whose critique of the state itself was based on similar sentiments.21 SNP members had seen the future, and they did not much like it: unless Scotland gained independence before

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being taken into the EC on British terms, the nation would suffer. In May 1967, the party published a statement declaring that an independent Scotland might not uphold British treaty obligations to Europe.22 As it happened, the United Kingdom did join the EC in 1973, and the SNP played no role in negotiating British entry. Thus the debate turned to whether, and to what extent, British membership would damage Scottish domestic interests. This debate was not purely about questions of economic interest. Rather, discussion of who had the final authority to make policy that affected Scottish territorial interests, that is, the question of sovereignty in Scottish decision making was a critical aspect of nationalist approaches to European integration. Despite having completely changed tack since the 1950s over questions of Europe and European integration, one underlying theme in SNP discussion of the subject endured. As a party with a focus on independence as its ultimate goal, SNP opposition to the EC primarily involved sovereignty over Scottish affairs: over oil and energy policy; over fisheries; and over whether “rule” from Brussels would be any better than “rule” from Westminster, an old question that returned to haunt the party. Party disgust with UK entrance into the EC, and suspicions about the effects of any European arrangement deeper than a simple trading area are evident in SNP publicity from the general election campaign at which the party won its highest vote share and number of seats at Westminster to date—the October 1974 elections. Hyperbole aside, party rhetoric clearly shows that the SNP believed that EC membership not only was dangerous for Scotland but also contravened the wishes of the Scottish people to make their own decisions about European politics. The October manifesto supplement reads: Mr. Heath’s Conservative Government, continuing the policy of its Labour predecessor, took the United Kingdom into the Common Market in 1973, against the votes of a majority of Scotland’s M.P.s and the wishes of a majority of the Scottish people. It was an act of political desperation, and the people of Scotland, along with the people of England and Wales, are suffering the consequences in food shortages, price rises and industrial decline. … The Scottish people must have the right to choose for themselves in a referendum whether or not they wish their country to be part of the Common Market … The Scottish National Party’s view is that an industrial free trade agreement on the Norwegian model [i.e., EFTA], negotiated between a sovereign Scotland and the Common Market, would emerge as the best solution for Scotland.23

One former SNP member of Parliament characterized party thinking on Europe at the time of Britain joining the EC as a “Fortress Scotland”


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mentality, the idea that independence for Scotland meant going completely on one’s own.24 In the referendum on EC membership held in 1975, the SNP mounted a “no” campaign. The Conservative government of Edward Heath had secured UK membership in the EC in 1973, but Labour leader Harold Wilson campaigned in the 1974 elections to renegotiate the terms of accession in order to win a better deal for the country. With Labour triumphant in both 1974 elections, the referendum was held after Wilson claimed to have succeeded in securing better terms for the United Kingdom. By asking the public to support continued membership, Wilson could permit disagreement within his own party before ultimately playing a “populist card” to strengthen his position.25 The SNP slogan was “No—on anyone else’s terms,” and the party emphasized sovereignty over issues such as oil and fisheries policy, along with raising the question of whether substituting “rule” from Brussels for that from Westminster would do any good for Scotland.26 In debate in the House of Commons, Donald Stewart pointed out that Labour’s “renegotiating” the terms of membership had done nothing to alleviate the dangers to Scotland. The unchanged CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), which he believed would be damaging to the small farm sector, remained “one of the most drastic objections to remaining in the EEC;” nor had negotiations produced improvements for fisheries, a far more significant sector for Scotland than for the United Kingdom as a whole.27 Winnie Ewing, MP, added that oil and steel were other significant sectors in Scotland that the Wilson government had ignored. Yet party members were not solely concerned that particular Scottish interests were threatened; they viewed these threats as the consequences of an EC that was devoted to the interests of big business. Ewing argued that whereas many people viewed the EC as a force for cementing peace in Europe, in reality different motives guided the actions of the Community: the EC was “a rich man’s club” and “a friend of the large international companies. On the whole, the small business man in Scotland is not in favor of joining Europe, while the man from the big company is.”28 Party chair Billy Wolfe underlined the “exploitation of labour” resulting from Common Market policies, the consequences of an organization rooted in “inequality and greed,”29 and Stewart condemned the “materialism writ large” that characterized the EC.30 The SNP also questioned the democracy of EC institutions and the sovereignty of member states. The members of the SNP feared that not only would Scottish interests be ignored, but that the United Kingdom or Scotland as one voice among nine would be powerless to reverse the centralizing and

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capitalist course of the Community. Donald Stewart pointed out that if the United Kingdom remained in the EC, the English would come to understand what it meant to have their decisions made from afar, a situation with which Scots were already familiar. Winnie Ewing and Andrew Welsh, MPs, argued that if UK membership continued, Scotland would need representation in EC institutions to protect regional interests. Ewing quoted the American revolutionary motto of “no taxation without representation” to support her case, stating that the EC in its present form was insufficiently democratic for the SNP.31 Yet Stewart ultimately believed that these measures were useless. He envisioned an EC that would “gradually gather momentum and be beyond human control,” and concluded that “the charge of loss of sovereignty will stick at the end of the day.”32 Although the position taken by the SNP was one of opposition to political and economic union, the party intended to hold a referendum on EC membership after Scottish independence. Above all, what mattered was the ability of the Scottish people to make their own decisions about negotiating the new political and economic environment being created by the EC. But a “no” campaign in 1975 provided more than a forum for the SNP to articulate its principles about European integration and Scottish sovereignty. SNP leaders recognized an opportunity to position themselves strategically in the electoral arena as the sole party in their region that was opposed to membership in the Common Market. Whereas the Conservative Heath government had successfully negotiated entry into the EC, Labour in government was split: Wilson sought to keep the country in the EC, but some Labour members opposed membership on economic grounds similar to those of the nationalists.33 The SNP believed that a clear “anti” position would have long-term electoral advantages. The party hoped to use the issue of Europe to mobilize support for independence, to win over voters from other parties, and to demonstrate that a significant difference existed between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom on the question of the EC. The nationalists felt that a clear “no” vote in Scotland, along with a “yes” vote in the rest of the country, would demonstrate the illegitimacy of a Westminster government that was promoting a European policy that had been rejected in Scotland.34 To capitalize on divisions in the Labour Party, the Scottish nationalists needed to present a united front on Europe. However, their image was ultimately ambiguous. The SNP position that a separate Scottish referendum should follow independence implied that the party did not mean “No—on no terms,” but that the terms currently on offer by the British government were not acceptable.35 Furthermore, although the party had close to unanimous internal support for the “no” campaign, a number of senior party


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members including MPs were quietly pro-EC.36 The party did not demonstrate overtly any of the splits over Europe that prevailed in the Labour Party, but divisions within the SNP that had been papered over during the debate on EC membership would lead to some missed opportunities to exploit the European dimension of politics for many years after the referendum. The results of the referendum ultimately went against the nationalists. Fifty-nine percent of Scots voted “yes” to remaining in the EC, ten percent less than those who did so in England, but the turnout was not high: about 62 percent in Scotland.37 The “no” campaign itself had been divided, compared to the better coordinated pro-Europeans, and—significantly for those who worried that a referendum on devolution might be in the cards—the nationalists were unable to mobilize their vote.38 The 1975 referendum signaled the arrival of Europe as a key issue on the nationalist agenda and as an important tactical weapon for party competition, but the SNP message did not seem to resonate with voters. More important were the implications of the SNP emerging on the losing side of the campaign. On the one hand, the party was now firmly associated with a negative attitude toward Europe. But the SNP had been so keen to differentiate itself from the British parties that it had not made effective cross-party alliances with others working on the “no” campaign, linkages that might have later proven useful in discussion on devolution.39 On the other hand, debate about Europe within the party had been stifled, leaving little room for reconsidering party approaches to the EC or integration more generally. The late Margaret Ewing, former MP, believed it was a “strategic mistake” in the 1970s not to have divisions in the party over the issue of Europe and suggested that this was owing to the referendum; she felt that those with a pro-Europe stance, “should have been allowed to make a case for Europe,” but that this debate never took place.40 The result was that the SNP was relatively silent on the question of Europe until the 1979 EP elections, which the party pragmatically decided to contest, even though the party position in 1975 was that the parliament should be “chiefly consultative.”41 The victory of Winnie Ewing for the SNP in the Highlands and Islands European constituency meant that the party might have its criticisms of European institutions and the processes of integration, but the SNP was not going to abstain from trying to play a role in shaping the form that Europe would take. The ambiguity of the SNP referendum theme and the divisions within the party on European issues suggest that a pragmatic reorientation on Europe was not unlikely, particularly once the SNP found itself with a member in the appointed European Assembly that preceded the elected parliament. By 1979, Europe had emerged as a tactical resource for a party seeking to improve on its good results of

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the 1974 elections. Consistent with the party emphasis on Scottish sovereignty as the priority for the nationalist movement, European integration and membership in the EC were evaluated on the basis of what these would contribute to, or detract from, this priority. Yet the EC would not become the overarching framework for the entire independence question until the 1980s when division and demoralization within the SNP led to the emergence of new leaders with innovative political ideas. In the Vlaams Blok, Europe emerged as an element of party strategy by a different route. As in Scottish nationalism, radical Flemish intellectual interest in Europe turned into broader-based party activism, driven by the interests of new members, the party search for electoral success, and changes in Europe itself. Yet the emergence of Europe in Vlaams Blok strategy occurred in a different context of state-Europe relations, and the issues that spurred this change were specific to the ideas of nation and state embraced by Blok members. By the late 1980s, party members were beginning to link the EC and European integration to the domestic policy concerns of the Vlaams Blok and to value Europe as tactical currency in the electoral arena. In contrast to the situation confronted by the SNP, the Vlaams Blok as a party emerged in a polity that had long since made its peace with an integrating Europe. The problem for the Vlaams Blok was that, even if the party did wish to question European arrangements, there was almost no space within national political debate for it to do so; not only would it have to make its case about Europe, it would also have to convince the public that Europe was worth making any kind of case about in the first place. Unlike the United Kingdom, Belgium has been a member of the ECSC, and then the EC, since their founding. The country has neither had referendums nor experienced serious popular discontent with these arrangements. In addition, Belgium had experience as a member of a currency union, the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU), before the other member states of the EU undertook Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Brussels has long served as the center for numerous international organizations, including NATO, the Western European Union, and the EU, symbolically ensconcing Belgium in the center of “Europe.” Initially, there was some concern in Belgium about the creation of the ECSC, and the government recognized that the Schuman Plan for a coal and steel community would have a short-term negative impact on Belgian industries, in particular the Borinage coalmines that would face difficulties competing with the Ruhr and Alsace-Lorraine in the event of free trade in coal.42 Some domestic protest was voiced, with opposition by mine owners and the abstention of the Socialist Party from the final vote in the Belgian Senate. Yet, in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the vote in


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favor of the Schuman Plan was overwhelming and demonstrated national consensus: one hundred and two to four, and one hundred and sixty-five to thirteen, in the respective chambers.43 The justifications for Belgian support for European integration were articulated in language that suggested that more than mere long-term economic gains were at stake from participating in a European community. Belgian participation in the new institutions of postwar Europe was an explicit rejection of nationalism. During the debate over the Schuman Plan, Paul-Henri Spaak urged deputies in the Belgian Chamber that the era of the small market was over and that, “Europe will only survive in unity! … No European country is able to assure its liberty and existence alone, together we can do it, but it is necessary to begin today.”44 The official Belgian position on the ECSC at a special meeting of the Community’s Council of Ministers in November 1954 has been described as one that recognized the Community as “the best possible body for bringing about the unity of Europe by overcoming the recent nationalist manifestations.”45 This apparent national consensus on the desirability of European integration did not wane in the decades after the founding of the ECSC and, during the early years of the Vlaams Blok, public debate about European integration at the elite or mass level was almost nonexistent. None of the major political parties in the country had criticisms of Europe, and it is only recently that an interest in the role of the Belgian regions in European policymaking has emerged. Certainly, at the time the Vlaams Blok was created, the institutionalization of Belgium at the heart of the EC went practically unquestioned. Hence, the Vlaams Blok could not hope to benefit from tactical positioning on the question of Europe in the same way that the SNP did. The Blok could not attempt solely to differentiate itself from the other Flemish parties on Europe; it would have to make Europe an issue for voters. The Vlaams Blok began to incorporate European integration, although less specifically the EC, into its calculations in the early years of the party. Unlike the SNP, the Blok did not reverse its overall stance on European politics from the earlier ideas of Flemish nationalist elites, as new members rose to positions of leadership and the party began to see some initial electoral success. Rather, elite discussion about the Flemish nation and state in a European context became the lens through which newer ideas emerging on the party agenda were viewed, ideas such as radical immigration policy. At the beginning of the 1980s, the focus of the Vlaams Blok remained on the constitutional question: the creation of an independent Flemish state, as opposed to accepting federal solutions for the restructuring of Belgium and perceived compromises with French-language interests. But even in the

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1981 general election, the party’s interest in the question of immigrants was emerging. Soon Filip Dewinter would be instrumental in bringing this tendency to the fore in Vlaams Blok internal politics, at the expense of the old guard nationalists who were still working for amnesty for political prisoners and the rehabilitation of collaborators.46 Karel Dillen, the epitome of this older strain of nationalism, responded acrimoniously to a visit by JeanMarie Le Pen to Schaerbeek in Brussels in 1984, where the French politician called for the establishment of a Flemish National Front. Yet Dillen’s dismissal of Le Pen as a meddler in Flemish nationalist politics was soon superseded by younger party members, including Dewinter, who saw in Le Pen and in the institutions of Europe a means of forging an alliance of the right that would strengthen the position of the Vlaams Blok both domestically and internationally. Before the electoral breakthrough that made Vlaams Blok policy on immigration the subject of intense public scrutiny, party members recognized that the question of immigration was not solely a Flemish or even Belgian issue, but a European one. At the Vlaams Blok congress on March 25, 1984, in Brussels, party vice president Roland Raes placed immigration, the idea of the Flemish nation, and Flemish sovereignty in a European context: The peoples of Europe can only survive if they aspire to a common future of mutual solidarity. This implies that we, as nationalists, oppose all those, all that which hinders or combats the construction of our community and the solidarity of the peoples of Europe. And these adversaries are numerous. Degrading Soviet imperialism and its brutal repression of all liberty; the more subtle but equalizing American dollar imperialism; the anarchist erosion of the old cultural, religious and ethical European heritage; the destabilization of lifestyles and work habits notably by reason of massive, uncontrolled, extraEuropean immigration … The Left, from its most shameless sympathizers to the troop of progressive priests, assumes an ideal of equality that, for us, is unacceptable. Along with Nietzsche, we affirm … that injustice resides precisely in claims of equal rights for all.47

Raes’s statement foreshadowed many of the policies about Europe and European integration that would emerge in Vlaams Blok manifestoes in later years, and Flemish nationalists were portrayed as contributing to a struggle larger than their own fight for independence—that of saving European civilization from its many enemies. But Raes also suggested how the Vlaams Blok envisioned the idea of the Flemish nation and state in relation to its European neighbors. His words implied that the nations of Europe formed a community of equals: Flanders was part of a larger cultural and historical project, but it was one among equals. Non-European nations and their


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members, however, were not equals in the community of nations, but rather posed a threat against which Europe must unite to protect itself. These themes drew directly from earlier party intellectual visions of Europe, now emerging as part of Vlaams Blok strategy. During the late 1980s, the EC per se had little visibility in the party and was not itself a key component of Vlaams Blok strategy. However, an ideal vision of what “Europe” should resemble had emerged and the Vlaams Blok was using this ideal, as Flemish nationalists had long used the ideal of Dietsland, to support their projects to protect the Flemish nation and win its independence. Changes in Europe offered new possibilities for the Vlaams Blok to advance the ideas of its younger, radical members. Party decisions to seek office in European elections reflected the fresh salience of the EP as an institution after the Single European Act came into effect, and suggested two new elements in the “European” strategy of the party: the desire to use Europe as an arena to promote a specifically Flemish nationalist agenda, and attempts to use European institutions to build support for the international extreme right. Campaigns for the EP, even if Vlaams Blok candidates were not successful, allowed the party another means of communicating its message to the public. Yet party members such as Dewinter also saw EP campaigns and seats as a means of developing relations with parties in other EC countries that shared elements of the Vlaams Blok program. By the time of its initial success in winning an EP seat in 1989, Vlaams Blok members had laid the groundwork for future collaboration with other right-wing parties in EC member states. Indeed, it was younger members such as Dewinter who took the lead in promoting ties with the international right, seeing the potential for collaboration at an international level even before the Vlaams Blok had the capacity to act on this in the EP. At a Youth of the Vlaams Blok congress in 1988, several guest speakers, including leaders of French and German right-wing youth groups, spoke in favor of greater international collaboration among their organizations. Dewinter’s interest in this idea led him to send a delegation to a 1988 conference in Strasbourg sponsored by the EP group of the European Right (of which Le Pen was a member) and the Movement of European Youth: among the Flemish participants was future Vlaams Blok president and MEP Frank Vanhecke. Soon after this conference, Jean-Marie Le Pen, along with MEP JeanMarie Chevalier, met Karel Dillen, Filip Dewinter, and Frank Vanhecke in Brussels, where they discussed the upcoming European elections for reasons that were as important to Le Pen as they were to the Vlaams Blok. Le Pen’s European Right group was in danger of disappearing after the 1989 European elections with the deaths of two Italian members and one Greek member of

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the group. The political and material losses resulting from the disintegration of the European Right, including the loss of about twenty people and twenty million Belgian francs each year provided by the EC to the Right for administrative purposes as an official grouping in the EP, must have been weighing heavily on Le Pen’s mind. The enthusiasm of young Blok members Dewinter and Vanhecke would have been a welcome opportunity for Le Pen to try to expand the potential base for rebuilding the European Right.48 The rise of Dewinter in the ranks of the Vlaams Blok and the shift of power away from the old guard coincided with the opening of a window of opportunity: the French right needed support, and the new leading figures in the Vlaams Blok possessed a set of ideas that could most fruitfully be put into action with international cooperation, and an interest in working with other parties of the European Right to do so. The EP as an institution played a role in shaping the incentives for these parties to cooperate, but it also provided a forum in which the Vlaams Blok could hope to start taking advantage of the strengths of an official European party grouping to promote its interests. Karel Dillen’s victory in the 1989 EP election represented the first successful bid for office by the Vlaams Blok at the European level. Overall the Vlaams Blok won 6.6 percent of the Flemish vote, a substantial increase in support over their previous efforts; in the European elections in 1984, they had won only 1.3 percent of the vote in Flanders. The theme of the 1989 election campaign was immigration, represented in the slogan “Europe for Europeans,” and Dillen would use his new role as a representative of the Vlaams Blok in Europe to bring the message of his party to a new audience—an international one. Dillen’s behavior in the EP is discussed in later chapters; from his earliest speeches in plenary sessions, however, a focus on the main themes of the Vlaams Blok platform is apparent, in particular immigration and the perceived Soviet threat. Furthermore, I discuss below how the Vlaams Blok confronted another “threat” in the European arena: the Volksunie had spent the 1980s retooling itself as the moderate, social democratic face of Flemish nationalism and would directly challenge the claims of Vlaams Blok MEPs to represent Flanders in Europe. Dillen’s victory contributed to saving the extreme right in the EP by allowing right-wing MEPs to form a technical group, that is, a group in name only, which did not present a single manifesto for all its members. The 1989 European elections marked the start of Blok participation in European institutions, and party members began to see that the EC, not just an idealized “Europe,” should be given serious consideration in their plans. Within the Vlaams Blok there was sympathy for the Single European Act and the idea of a free trade zone for Europe, yet other EC projects were not seen in such a favorable light, and party leaders were beginning to realize that the


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ideal Europe that they saw as the framework for a self-governing Flanders was not what apparently was emerging in the EC. The development of an increasingly supranational EC led numerous Flemish nationalists, not only the extreme right, to wonder what the future of Flanders as a self-governing small state would be in the EC. Manu Ruys, formerly the editor of the leading Flemish daily broadsheet De Standaard, noted as early as 1985 that separatism was a “peril” that most Flemish nationalists recognized, but that the idea of a “Europe of the nationalities” would not provide a solution to any of the problems facing Flemish society. He argued, “The European Community will for a long time remain a Europe made up of states. In that Europe a Flemish ministate would be even less significant than present-day Belgium.”49 However, five years later, the impetus of integration had sufficiently changed the political landscape of the EC that a group of about twenty leaders and former leaders of Flemish associations asserted that for Flanders as well as for Wallonia, full control over external relations and direct representation in the EC were necessary.50 By the beginning of the 1990s, the Vlaams Blok was confronting a shifting landscape of sovereignty in Europe as well as in Belgium, where reforms in 1988 had further institutionalized federalism and empowered the regions of the country. The 1989 European election victory of Karel Dillen represented the explicit recognition on the part of Vlaams Blok activists that Europe might prove a useful element in promoting the agenda of the party and in strengthening its resource base with international support; the EC could not be ignored in party tactics. The EC did not yet represent a crucial aspect of these tactics, however; the immigration question was framed in vague terms of “European civilization,” but the Vlaams Blok was not yet explicitly holding up its ideal of Europe to the reality of the EC. The Vlaams Blok approach to European institutions and European integration would change dramatically when the Treaty on European Union opened a new set of questions about the sovereignty of states and the ability of nations to protect their selfproclaimed interests. Maastricht and its aftermath would provide the impetus for the party to think of European institutions as a tactical tool as well as a potential threat to the Vlaams Blok vision of an independent Flanders. Normalizing “Europe” in Nationalist Party Politics The SNP and the Vlaams Blok followed a similar trajectory in incorporating European integration and European institutions into a nationalist agenda. For each party, the initial engagement of European politics emerged from intellectual or elite level consideration of a European dimension of politics: an early party leader or leaders conceived an idealized vision of Europe in

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which to situate the self-governing polity at a future point. Some party activists were drawn into theorizing about the relationship of their respective nations with Europe, but debate about Europe was generally restricted in scope. In each case, Europe initially became a subject of interest to nationalist intellectuals and theorists because a supranational context legitimized the nationalist struggle in several ways. First, a European context could provide an alternate frame of reference for the nation: by turning to Europe, nationalist intellectuals hoped to define a community of support for their small nations that would provide a sense of security for a newly self-governing polity and that would highlight the flaws inherent in current state-region relations. For the SNP, an integrating Europe was seen as a desirable alternative to the United Kingdom, its empire and dominions. Involvement in a European federation would bring Scotland into a partnership of equals, whereas union with England had reduced the country to second-class status. Similarly, for early radical Flemish nationalists, Europe would ultimately provide an environment in which all Dutch-speaking people could unite, whereas Belgium prevented the cultural union deemed necessary to satisfy Flemish cultural aspirations. Second, intellectuals attempted to portray the EC, or Europe more generally, as requiring the participation of their respective nations as sovereign and equal partners. Elites in each party created an image of an ideal Europe, with values that they claimed were embodied by their own nations. In this respect, justice demanded that the nation be given the same rights, such as political liberty, as were given to any other state that claimed to represent these values; furthermore, Europe could not live up to the potential of the ideal without full, equal participation by the nation in its affairs. If, as the SNP argued, European integration was to be based on ideas of democracy and liberty, then Scotland with its strongly democratic traditions could not be excluded from playing a role equal to that of any other democracy. For the men who would later lead the Vlaams Blok, Flemish nationalism represented one front on which to fight the war to save European civilization. A white, Catholic-values-based and anti-Soviet independent Flanders could help roll back the forces that threatened the values and culture of Europe. The ideal Europe envisioned by party elites in the SNP and the Vlaams Blok allowed each party to assert that not only did the nation need Europe, but Europe needed the nation. Europe did not remain static. But neither did the parties: each party moved from a primarily intellectual or elite consideration of European politics and integration to broader party interest in Europe. The extent to which the EC specifically became an aspect of party tactics, as opposed to Europe in more general terms, depended on the politicization of the EC in domestic


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contexts for each party. Where public debate over the EC and its institutions was highly salient, as in the United Kingdom, nationalist strategy focused specifically on the EC. Where little public debate took place, as in Belgium, the EC only emerged as a separate dimension from Europe in nationalist politics at a later point. The transition in the role Europe played in nationalist politics was shaped by several factors. Institutional developments at the level of the EC and shifts in EC relations with member states helped create opportunities for parties to incorporate Europe into their strategic considerations. Debate over British entry into the EC and the likely impact of an integrating Europe on the regions of the United Kingdom offered Scottish nationalists the possibility to critique an evolving EC and to position themselves in electoral space on the issue with respect to other parties in order to use Europe to mobilize support for the nationalist cause. Vlaams Blok members found that an elected EP offered them the opportunity to promote the interests of the party, in both campaigns and in the parliament itself, and to make connections with the international extreme right. Institutional changes and domestic political debate about Europe offered only potential material for nationalists to exploit. This new resource for political mobilization was seized because of changes within the parties themselves. The arrival of new members in positions of influence, members who often injected new ideas into nationalist party politics or who rejected old ones as inadequate for achieving nationalist goals, led to a fresh look at European integration, frequently at the same time that integration was posing challenges to earlier intellectual notions about the value of Europe to these struggles. As the SNP and the Vlaams Blok became professionalized parties, dedicated to seeking office and to pursuing self-government through electoral competition, party members began to recognize the value of Europe as a means of positioning their parties in the electoral arena. The SNP rejected the earlier, pro-Europe philosophies of party elites as European integration appeared to threaten their respective visions of self-government, regional interest, and national identity. The Vlaams Blok remained committed to early radical nationalist beliefs in a Europe that could protect Flemish identity and sovereignty while increasing their commitment to issues such as immigration as part of their program for national liberation. Whatever its overall attitude toward the idea of European integration, each party adopted a pragmatic approach toward including Europe as an aspect of its electoral strategy. Both parties effectively sought a Europe that would accommodate them, and their ideas of nation and state, on their own terms. For the SNP, a rejection of the terms on which the British government had negotiated accession to the EC was based on the belief that interests specific to Scotland had been ignored and would be damaged by integration. Because the British state did

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not prioritize the interests of these regions, it could not possibly strike a good deal for Scotland in Europe; rather, what was necessary was that the region won independence, so that citizens could exercise the rights of a sovereign people to decide their own position in Europe. The SNP articulated its position on Europe with a vocabulary emphasizing notions of who possessed, and who ought to possess, the right to choose: defending what they believed was the right of their constituents as sovereign people to negotiate their own way in Europe, the party left open the possibility that the EC could, at least in theory, serve the interests of Scotland. The Vlaams Blok began to take advantage of European institutions before it had developed a coherent policy on the EC per se. The party commitment to a particular ethnonationalist worldview suggested that members would support a supranational EC only as long as the EC was compatible with these views. The party prioritized the protection of Flemish culture and the quest for independence, and the Vlaams Blok found Europe to be a valuable means for promoting radical ideas about the Flemish nation and self-government. Yet this also suggests that if the EC were perceived to threaten Flemish cultural interests or to be an obstacle to Flemish independence, the Blok would turn against it. As long as the EC did not clash with the idealized Europe of Vlaams Blok philosophy, the party could use the EC for tactical purposes with few concerns about its evolution. By the late 1970s for the SNP, and by the mid-1980s for the Vlaams Blok, the EC seemed a minor but useful aspect of nationalist tactics, intended to contribute to building support for other policies relevant to the parties, such as national culture and self-government. Yet these parties were to move into a new phase of engagement with the EC, soon to be the EU. Institutional changes in the EC and internal dynamics within the parties soon combined to make Europe the overarching framework in which the struggle for national liberation would be fought.

CHAPTER 5

Europeanizing the Nationalist Agenda: The Scottish National Party

D

uring the mid-1980s, the role played by the EC in nationalist politics began to evolve. Whereas nationalists in the SNP and the Vlaams Blok had initially viewed their relationship with the EC as one among many tactics for pursuing independence, the transformation of the EC itself and of member state relations with the Community began to shift the ground under nationalist perceptions of Europe. With the relaunch of the EC and the Single Market, European Commission President Jacques Delors probably did not suspect that the changes that would reshape the EC during his presidency of the European Commission would also alter forever the terms of debate of nationalist politics in the member states of the Community. In this and the following chapter, I analyze how nationalist parties transformed their approaches to Europe and their campaigns for self-government in response to the reforms introduced by the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. The overall Europeanization of nationalist politics involved the SNP and the Vlaams Blok recasting their ambitions for self-government in a European framework that was seen as both desirable and unavoidable. Europeanization became an option with the transformations of the European polity that began in the 1980s, changes in member state relations with the EC that had an impact on the regions represented by the nationalist parties, and developments in domestic party politics that made capturing or creating issue space about Europe a potentially valuable asset for nationalists. However, these changes in the environment in which nationalist struggles were being fought created only the potential for the transformation of nationalist relations with the EC. The parties eventually embraced what would prove to be an increasingly supranational context for self-government because activists came to power (or were already in positions of power) who claimed

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that although an integrating Europe might present challenges to the project of self-government, participation in the EU was necessary for the good of their respective future polities. The benefits of self-government in the EC, and then the EU, were argued to outweigh the benefits of being outside; at the very least, independence for Scotland and Flanders outside the EU was a decreasingly attractive option. Party leaders, either by appealing to old notions of Europe or by creating new ones, successfully argued that the EU would be a sympathetic framework in which to pursue their goals, whether these goals were derived from right- or left-wing ideology, concerned social welfare, economic development, security, or other policies of interest to the party. Yet the very notion of self-government in an increasingly supranational Europe appeared so complex that merely touting the benefits of participation in the EU was insufficient to produce a vision that party organizations would embrace. This became especially clear in the aftermath of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991. Provisions for the creation of a single currency would remove from state jurisdiction a key policy area once seen as a hallmark of national sovereignty: monetary policy. However, I argue that efforts to perfect a “Europe without borders” and the increasing supranationalism of EU policymaking did not reduce, but rather enhanced the perceived desirability of self-government in Europe for SNP and Vlaams Blok leaders. Whether or not they viewed Maastricht favorably, nationalist leaders asserted that participation as a full and equal member in EU institutions was necessary if their constituents were to influence the path of European integration. Arguing that continued regional status in the EU would leave them powerless to influence or challenge supranationalism as they chose, nationalists used European integration to legitimize claims for immediate independence, even though this implied accepting a different understanding of sovereignty than they had originally embraced. This chapter focuses on the United Kingdom and on the Europeanization of the SNP. I first sketch the changes in the European environment that altered the incentives for the party to remain hostile toward membership in the EC. I then look at domestic electoral space in the United Kingdom, arguing that the shifting positions of the major parties on the question of Europe left an opening that a “pro-EC” party could potentially exploit. I examine the rise of activists in the party who saw the EC, and then the EU, as a necessary and valuable context for the nationalist project. Arriving at a time when the SNP as an organization was searching for new ideas to revive its electoral fortunes, these political entrepreneurs emphasized the ideological and material support that the EC could provide for their future polity. They argued that the EC would provide the advantageous economic and social environment for Scotland that the United Kingdom could not provide. In arguments that

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echoed earlier nationalist discourse, the EC was depicted as an empowering framework for small states and an arena in which the self-governing polity would find support for its policy goals. Scotland was claimed to be handicapped in its ability to contest the shape of an increasingly supranational Europe: the same United Kingdom, the institutions and practices of which had inspired nationalism in the first place, was now the only “voice” being represented in the EU. To protect Scottish interests from misrepresentation by both the United Kingdom and European institutions, independence in the EU was the only option. The SNP did not accept all aspects of integration unquestioningly; members were beginning to recognize that increased supranationalism might conflict with the interests of a future independent Scotland. However, the party focused primarily on the benefits of self-government in the EU. The case for Scotland “in Europe” was argued to be overwhelming, and the benefits from these relations were claimed to outweigh by far the consequences of any loss of sovereignty. Changes in the External Environment: The End of “Eurosclerosis” The early 1980s were not years of major transformation in the EC. The European Council recognized that many barriers still existed to the completion of the internal market and took a lead role in making this a priority, but proposals to develop the Single Market had “not yet been put together in a package that would be politically attractive to the leaders of the Community” at the time of Jacques Delors’ arrival at the presidency of the Commission.1 The EP, despite the direct elections in 1979 that seemed to mark a watershed in democratizing the EC, remained a weak institution, flexing its muscles primarily in a limited area of budget policy and with little expansion of its effectiveness.2 Nor was significant reform of the Common Agricultural Policy undertaken, despite the difficulties the EC faced in financing its growing agricultural commitments. The Fontainebleau summit of 1984 initiated the curbing of the worst excesses of dairy production in the CAP and resulted in a decision about budget contributions that the British were willing to accept, but no radical restructuring of the policy occurred.3 The “Eurosclerosis” of the early 1980s suggested to many that economic and political integration had stagnated and that member state interests, informally recognized by the Luxembourg Compromise and the continuing importance of national vetoes in the Council of Ministers, would continue to dominate Community politics. However, some changes in the EC were beginning to alter the circumstances that had previously underpinned nationalist arguments to stay out of,

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and to struggle against, the EC. Even before the Single European Act, enlargement that brought small, poorer states into the EC offered hope of answering earlier nationalist criticisms of the constitution of the Community. The accession of Greece in 1981 and of Spain and Portugal in 1986 suggested that small states could play a role in the EC and might find it in their interests to do so; the relative poverty of these new members suggested as well that Europe might become more than the self-interested “capitalist club” that nationalists of the 1960s and 1970s had feared. Furthermore, the actions of the Greek government in the aftermath of accession may have provided some inspiration to nationalists who believed that their stateless nations had been dragged into Europe on unfavorable terms, and who hoped to rectify the situation. The new Socialist prime minister of Greece, Andreas Papandreou, demanded the renegotiation of his country’s terms of entry, which had been agreed by his Conservative predecessor. Papandreou was unlikely to win major concessions from the EC, but Greek accession provided an example to those who hoped that weak states might be able to voice their concerns and stand up for their interests in European institutions. Despite the stagnation of political and economic integration at the institutional level, other economic factors were altering the European environment in which nationalist politics was situated. Most importantly, trade interdependence among the members of the EC was growing, and European states that were not EC members were beginning to find association with the Community a more alluring option. In the decades before the Single European Act, EC member states were generally becoming more dependent on trade, as indicated by the increase of exports as a percent of their gross domestic product; in addition, the member states were becoming more dependent on trade with other members of the EC, measured by the ratio of a state’s exports to EC states to its total exports.4 Although it is extremely difficult to disentangle regional trends within the United Kingdom (e.g., Scottish export figures with Europe, with respect to total Scottish exports), it is clear that the European economic environment that the SNP was confronting in the early 1980s was a different one than that in which it had initially formulated its anti-EC policies in the 1960s and early 1970s. The longer the United Kingdom remained in the EC, the more important trade with EC countries was becoming, and if Scotland were to win self-government, the Scottish economy would be increasingly integrated into continental markets. Whether the SNP wished its country to stand outside the EC, or join it and participate in making the rules and institutions that would shape Scotland’s engagement in it, was an increasingly important question by the middle of the 1980s.


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The changing context that nationalists were facing was indicated by an additional consequence of the growing importance of the EC in global trade. The remaining states of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), some of which had long served as inspiration for nationalists in Scotland, were beginning to reevaluate their relationship with the EC. The British application to join the EC in 1961 had stimulated a number of the EFTA countries, including Sweden and Austria, to seek associate status with the EC at the same time, although they lost interest when the application of the United Kingdom was rejected. By 1974, the states remaining in EFTA after the United Kingdom and Denmark joined the EC (Norway, Portugal, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland) had ratified Special Relations Agreements with the EC, which were intended to create a free trade area of sixteen EC and EFTA states; a decade later, EFTA and the EC sought to move beyond a free trade area to cooperate further in a number of policy areas. Derek Urwin states that by 1984, the “net effect was to pull EFTA ever more closely into the EC orbit, with EFTA states consulting and informing the EC about policies they proposed to introduce.”5 The Scandinavian EFTA states had long been symbolically important for Scottish nationalists. The SNP viewed Norway’s prosperity and relatively recent independence as a demonstration of what could be accomplished by an independent polity with oil revenues at its disposal. Yet the nationalists’ interests in the EFTA states were as much social as economic, as left-wing nationalists found inspiration in Scandinavian social models and cooperative movements. By seeking more than merely a free trade agreement with the EC, these states were signaling that their social models could tolerate at least some degree of cohabitation with an integrating Europe. They may also have been indicating that they could not survive without further cooperation with the EC. The EC was increasingly playing a role in the trade considerations and policies of non–member states. By the middle of the 1980s, whether the SNP chose to be “Euro-positive” or “Euro-negative,” it seemed unavoidable that whatever kind of polity Scottish nationalists sought to establish would feel a direct and immediate impact from the economies of the EC. Questions of how much “sovereignty” small states could have in the EC were beginning to seem less important than the necessity of participating in the EC in the first place. Changes in the Domestic Environment: British Political Parties and the EC Changes in the domestic electoral space of the United Kingdom also created an opportunity for nationalists to benefit from reevaluating their positions

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on the EC. In the early 1980s, the position of the major British parties on European issues suggested an opening in the debate that the nationalists could exploit if they so chose. The division between “Europhiles” and “Euroskeptics” in British politics has never been a simple dichotomy describing the two major parties, and in the middle of the 1980s, the picture was particularly murky. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, the Conservative Party was in fact consistently more pro-European than was Labour.6 Yet by the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher had led her Conservative government into a highly conflictual relationship with the EC. Thatcher’s main grievances concerned budgetary issues and British contributions to the CAP; she argued that as a net contributor, the United Kingdom was owed a rebate and announced her resolve to “get her money back” from Europe. An end to this dispute was negotiated at Fontainebleau in 1984, where the validity of the British complaint was recognized and terms for repayment were settled. With the resolution of this conflict, the Conservative government could press on with its broader agenda of deregulation. Thatcher described her primary goal as the creation of a Single Market and explained her willingness to accept qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers as the price that needed to be paid to achieve this goal. Qualified majority voting was inescapable “because otherwise particular countries would succumb to domestic pressures and prevent the opening-up of their markets.”7 Yet, whereas she accepted qualified majority voting as a keystone of the development of the Single Market, Thatcher refused to countenance any development of EC institutions that would promote the supranational character of the Community. She rejected strengthening the Commission and the EP and asserted the importance of national sovereignty, of sustaining the intergovernmental character of the Community, and of limiting the jurisdiction of the EC to trade policy. Her ideological inclinations led her also to reject the idea of a European social charter, which she characterized as an opportunity for the EC to slip socialism “in the back door” of the United Kingdom.8 However visible Margaret Thatcher was as the face of the British Conservatives in Europe, she was presiding over a party that was increasingly split on questions of European integration in the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas Thatcher’s stand against political integration remained absolute, some of her own cabinet members and backbenchers were less convinced that hers was the best route for the party, and the country, to follow in Europe. In the years following the Single European Act, the tone of the Conservative Party was increasingly negative, although some cabinet members disagreed with the intensity of this tone. Thatcher’s Euroskeptical speech at the College of Europe in Bruges in 1988 marked her diminishing enthusiasm for a project that seemed to be leading ever more clearly in the direction of political


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integration. The Conservative government decision to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism in October 1990 was particularly fraught with tension. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson disagreed with Thatcher over British membership in the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism), a dispute that contributed to Lawson’s eventual resignation; other cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister herself, left office in the wake of contentious debates about European integration. Divisions within the party became more visible during discussions surrounding the Maastricht Treaty, which split the right of the party and led to a government defeat in July 1993 as rebellious backbenchers sided with the Labour party in a vote on the Protocol on Social Policy. With their belief that the state represented the highest form of political organization, Thatcherites saw state sovereignty as an end in itself and could only react negatively to European trends that seemed to threaten this sovereignty.9 Following years of negative party rhetoric about European integration, the Conservative Party entered the 1990s deeply divided on Europe. The question of sovereignty has equally been at the heart of Labour attitudes. Sovereignty, however, has been seen as less an end in itself than as necessary for Labour to have the capacity to enact its social programs in the United Kingdom. Divisions over Europe in the Labour Party did not disappear after the referendum of 1975, and after the Conservative victory in 1979, Labour became increasingly hostile toward the EC. In 1980, the party passed a resolution advocating withdrawal from the EC, and its 1983 election manifesto committed Labour to this goal.10 A reorientation toward Europe began after the party’s massive defeat in the 1983 general elections: under the new leadership of Neil Kinnock, Labour called for reform of the EC in its campaigns for the 1984 EP elections. However, Labour policy on Europe in the mid-1980s changed slowly. It was not until the third successive general election defeat for the party in 1987 that European policy was subject to serious reconsideration, along with much of the rest of Labour policy. The reports of Labour’s policy review bodies suggested that Europe could be a useful arena in which the party could advance British interests. This more positive approach to the EC was a symbolic break with the earlier party policies of withdrawal, revealing the decline of the far left within the party and providing the opportunity for the party to edge into the Europe-friendly corner of policy space, a corner no longer occupied by the Conservative Party.11 The Europeanization of the Labour Party has been described as proceeding apace with its abandoning the protectionist policies of the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) of the early 1980s, and with the reframing of Labour policy in terms of British participation in an open world economy.12 The strong showing of Labour

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in EP elections also heightened party interest in the EC. The election of John Smith as party leader in 1992 strengthened the pro-Europe orientation of the party further, and Tony Blair after 1994 demonstrated a similar desire to engage Europe constructively, particularly on social issues. The Labour and Conservative parties have switched positions on European integration over the past two decades, although the parties retain differences within their ranks. Some noted members of the Conservative Party broke with official party policy to participate in the Britain in Europe movement, a cross-party organization that included former chancellor Kenneth Clark among its members. Similarly, Labour continues to possess its share of Euroskeptics who do not enthusiastically embrace either the single currency or significant institutional reform of the EU. Yet the Blair government was committed in principle to joining the single currency, albeit only if a strong economic case could be made for membership. One contender was available to position itself in the pro-Europe corner of British issue space in the early 1980s. The Liberal Party, later the Liberal Democrats, has traditionally supported European integration and was an early proponent of the ECSC, EFTA, and the EC. Unlike the other major UK parties, the Liberals consistently supported British membership in the EC, and the current Liberal Democrats have viewed European integration as an essential component of international political and economic cooperation, pledging their support to a single currency and a federal EU.13 Although the party has possessed a small number of Euroskeptics in its ranks, these have not proven a strong threat to party leadership or party unity. Yet despite the distinct identity of the party on European issues, Scott Clarke and John Curtice have argued that the party has failed to translate its capture of a distinct corner of the European issue space into votes. Furthermore, survey data suggest that the party membership is not particularly pro-European, despite decades of the official pro-Europe stance. In the early 1980s, the Liberal Party could potentially fill the gap left in European issue space by the Labour and Conservative parties, but its leadership seemed unable to articulate a European policy that had a strong attraction to voters. The increasingly anti-Europe rhetoric of the Conservative Party and the lack of a clear proEurope position in the Labour Party suggested that a potential opening in competitive space could still be captured by a pro-Europe party hoping to convert this space into currency for external and internal use, that is, for electoral and party organizational purposes. Both the international and domestic political arenas seemed conducive to a nationalist reappraisal of the EC. In addition, the demoralization of Scottish nationalists by the early 1980s created circumstances that were favorable for the introduction of new ideas into party philosophy. The aftermath


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of resounding defeat for the party in the 1979 general elections and the failure of the 1979 referendum for devolution were turning points for the SNP in its relations with Europe. The consequences of the 1979 defeats, described as “trauma” for the SNP,14 created an opening for new strategies to be tested that might win voters and create common ground within the party. Yet, the impetus for the Europeanization of the nationalist campaign in Scotland must be sought in the dynamics of the party itself. Conditions may have been favorable, but without political actors who recognized Europe as a potentially valuable resource and who were able to muster support for their ideas, European politics might never have moved to the top of the nationalist agenda. Influential political entrepreneurs emerged in the SNP who believed that Europe could make positive contributions to nationalist politics. First, embracing Europe would allow the nationalists to capture a corner of issue space that might benefit them in elections; second, Europe might prove useful for managing internal divisions in the party. But primarily, these party activists saw the EC as a fundamentally new and necessary basis for the nationalist project, and brought a new philosophical commitment to Europe into nationalist politics. The EC provided a new social and economic framework in which to situate the nation and the future state, and it could bolster nationalist claims that British governance of Scotland was illegitimate. These efforts to Europeanize the SNP represented attempts by nationalists to appropriate Europe as their own issue and to (re)insert Europe into statewide debate on the nationalists’ terms, in order to set the agenda and direct the discussion about prospects for the nation in Europe. The Europeanization of the Scottish National Party In the SNP, a reassessment of the party’s longstanding hostility toward European integration began as part of a broader initiative among nationalist leaders to revive a party that was split by factions and suffering at the polls. Yet with large numbers of Euro-skeptics in the party in the early 1980s, the SNP could articulate only weak enthusiasm for the EC. I argue that the transformation of the European arena with the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty offered skilful political entrepreneurs who supported the “independence in Europe” option new opportunities to make their case within the party. They pointed to the need for Scotland to become an equal partner in a European project that would allow it to flourish politically and to prosper economically. In addition, they asserted that the transformation of the European environment made Scottish independence an immediate requirement: the country needed to be able to voice its interests and concerns

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about future integration before increasing supranationalism forever robbed it of the chance to do so. The party did not offer unequivocal support for the EU, asserting that a centralizing EU could not be permitted to dictate to Scotland about its “vital national interests.” Yet party leaders succeeded in converting their organization to the belief that membership in the EU would ultimately benefit Scotland. The Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty provided the party opportunities to create a new image of the Scottish nation in a European context, to attempt to represent itself as the only legitimate leader of this nation, and to argue that only statehood could protect Scottish interests in the EU. The SNP began to shift discussions of sovereignty away from a focus on total control over territorial interests to one in which “sovereignty” involved the right to decide who would shape Scotland’s future in Europe and what the terms of this future would be. In the 1979 general elections, the SNP saw its share of the Scottish vote tumble from its October 1974 results of 30.4 percent to 17.3 percent, losing nine of its eleven seats in Parliament. The danger of electoral marginalization was accompanied by a boiling over of ideological divisions in the SNP, along with a hardening line between supporters of different constitutional strategies within the party and splinterings by a variety of internal groups. “Pragmatists” who believed that devolution was a reasonable first step toward eventual independence continued to square off against “fundamentalists” who sought independence in one step, despite the message from the 1979 referendum that the Scottish public desired neither. The socialist ‘79 Group was perceived as a threat by traditionalists who saw its ideology as dangerously factionalizing to the nationalist party; eventually its members—including future party leader Alex Salmond—were briefly expelled from the SNP. All internal party groups were forced to disband after a vote at the 1982 party conference, described as the most traumatic party conference since the Second World War.15 As the decade opened, the SNP seemed riven by faction, exhausted from conflict, and incapable of repeating its successes of the previous years. By the 1982 SNP conference, party leader Gordon Wilson recognized the need to end the factionalization of the party if it were to remain a coherent and effective political vehicle. Yet, the end of formal internal party groups that year did not necessarily create bridges between individual party members with different ideological and constitutional philosophies. By the party conference in 1983, a number of party positions were up for reevaluation, including SNP policy on Europe. Wilson led the effort to revamp a number of party policies, including reversing SNP opposition to NATO and to membership in the EC. Ultimately, party members voted to offer guarded support to Scottish membership of the EC with the caveat of requiring a referendum


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after independence and negotiations for better terms for Scotland. The resolution adopted at the conference included the statement: An SNP Government would approach negotiations with the Common Market in a positive manner, willing to recommend membership unless our negotiating team were unable to secure from the EEC guarantees of protection of vital Scottish interests, particularly in relation to fishing, oil and steel. In the event of negotiations on full membership proving unsatisfactory, an SNP Government would seek associate membership status with the Community.16

Wilson saw the new party position as a way to promote independence and to protect Scottish trade; the idea that the EC could reduce the economic costs of independence was slowly taking hold among party leaders.17 Yet, the resolution also reveals the extent to which party members recognized the increasingly inescapable impact of the EC on national politics and economics. Whereas some SNP activists continued to believe that Scottish “independence” required rejecting the EC, others were coming to realize that Scotland would have to make its peace with the EC, either from inside the Community or from outside it. In addition, the issue of Europe proved to be common ground on which members of opposing party factions could meet, and it reduced the coherence of one major party faction by splitting its leadership. Two leaders of the socialist ‘79 Group, Jim Sillars and Stephen Maxwell, held opposing views on Scottish independence in the EC, with Sillars supporting it and Maxwell opposing the idea. But the party members who opposed the ‘79 Group were also divided on the question of EC membership. Winnie Ewing, elected to the EP in 1979, opposed the ‘79 Group but supported EC membership; other opponents of the socialists, including two deputy party leaders in the early 1980s, stood against Scottish membership. James Mitchell has argued that EC membership was a secondary issue in the party in the early 1980s, but that it cut across the more explosive cleavages within the party, both ideological and constitutional, with both fundamentalists and pragmatists on the question of devolution finding common ground on Europe. The cautious tone taken by the party at the 1983 conference allowed the critics of EC membership to continue to voice their qualms. European issues were not yet at the top of the party agenda, but a basis for greater party coherence was being built on an issue that could potentially unite a fragmented membership, and party members were beginning to articulate thoughts about the value of the EC for the nationalist project as a whole. The SNP campaign for the 1984 EP elections revealed the new attitude toward Europe taking hold in the party. The party was beginning to sketch

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its policy interests in a number of areas where it felt that Scotland was poorly represented by the British government in Europe, including fishing, steel, hill farming, energy, and the environment. In its European manifesto, the party explained to voters that despite the problems of the EC, Scotland’s lack of independence made it doubly vulnerable not only to mismanagement by Westminster domestically, the traditional argument of the party, but also to mismanagement from Westminster in European policymaking arenas, where the government claimed to act on behalf of the whole United Kingdom. The SNP argued that UK positions were biased toward English interests and that the “London process of ‘government by neglect and omission’ ha[d] continued. Repeatedly, deals have been hatched with the Commission and other countries by English ministers who know nothing of Scotland and care less.”18 The European manifesto detailed policy areas where Scotland would have benefited materially from independent representation in the EC and states that only SNP members of the EP could represent Scottish interests in Europe, unlike Scottish members of other parties who would be beholden to London-based party organizations. The party was also beginning to address publicly the issue of sovereignty in an integrating Europe. The vision of the ideal EC that emerges from the 1984 European manifesto is one of decentralized decision making in a Europe that could be characterized as confederal, where states ultimately retain control in policy areas of national interest and where the power of the EC bureaucracy is held in check. In his introduction to the manifesto, party chair Gordon Wilson acknowledged that the impact of the EC on Scotland was undeniable, and that if there were criticisms of European governance, only as an independent entity would Scotland be able to voice them: The Common Market has many critics—but it is here to stay, and it is making more and more of the decisions which affect all our lives. We have to live with it—and improve it … Many of the fears that the Common Market would become a superstate have been eased by experience. Far from becoming a new European despotism where bureaucracy triumphed over national rights, the enlarging of the Community in recent years has diluted some of the dangers of centralism. The bigger it gets, the looser it becomes.19

In the years before the Single European Act, the intergovernmental decisionmaking style that had been informally institutionalized in the EC since 1966 clearly appealed to the SNP, as revealed in manifesto references to preserving a veto over “vital national interests” in the EC. The language of the manifesto emphasized that Scotland would resist trends toward a “unitary” Europe, but that this would be most effectively done with Scotland as an independent state in Europe.


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Yet the SNP ultimately presented an ambiguous portrait of Europe. The theme of maintaining national sovereignty to the greatest extent possible seemed clear, but this was coupled with calls to increase the power of the EP, including giving the Parliament the right to delay the Council of Ministers when it ignored parliamentary advice. The more positive approach to the EC advocated at the 1983 party conference emerged in the stated desire of the SNP to engage in negotiations with EC officials over protecting Scottish interests in the event of independence. However, the baseline insistence of the party on retaining a veto over any policy area considered vital to Scotland echoed not only Charles de Gaulle but also Thatcher herself. This approach could appeal to the remaining Euroskeptics in the party, who feared that EC membership would dilute the future independence of Scotland, but also seemed to be a reasonable basis on which to engage a Community that remained predominantly intergovernmental in nature in 1984. The entry into force of the Single European Act in 1987 had significant consequences both for the representation of Scottish interests in the EC and for SNP policy on Europe. The roots of a more positive party approach to Europe had been laid in the early 1980s, but the impact of the Single Market initiative, along with the rise within the SNP of influential Euro-enthusiasts, brought Europe to the fore of the party campaign for independence. Jim Sillars is generally credited with being key to the “Independence in Europe” campaign undertaken by the SNP in 1988 and to solidifying the overall Europeanization of party strategy. Sillars had long believed in Home Rule for Scotland and had campaigned with the anti-Marketeers in the 1975 referendum before breaking with Labour to become a cofounder of the Scottish Labour Party. This short-lived organization collapsed soon after Sillars’ defeat in the 1979 general elections but served as a stepping stone for a number of former Labour members, including Sillars, to join the SNP. Despite having opposed UK membership in the EC, Sillars had been quick to see that, given membership, Scottish nationalism needed to reorient itself to the inevitable political and economic influence of the Community. Sillars saw the EC as integral to the social, political, and economic flourishing of Scotland. Throughout the 1980s, Sillars stressed a number of ways in which Europe was vital to the nationalist project, while arguing with those who believed that EC membership would negate the very sovereignty for which the nationalists were fighting. He explained his own conversion from opposition to the EC in both democratic and pragmatic terms: the people of the United Kingdom (and Scotland) had voted to remain in the EC and their decision had to be respected, and in the decade since the referendum, the relationship between Scotland and Europe had grown closer—there could be no going

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back. But if he had once reluctantly accepted the outcome of the referendum, by the mid-1980s Sillars recognized the gains that Scotland could make from independent membership in the EC. He decried charges from other British parties that the SNP was promoting a dangerous “separatism” that would lead to “isolation” for Scotland, but he admitted that the SNP had to accept that potential voters might be frightened away from supporting the party by this tactic. He urged that the charge of separatism and fears of political and economic isolation could be vanquished by embracing Europe: there could be no commercial or trade discrimination against Scotland if it were a member of the EC, and economic relations with England would not be disrupted. Without independence, Scottish interests would always be marginal to those of England in EC decision making. But independence in Europe would allow Scotland to maintain commercial and psychological relations with England and to influence Community policy as a self-governing member.20 Sillars linked the interests of Scotland and its relations with England and the EC to the fundamental question of sovereignty and attempted to answer the question that had dogged the SNP for decades: what good would come of “exchanging London for Brussels?” He responded by arguing that all modern states have practical limits on their sovereignty imposed by geography, trade patterns, resources, and other factors. Contrasting the relations of Mexico and Canada, and of Cuba and Grenada to the United States, Sillars asserted that the question of “how independent [is] an independent country” was subject to numerous mitigating factors, but that independence itself still remained a paramount value of countries and nations. He asserted: Firstly, there is merit in almost every degree of economic and political independence that can be obtained and held. Secondly, the freedom of political action in countries, even where there exist severe externally based constraints, is a powerful medium of self-control, national identity, cultural vitality and a gateway to participation in the international community on an equal footing with many other peoples. There is another point. The surrender of sovereignty to international bodies and laws … is a series of obligations independently accepted in order that human society, on a world scale, can function with the minimum of friction and the maximum of harmony.21

Scotland would be no different than any other state in having limits on its “independence.” But the gains from independence would still be considerable, both symbolically and practically. Scotland would be an equal partner in an association of states—the EC—that was freely sought, not imposed by Westminster, and the policymaking power and influence that Scotland would gain from participating in the EC as an equal would be significant. Recognizing the growing power of the EC, Sillars argued that Scotland would


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be incapable of prospering as an independent state outside the Community. He noted that the Dooge Report of March 1985, which called for the reform of decision-making procedures in European institutions, was setting the stage for significant transformations of the EC and for a push toward greater supranationalism. It was precisely this evolution of Community power that made independent Scottish participation more critical: “[a]s the European Community develops and extends its influence on policy, it is essential that Scotland has a seat at its top table where issues are considered and policy decisions made.”22 In this sense, Sillars’ beliefs were similar to those held by Scottish nationalists for many decades, that is, that nationalists must fight against a centralizing Community to preserve Scottish sovereignty. The context that the EC presented was changing, and Scotland needed to respond to this: These [Spinelli and Dooge] reports confirm the centralist tendencies within the Community’s institutions and press for advance towards political union on a federalist basis. That is the wrong direction for Europe to travel in but these centralist forces will edge forward unless those of us with a different view of European development take an active role in the debate. The Community will change. The question is: who will make the changes? If we stand back, it certainly won’t be us.23

Sillars recognized that the window of opportunity for Scotland to have its greatest impact on decision making in the EC was about to shrink dramatically. Scottish independence in the EC was an immediate problem, while the country could still influence the form and content that increasingly centralized European governance would take. Waiting too long might indeed pose the threats to state sovereignty about which SNP members had long warned. Ultimately, Sillars believed that Scottish participation in the EC would benefit the EC itself and all its citizens. An independent Scotland would bring a fresh perspective to questions of the centralization of EC authority, and Scotland could play a role as a leader for the small states of the EC against the large, attempting to force “the institutions to be more open and receptive, recognising the legitimacy of the decentralist case.”24 Hence the case for Scotland in Europe was one of helping to create a democratic, decentralized, and socialist polity that would benefit all citizens of the EC. Sillars was tremendously influential within the party in the mid-1980s. Described as “the SNP’s most charismatic, adored – and hated – individual” by one observer, and by another as the best public speaker that he had ever heard,25 Sillars’ promotion of Scottish independence in the EC coincided with a fortuitous set of circumstances in the party, in the United Kingdom, and in Europe that turned the party decidedly toward EC membership as

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fundamental to Scottish nationalism. Margaret Ewing described Sillars as one who “took the crowd with him,” creating space for party members to come together and support EC membership.26 Sillars’ influence on SNP policy on Europe was important, but the pro-EC position managed to pick up the support of other influential members from across the ideological and constitutional divides in the party. A small group of members around Sillars was particularly keen on EC membership, including Alex Neil who had started the Scottish Labour Party with Sillars. In addition, Winnie Ewing, a senior party member and SNP Member of the EP from the Highlands and Islands, had embraced the idea of Scottish membership in the EC, despite having political differences with Sillars. At the same time that support of EC membership was growing in the party, Europe itself was undergoing significant changes that contributed to the emergence of the EC as key to SNP policy. When Jacques Delors became the president of the European Commission in 1985, he set as his task to relaunch the EC by focusing on the completion of the internal market: the ratification of the Single European Act in early 1987 and preparations for “EC 92” brought Europe onto the agendas of all the member states. Newfound public interest in the European Community emerged at the same time that the SNP was developing its pro-Europe consensus, creating publicity of which the party could take advantage. The initial party reorientation on EC membership had occurred during the period of apparent atrophy of the EC, but developments after 1985 seemed to bear out Sillars’ arguments about the importance of independent membership in the EC to an even greater extent. The path to SNP support of EC membership was not completely smooth. Despite the growing consensus in the party leadership on the benefits of membership, some opposition remained. In 1986, SNP rank-and-file members rejected a position adopted by the party National Executive, which stated that the Single European Act did not threaten national sovereignty and did not conflict with standing SNP policy on Europe. Although this represented a “slap in the face” for the party leadership, it had little impact on the strategy of “independence in Europe” that would soon emerge.27 The solidly pro-EC party leadership moved ahead with developing its position on independence in the Community for the 1988 party conference, rejecting two dozen amendments that would have made the proposal more negative. Without a compromise position available, and with the decline of EFTA meaning that few alternatives remained, remaining anti-Europeans in the party were forced to oppose the EC per se.28 Such members were marginalized within the party, eventually earning the tag of “Albanians” by EC supporters seeking to paint them as isolationist. The 1988 party conference


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gave overwhelming support to a new policy on the EC, underpinned by resolutions that committed the SNP to pursue the only strategy that the party claimed could protect the interests of Scotland in an integrating market: “independence in Europe.” The 1988 conference marked the triumph of pragmatists on the European question in the SNP, the culmination of several years of party reconsideration of the question, and the efforts of numerous individuals to change the direction of party policy. The adoption of this policy put the SNP in a position to capture electoral space on the issue. Conservative skepticism and divisions over Europe were growing; Labour was edging away from its earlier hostility to integration but had not yet adopted a pro-EC stance; and the Liberals (soon to be the Liberal Democrats) supported the EC but had not succeeded in making this issue a critical part of their public image.29 The Single European Act had already started to shift the political ground in Scotland. Local authorities, recognizing the enormous impact that the SEA would have on them, were mobilizing to gather information from the Commission and to promote themselves in Brussels, in part to gain an edge against a centralizing Conservative government that monopolized channels of influence in the EC and the negativism of which was seen as detrimental to local actors’ interests in Europe.30 With its commitment to independence in Europe, the SNP was advancing a bold idea that tapped into new public curiosity about the reenergized EC and that caught the other British political parties off guard.31 Buoyed by Jim Sillars’ victory in the 1988 Glasgow Govan by-election, the SNP seemed to offer an exciting alternative for pro-EC voters and for the next few years would be leading the discussion in Scotland about Europe, while its adversaries were scrambling to establish their own arguments. The SNP took its new strategy into the 1989 EP elections. Although the SNP won only one seat, retaining Winnie Ewing’s seat for the Highlands and Islands, Ewing tripled her majority, and the party came close to winning a second seat. The party linked Ewing to its broader strategy, emphasizing the importance of having members in an increasingly powerful parliament, where they could lobby for Scotland’s share of EC regional funds and promote Scottish interests to a Community-wide audience. By the 1992 general elections, Europe had emerged as the context in which the SNP currently had to fight for Scottish interests, as well as the “bigger picture” in which independence ultimately had to be conceived. The election manifesto— entitled “Independence in Europe: Make it Happen Now!”—outlined the SNP policy agenda for a future independent Scotland and described how EC membership would contribute to Scotland’s achieving its domestic and international policy goals.

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The SNP and the Maastricht Treaty But along with this establishment of the pro-Europe orientation of the party, new challenges to SNP policy on Europe were emerging in the form of the Maastricht Treaty and its consequences. The 1992 election manifesto made no mention of the Treaty, signed by the European Council in December 1991. As Peter Lynch has noted, the problem of the SNP was that it had built “independence in Europe” on a predominantly intergovernmental model, with a preference for a confederal Europe, but the increasingly supranational Europe being ushered in by Maastricht made this a problematic vision to sustain. The EC was “on the move”: was the SNP going to be able to move with it? Although a special party conference in 1991 was intended to pursue an in-depth reconsideration of SNP policy in the light of the ongoing Intergovernmental Conference of the European Council, the poll tax took center stage, and resolutions on Europe were confined to a few measures, including support for a confederal Europe and support for a central bank. Yet within a year the SNP was attempting to use the Maastricht Treaty as an element of its tactics and of overall party thinking about independence in Europe. The party used the treaty to promote itself as the most “pro-European” party in the United Kingdom, pointing out that Labour had abstained from a key vote on the Maastricht Treaty in May 1992 and that, unlike Labour, the “European credentials of the SNP cannot be questioned.”32 The principle of subsidiarity and the establishment of a Committee of the Regions by the Maastricht Treaty were central to the SNP response to the treaty: the party rejected these as part and parcel of unionist strategy to keep Scotland subordinated within the United Kingdom. First, the party interpreted subsidiarity as dividing decision making between member states and EC institutions and argued that Article 3b of Maastricht could not be interpreted as empowering regions. Hence, calls by Labour and the Liberal Democrats for a devolved Scotland in a “Europe of the Regions” would only condemn Scotland to a powerless position in the EC. According to party leader Alex Salmond, Labour policy was to gain observer status for Scotland, or regional status in the EU similar to that of the German Länder, but “even this is weak,” and a Scottish regional body “would have no role other than lobbying.”33 The creation of the Committee of the Regions was interpreted in a similar light. The SNP dismissed the Committee as powerless, using it to attack proponents of devolution: Involvement in a powerless Committee is the most a devolved Assembly could expect in terms of a place within EC structures … Regional status would lock


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Scotland out of decision-making in the European Community – to the continued detriment of our national interests.34

Maastricht, the party argued, confirmed that the EC would continue to be based on states; seeking independence for Scotland in Europe would be the only way, for the foreseeable future, to guarantee the country a role in making the decisions that increasingly would affect its citizens. The process of Maastricht ratification also confirmed that small states were as valuable as large ones as participants in the EU. The example of the Danish referendum rejecting Maastricht was a commonly cited example in SNP literature of a small state exercising influence over the direction of European integration and proving capable of protecting its national interests. Responding to the argument that small states would get swamped by large ones and by the institutions of the EU, the SNP pointed to the examples of Ireland and Denmark as states whose leaders believed that they had gained influence in the EU out of proportion to their economic importance or size. The SNP saw the Council of Ministers as the institution that was, and should remain, the most powerful institution in the EU, and continued to favor confederalism; there was general agreement in the party about “not going further down a federalist [road].”35 Yet Maastricht did raise thorny questions about sovereignty for Scotland in an integrating Europe. Despite the apparent enthusiasm of the SNP for the EU, the party maintained that Scotland needed to be able to protect its vital interests in Europe: the prospect of increasing supranationalism, in particular the creation of a single currency, was understood as reinforcing the need for Scotland to have the full power of a state in the Council of Ministers. With independence, Scottish representatives “would be in a position to advocate on Scotland’s behalf with the right of veto over any decisions affecting Scotland’s vital national interests.”36 Alex Salmond reiterated that on “breadand-butter issues,” Scotland needed to maintain a veto; on questions of military cooperation, Scotland would want the “right of withdrawal.” Although stating that the SNP was “pro-Europe, pro-progress and pro-integration” on issues such as the environment, where a pan-European agenda was perceived as useful, Salmond noted that there was less support in the party for integration in areas such as natural resource policy, education, and taxes and that some members were hostile to the Common Fisheries Policy.37 Hence the party was not without criticisms of European integration and did want to see some reform of EU policies. However, this did not diminish the party argument that Europe was a more favorable environment for Scotland than was the United Kingdom. Member of Parliament Margaret Ewing urged that the SNP needed to communicate that “Europe is less of

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a threat than Westminster.” Similar to Sillars, she made the point that any state had constraints on its so-called sovereignty. Thus, at the same time that the SNP demanded a place for Scotland in the Council of Ministers, Ewing could state that “sovereignty is about how much you pool,” and not an issue of absolutes.38 The question in an integrating Europe had become: what political arrangement could maximize Scottish power in European policymaking? For a small country like Scotland, enmeshed in the highly interdependent trade of the EU, at least EU membership would bring equal standing with the other member states, equality that was denied within the United Kingdom. What Maastricht made increasingly clear was that independence—and the associated rights of a member state—needed to be the primary concern for Scots. According to Salmond, the SNP view of what mattered for participating in the EU was not whether a country is “the size of Luxembourg or the size of Germany … [but what benefits] being an independent state confers upon you.” If significant changes that would affect Scotland, such as EMU, were to occur, Scots needed to have a say.39 Only with independence could Scots freely decide how, or whether, to “pool” sovereignty in the EU. In this sense, sovereignty per se is not the issue; the real question is whether Scots possess the “sovereignty” to decide the terms on which to engage European integration. Margaret Ewing, although recognizing that Scotland would not always “get its way” in the EU, favored the expression: “You have to have a say before you can get your way.” If European integration and EU policies did pose challenges for Scotland, these could only be addressed from a position of independence. The Scottish Nation in Europe Having moved to a pro-EU stance, the SNP also returned to a strategy that had its roots in the intellectual debates of the 1940s: European integration now gave the party the opportunity to assert the nation in a European context and to claim that only the SNP, followed by an independent Scotland, could legitimately represent the nation in Europe. The party sought to accomplish this by situating the nation as a historical entity in Europe. Party literature began to highlight the theme of Scotland as a “long-established European nation,” emphasizing the cultural, trade, and military ties with the continent that the SNP claimed had been broken by the Union of 1707. Scottish education and the legal system were rooted in continental, as opposed to English, tradition and Scotland’s political ties had helped develop an “international” cultural identity three centuries previously that still endured.40 The SNP asserted that union with England had cut Scotland off from the


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“goodwill” of Europe and had isolated the country; independence in Europe should therefore be regarded not as a novelty, but as the normalizing of a situation long out of sync. The SNP referred to independence in Europe as “restoring” the self-confidence of the country and of “recovering” nationhood within a new Europe.41 In this way, the party attempted to make the case that Scotland was “naturally” more outward looking than England with respect to Europe: membership in the United Kingdom had perverted Scotland’s normal role in the world. In contrast to Scotland, which was outward looking, internationalist, and cooperative, England in Europe was insular and obstructionist. Referring to the European tendencies in Scotland’s history, a 1992 party document stated: “It is therefore not surprising that most Scots do not share the unpleasant and xenophobic attitudes sometimes found in anti-European outbursts from the “little Englander” factions in the British political parties.”42 Winnie Ewing, SNP Member of the European Parliament for the Highlands and Islands, made the point even more bluntly in the 1997 general election manifesto of the party, saying, “We are an internationalist people, who look outwards to the rest of the world—in contrast to the insular, Little Englander mentality at Westminster.”43 Seeking to reestablish a sense of a historic Scottish identity in Europe, the party hoped to dispel fears of separatism, a strategy parallel to emphasizing the economic continuity that would ensue after Scottish independence in the EU. The 1997 SNP election manifesto sounded a reassuring note: “Scotland, on independence, will automatically become a full member of the European Union: European legal, political and constitutional opinion on this matter is quite clear.”44 A historic Scottish identity with European links had not been destroyed in the years since 1707; it had simply been repressed, and independence would allow the country to recover its “natural” identity in a European context. Scots should therefore not believe they are separating from the United Kingdom or isolating themselves with independence. Instead, they would be rejoining a social and cultural community from which they were cut off three centuries ago, a community in which their continentally influenced culture could find expression. But locating the nation in Europe represents more than simply trying to boost the confidence of the Scottish people. The SNP seeks to create an identity for Scotland, to create in the minds of voters an idea of what the nation ought to be, and hence of who its political representatives ought to be. The Scotland of SNP rhetoric is outward looking, social democratic, antinuclear, and, above all, cooperative with European institutions. Party rhetoric contributes to creating this image by establishing certain images of Scottish nationhood as legitimate, and by therefore constructing other

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potential ideas of the nation as illegitimate. A Scotland that possessed these characteristics cannot at the same time be conservative, insular, and uncooperative with the EU. The SNP thus attempts to establish not only what the nation “really is,” but also who has the right to represent it. As long as the SNP defines itself as possessing the same characteristics that the Scottish nation embodies, the nationalists can claim to be the only party with the legitimate right to speak on its behalf, in Europe as well as domestically. This tactic denies legitimacy not only to Westminster government, but also to any other political party that claims to speak on behalf of Scottish interests.45 This strategy is an essential part of any nationalist project: winning public support for reconstructing the state is more than a question of getting the public to rethink the representation of its economic interests; it is a question of recasting people’s sense of what their interests are, and then of getting them to reconsider what forms of political representation best cater to those interests. Exploring the potential impact of the Maastricht Treaty, the SNP sought to provoke the people of Scotland to rethink their interests in Europe and asked them to consider who best could represent them. Supranationalism and a New Idea of Scottish Sovereignty In a period of internal party turmoil and weak electoral performance, a party leadership emerged that recognized the value of a pro-EU position for the SNP. The transformation of the European environment with the Single European Act created the possibility for a more positive approach to integration, already increasingly in evidence in the SNP, to be brought to the forefront of nationalist strategy by party activists. By winning support within the party for their views, activists such as Gordon Wilson, Jim Sillars, and Winnie Ewing transformed the SNP into an organization the success of which could not be divorced from participation in the EU. By the late 1980s, the party officially supported membership for an independent Scotland in Europe. Membership in the “new Europe” was argued to be critical for Scotland’s success as an independent polity, but the accelerating pace of integration made independence an even more pressing concern. Without it, the future relationship of Scotland and Europe would be determined by the preferences of British governments. In the late 1980s, the SNP positioned itself in the pro-Europe corner of electoral space with little competition from other parties. Its leadership successfully deployed “Europe” in party strategy as both a context that would empower a future independent Scotland and as a rationale for immediate self-government. Yet not all of the earlier party concerns with European integration disappeared; indeed, the Maastricht Treaty introduced new concerns for a party


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that had premised its enthusiasm for Europe on an intergovernmental model. As the EU developed into a polity with more supranational authority, SNP leaders were challenged to articulate a vision of sovereignty for Scotland that made sense in the new Europe. Aspects of the treaty that heralded greater supranationalism, such as the single currency, yielded cautious responses from the SNP. Questions about the potential for the overcentralization of EU policymaking began to emerge, particularly with the approach of stage three of EMU, and the SNP remained wary of EU policies in fisheries, energy, and other sectors. Party leaders reiterated their belief that Scotland needed to retain a veto over its vital interests in an EU that would ideally remain confederal. However, at the same time, they used the Maastricht Treaty to reinforce their arguments that states remained at the heart of the Union. The supranationalism entailed by Maastricht did not derail the “independence in Europe” strategy. Party leaders began to emphasize that sovereignty was not a question of absolute control over one’s territory. Instead, the quest for Scottish independence was redefined as an effort to maximize Scottish political power by casting off the “regional” status that hobbled the country in its dealings with Europe and by winning equality in the European arena. Although this equality implied the surrender of sovereignty in some areas, party leaders argued that all states in the EU shared such constraints. The critical point for the SNP was to secure the right for Scots to make their own decisions about where and how to surrender or retain sovereignty. Having convinced the party as an organization of the merits of independence in the EU, party leaders and activists then needed to turn to the more difficult task of winning the support of the public for this, the new face of Scottish nationalism.


CHAPTER 6

Europeanizing the Nationalist Agenda: Vlaams Belang

T

he Vlaams Blok began to Europeanize its separatist agenda while facing very different circumstances as a political party than did the SNP. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Vlaams Blok was negotiating the acceleration of European integration from a position of strength. Support at the polls continued to increase and the Blok did not appear to need new issues or a new framework for Flemish independence to revitalize itself. Nor did Europe present itself as a means for resolving internal party conflicts: there was little dissent over its cultural politics, anti-immigrant stance, or constitutional program. What, then, motivated the Europeanization of the Vlaams Blok? The quest for Flemish independence in an integrating EU emerged as the relations of Flanders and Belgium were being transformed with respect to each other and to the EU. The continuing federalization of the Belgian state empowered the regions in Belgium at the same time that the importance of regional actors in the EU was growing. Belgium was committed to joining the single currency, despite the burden that this placed on the debt-strapped federal government. Furthermore, the major Flemish parties hailed the Maastricht Treaty and undertook to reconceptualize their respective regional political agendas in a “European” light. Yet although it seemed inevitable that Belgium would be ensconced in the middle of an increasingly supranational EU, Vlaams Blok leaders saw in European integration a challenge to core party ideas about national identity and state sovereignty. Changes in domestic and international circumstances in the early 1990s contributed to the Europeanization of Vlaams Blok strategy. Particularly with the Maastricht Treaty, party activists believed that European integration threatened to undermine the ethnic state project they had long espoused by allowing for governance by “nonnationals.” In addition, the party argued that Maastricht would lead to centralized European

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institutions that lacked accountability and that were the antithesis of democratic government. European integration menaced not only state authority but also—specifically in Belgium—the powers of regional and community actors dedicated to protecting Flemish interests. The combination of Belgian federalization and European integration created a scenario in which Flemish government was in theory empowered to operate in European institutions. But in practice, according to the Vlaams Blok, neither Flanders nor the Belgian state retained the capacity to protect Flemish interests in an increasingly alienating European arena. The fact that the Vlaams Blok as an organization recognized European integration as a threat does not, however, explain the Europeanization of the party: why should an independent Flanders be a part of such a Europe? Europe became the overarching context of radical Flemish nationalism when party philosophy steered Vlaams Blok leaders toward recognizing that an independent Flanders must be situated in an EU, although not necessarily the EU that was emerging in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty. The Vlaams Blok, and later Vlaams Belang, response to the EU has been far subtler than a simple rejection of integration. Instead, party leaders found that many aspects of European integration could contribute to building the type of polity the party envisioned. The EU could potentially provide a means by which to promote European cultures, to protect against non-European immigration, and to establish a powerful military presence to defend European civilization and values. Arguments in favor of leaving the EU have not emerged in the party. Asserting instead that Flanders rightfully belongs at the center of a European polity, Vlaams Belang leaders have sought to articulate the benefits that a confederal Europe can provide while simultaneously remaining wary of any form of integration that might contradict party ideology. With the strictly defined notion of the ethnic state embraced by the then Vlaams Blok, party leaders could not avoid addressing the impact of European integration on Flanders. Indeed, the success of the anti-immigration politics of the party made it more pressing for the Vlaams Blok to develop policy positions that would not be seen to undercut its Flemish cultural agenda. Yet at the same time, party leaders could argue that integration made Flemish independence more necessary. Without it, the Flemish people would neither be able to defend their language, culture, and economy, nor would they be able to help change the EU into the “Europe” that the Vlaams Blok ultimately sought. I first explore the changing relationship between the Belgian regions and the EU, which has raised questions about the de facto ability of Flanders, despite its apparent power, to be an influential actor in the European arena. I discuss how Belgian economic interdependence has contributed to many regional leaders’ beliefs that Flanders must increase its power relative to the central state in order best to negotiate the dynamics of European integration.

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This transformation of Flemish politics set the stage in which questioning the position of Flanders in Europe rose to the forefront of political debate in the region. The chapter then turns to a discussion of how integration has been interpreted by the Vlaams Blok and Belang. Party leaders have responded critically to developments that are perceived to infringe on Flemish cultural and political sovereignty but have led their party to support those aspects of the EU that can underpin the creation of a confederation of ethnic states. The Belgian Regions and European Integration During the 1980s and 1990s, the transformation of the Belgian state into a fully federal system created regions that were among the most powerful substate governments in Western Europe. In chapter 3, I described the federalization of the Belgian state over the past two decades. Belgium now comprises three regions and three communities, which have gained considerable power with respect to the central state. The regions and communities are the sole authorities in many policymaking areas, leaving the federal government with social security and aspects of “high politics” as its most important jurisdictions. However, the interaction of these two levels of government has provoked questions about the actual ability of Flanders to participate effectively in European policymaking. Changes in the relationship between the regions and the EU have accompanied changes for regions within the state. The involvement of regions in numerous policy areas has grown considerably in recent years, most notably in structural fund policymaking and implementation. In the wake of the Single Market, leaders of the Belgian regions established official delegations to the EU to lobby the Commission and to serve as information brokers for their respective regions. The Maastricht Treaty provided formal representation for regions in the institutions of Europe through the Committee of the Regions and Article 146, which modified voting rights in the Council of Ministers to allow regional ministers to vote on behalf of their states. Yet the creation of bodies for regional representation in Europe has provoked questions about democracy and participation in the EU. The role of the Belgian regions in Europe is complex. Under Article 146, in the Council of Ministers, regional ministers do not speak on behalf of their regions; they must speak for Belgium as a whole. In some policy areas, only regional ministers may vote in the Council; in others, a federal minister may vote but must consult colleagues from the regions and include their notes in his or her decision; in a very few matters, only the federal minister votes.1 In addition, it remains difficult for the regions to influence agenda-setting and decision-making processes in Europe, suggesting that the impact of the regions at the European level is limited.2 The difficulties of coordinating

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policy positions among Belgian regions may allow actors in EU institutions to gain influence in areas of Council voting where the regional and communal ministers must develop a joint position.3 Belgian regions appear to be powerful substate actors, but in EU institutions they are forced to produce collective agreements with their Belgian colleagues, and in the Committee of the Regions they have no more formal importance than local and metropolitan executives. As the regions of Belgium acquired new powers in the European arena, the role of the Belgian state itself receded: the Flemish presence in the EU seemed destined to increase in scope and strength. However the weakness of the Belgian state in an integrating Europe has created an imbalance between the jurisdictions that the regions claim under the Belgian constitution and their capacity to act effectively in these areas at the European level. The weakening of the Belgian state by federal reforms implies that a void exists with respect to the representation of regional and communal interests in Europe, where states continue to be privileged actors. In some cases, the federal government has ceded control of an issue to the regions or communities within Belgium; however, at the European level, the regions only possess a weak voice, rendering them unable to play in the EU the role that they have been accorded within Belgium. The Belgian state is formally an equal to other member states in the EU, but as the federalization of the state has empowered the regions, the new distribution of policymaking power is not reflected at the European level. This has created a “capacity gap” with respect to Europe, as “power evolves upward toward the supranational level with few new mechanisms to provide for participation by, and accountability to, regional actors.”4 Belgium, European Monetary Regimes, and Flemish Economic Autonomy The interaction of European integration and Belgian domestic politics also reshaped the economic dimensions of Flemish politics. The impact of the Common Market and European monetary regimes on Flanders suggested that even with a significant degree of political autonomy, the economic future of Flanders would continue to be strongly influenced by the decisions made by the Belgian federal government. Specifically, the Belgian decision to seek entry into the single currency of the EU resulted in severe constraints on the federal government that created incentives for the Flemish to question their political role in the federal state. The development of the Single Market has long shaped Flemish perceptions of the impact of European integration on the region. In the years following the Treaty of Rome, Belgium proved an attractive location for foreign

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investment: at the geographical and transportational heart of Europe, Belgium became a gateway for foreign capital seeking a foothold in the EEC. By 1975, foreign companies employed 30 percent of the Belgian labor force. According to Paulette Kurzer, foreign direct investment helped make the 1960s the “Golden Age of growth and full employment.”5 However, to a large extent this was a “Golden Age” for Flanders, not for Wallonia. Most foreign corporations established themselves in Flanders because of its port facilities and relatively low labor costs. Wallonia was considered a less desirable site for investment because it was perceived as more isolated, geographically and economically, and the strength of regional labor organizations contributed to higher wage demands. Little more than a decade after the creation of the EEC, the relative economic standings of Flanders and Wallonia had been reversed. Whereas previously Wallonia had been the economic powerhouse of Belgium based on its heavy industry, by the early 1970s and continuing into the next decade, Flanders experienced higher economic growth rates and lower unemployment than its southern neighbor.6 Walloon and Flemish leaders began to demand state reforms and greater regional government to protect their respective interests in the context of recession in 1975. Yet as foreign direct investment was spurred anew by the Single Market initiative in the mid-1980s, regional pressures to take Belgium further down the road to federalization did not decline. Similar to the period before 1975, “Belgian” success in attracting foreign investment was disproportionately Flemish. However, the investment stimulated by the Single Market project differed from the earlier phase of foreign investment in an important respect: new investors bought out Flemish and Belgian firms. In 1992, 62 percent of the hundred largest firms in Belgium were foreign owned, and by 1997, 30 percent of the 3500 largest firms were foreign owned.7 This “disappearence of independent Belgian/Flemish corporate life posed a fresh challenge to the administrative autonomy and policy capacity of the new Flemish regional government,” as Flemish leaders began to fear that the rise of foreign capital would undermine their hard-won decision-making powers.8 European monetary regimes also contributed to reshaping Flemish perceptions of regional governance. The decisions of the Belgian government to participate in the European Monetary System (EMS) and to attempt to qualify for stage three of EMU had significant consequences for the attitudes of regional elites to European integration. Belgian efforts to conform to European monetary regimes both intensified Flemish political sentiment that the region was “subsidizing” Wallonia and increasingly allowed regional leaders to question the legitimacy of the state by asking whether it served a useful purpose for them. General consensus existed across the regions and parties of Belgium in favor of stable exchange rates and of the creation of the EMS in 1979, but

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participation in the EMS created extreme pressures on a state that possessed the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the EC. Participation in the EMS compelled Belgium to raise interest rates after German reunification in 1990, which increased government payments to service the debt.9 More critically, at a time when the federal government hoped to cut public spending, pressure groups ranging from unions and health care societies to regional elites successfully fought any reforms that might have an adverse impact on their constituents. Central governments maintained spending patterns that silenced critics who might otherwise withdraw support from ruling coalitions, but this forced the state to spend itself further into debt and set the stage for potential crisis as European integration deepened in the 1990s. Belgian governments had long expressed support for proposals to create EMU. Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemans was responsible for the report to the European Council in 1975 recommending that political consensus in the EC states must be developed on the subject of a common economic and monetary policy.10 By the 1990s, there was no strong dissent within Belgian governments about joining a single currency, and Belgian voters supported entry. Given the historical support of Belgium for the EC and the centrality of Brussels in European political life, it was difficult to imagine that Belgium would not participate in the final stage of EMU. Yet at the same time, it was clear that the country was going to face serious difficulties in meeting all of the convergence criteria established by the Maastricht Treaty. Few believed that Belgium would fail to meet the criteria concerned with inflation, interest rates, and exchange rate fluctuations. However, with respect to the other criteria the future was less certain. The debtto-GDP ratio of Belgium stood at 133.7 percent in 1995, the highest ratio of any EU member state and more than double the ratio of 60 percent set out as the target in the convergence criteria. Furthermore, despite government attempts to reduce the budget deficit from 4.5 percent of GDP in 1995 to meet the Maastricht criterion of 3 percent the following year, the national budget was based on overly optimistic predicted growth rates that that did not materialize.11 Attempts to meet the timetable for moving to a single currency led the government to take action on the budget that was condemned by many outside the governing coalition. In the wake of an unpopular austerity program, and unable to negotiate new wage restraints in agreement with employers and trade unions, Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene resorted to unusual tactics to attempt to control the budget, debt, and deficit. In July 1996, with the support of the governing parties in the federal Chamber of Deputies, Dehaene was given the right to bypass parliament in drawing up the budget for the coming year: he received executive power to raise taxes, cut social security

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spending, and set wage levels without consulting members of the Chamber.12 These measures were condemned by the opposition parties; conservative British editorialists proclaimed that “the Belgian measures are the first example of a state becoming less democratic to meet Maastricht demands.”13 Dehaene insisted that his newly acquired powers were necessary to take Belgium into the single currency. In October 1996, Dehaene presented what Belgians referred to as the “budget of the century” to parliament, although MPs had no power to challenge it. Criticisms quickly emerged from Belgian economists, who argued that the state required structural reforms and not one-off measures to raise taxes.14 Higher taxes were a particularly politicized aspect of the march toward EMU in Flanders, with its regionally higher earnings and low-level popular resentment about Flemish contributions to Walloon welfare. These sentiments were given voice in early 1996 by Flemish Minister-President Luc Van den Brande, who called for more powers for Flanders to run its own social security system, raise taxes, and run its own fiscal policy. The emergence of Van den Brande’s demands at the same time that Belgium was beginning to take the most difficult steps on the road to the single currency was not a coincidence. Van den Brande sought to set a specifically Flemish economic path toward European integration in part because he believed that Belgium’s public debt was largely the result of Walloon economic difficulties.15 Increasing Flemish autonomy would help absolve Flanders of the responsibility for any “failure” on the part of Wallonia to meet the Maastricht criteria, and Van den Brande did not want to jeopardize Flemish participation in the single currency. Belgium ultimately qualified as one of the first wave of states to join the single currency. However, the half-decade of austerity and welfare retrenchment required to meet the convergence criteria, following the exacerbation of regional tensions during the first decade of the EMS, offered numerous opportunities for the Belgian public to question the impact of government policies intended to take them into the single currency and the legitimacy of the processes that were involved. Indeed, the unintentional result of Belgium’s path to EMU may have been the discrediting of the state as a legitimate political actor. Government action to control the deficit to ensure membership in EMU backfired, creating new opportunities for criticizing the terms on which Belgium was preparing to join the single currency and the overall relationship of Belgium with the EU. Flemish Political Parties and European Integration The main Flemish political parties remained overtly Euro-enthusiastic. As the role of foreign capital in Flemish corporate life grew in the wake of the

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Single European Act, Flemish leaders increasingly sought novel means to respond to a perceived loss of control of their regional economy. Many Flemish politicians turned to European institutions as a context to help protect and legitimize the cultural, economic, and political autonomy of Flanders. By far the most ardent enthusiasts of European integration were found in the CVP, the Flemish Christian Democrats, led by the Flemish Minister-President Luc Van den Brande. In 1988, the party had passed a resolution during its annual conference declaring support for Flanders in a federal Europe, echoed in its campaign slogan in the next general election: “Flanders in federal Belgium and federal Europe.”16 But a more radical position was advocated in the early 1990s by Van den Brande. In January 1993, he suddenly changed the constitutional vocabulary of the CVP: in an interview in a francophone newspaper, he stated that he saw state reform as a step toward a “confederal” Belgium, in which the state would serve only as an intermediary for the regions.17 In March of that year, his regional government published a strategy document, entitled Vlaanderen—Europa 2002, intended to set the terms for the evolution of “a new Flanders in Europe.”18 Van den Brande had already produced a document proposing what would effectively be a Flemish foreign policy, ahead of the constitutional reforms that granted the Belgian regions the right to make foreign treaties in policy areas under their jurisdiction. The new document represented an attempt to create a feasible model for a Europe of the Regions, with Flanders playing a salient role while Belgium, deprived of significant policymaking capacity, faded. Van den Brande envisioned three essential levels of decision making in the EU: local authorities, regional government, and the EU. Belgium would serve only to coordinate European affairs, justice and defense policy, and economic and monetary policy (before 1999).19 The long-term strategy for Flanders involved embracing Europe as the context in which Flemish political, cultural, and economic life would flourish. Van den Brande rejected charges that he was a separatist; he based his vision of Flanders “in Europe” on the grounds that, with the Belgian state playing a decreasing role in public life, it was time for the Flemish to recognize that the EU, not Belgium, was the most significant political arena above Flanders. Yet his language of regionalism remained fuzzy. He claimed that he did not seek Flemish independence “according to international law,” that is, with formal recognition.20 Yet short of recognition, he used the European dimension of politics to create the image of a Flanders that was no longer dependent on Belgium, but that was an integral part of a much larger political project. Although the enthusiasm of the CVP for the EU was highly publicized because of the role played by Van den Brande, the other main Flemish parties equally embraced integration. The Flemish Socialist Party (SP), the junior partner in numerous coalition governments, has not faced the same incentives

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as its Walloon counterpart to criticize the impact of European policies on employment because much of the popular protest about threatened and actual job losses has occurred in Wallonia.21 The SP has been a supportive, even enthusiastic partner with the CVP in its European strategy. The Flemish Socialists have at times shown themselves to be more “pro-Europe” than their ideological underpinnings would suggest, preferring a vision of a socially just EU that is compassionate to all workers, not simply to European or Flemish ones. Belgian interior minister and SP leader Louis Tobback also became known for his creative proposal to end the many political battles among Dutch and French speakers over the governance of Brussels. He suggested turning the city into a “European district,” a quasi city-state in which European institutions would play a governing role. The idea, known as “Brussels DC,” had little popular support but illustrated the extent to which the SP recognized that the EU might be not just a source of structural funds and support for the welfare state, but also a set of institutions that could help regulate or resolve political conflicts that seemed beyond the control of Belgium. The Flemish Liberals (the PVV until November 1992; renamed the VLD— Flemish Liberal Democrats) have supported European integration for different reasons than have the leftist and centrist parties of the region. Leader Guy Verhofstadt, who spent three years as budget minister in the mid-1980s, became leader of the PVV in 1988 with the goals of reducing the budget deficit and government intervention in the economy. After becoming prime minister in 1999, Verhofstadt began to prepare for Belgium to take over the presidency of the EU in the second half of 2001. He noted that although fiscal harmonization would be a priority under the Belgian presidency, he would also seek, in the spirit of his government, to conserve “a space for liberty in a harmonized framework.”22 Not only did his emphasis on liberty set Verhofstadt apart from other Flemish party leaders, his vision of the role of the Belgian regions in the EU differed. He had long criticized the inefficiency and complications of Belgian regionalization, dismissing arguments that regional government has made Belgium more democratic. Hence, he did not express the enthusiasm for a “Europe of the Regions” that Van den Brande had, preferring to focus on how further constitutional reforms could promote economic and administrative efficiency and individual liberty in Belgium.23 The Volksunie, the center-left Flemish nationalists who participated as coalition partners in Flemish and Belgian governments, were high-profile supporters of European integration. Many in the party viewed Belgium as a temporary state, unlikely to remain relevant or even to survive further European integration. While Belgium continued to exist with Flanders as a powerful region, the Volksunie supported a “Europe of the Regions and the Peoples,” in which regions should be endowed with sufficient power at the European

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level to advance their interests. The Volksunie supported the Committee of the Regions as a fledgling institution with the potential to evolve into a more powerful body and participated in the European Free Alliance, a non-EU body in which regional nationalists worked together to support each other’s European electoral campaigns. The Volksunie philosophy about the EU was summarized by Gilbert Lambert, assistant to party European Parliamentarian Jaak Vandemeulebroucke, who stated, “We don’t believe in a Europe of the states. We don’t want Europe being constituted like it is at the moment, of the fifteen nation-states. But we would like that the regions … take part in the decision-making of Europe,” emphasizing that the goal was for Flanders to be a full participant in the European arena.24 Before its demise, the Volksunie hoped to see the substantial reconfiguration of European institutions to improve the formal status of regions, and—similar to the CVP—saw Europe as ultimately representing the third level of political life, above regions and localities, with states disappearing. There were therefore few areas left in political party space that did not seem to have been occupied by pro-Europe forces. The Flemish party system has remained pro-EU, either enthusiastically or with a few reservations. Ultimately, Flemish leaders view the EU as an ally in the struggle to protect their hard-won decision-making capacity. As the impact of the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty combined with regional reforms to divest the central state of power, regional elites could take advantage of this questioning of state authority to legitimize their own newly acquired power. As Kurzer observes, integration was used by substate elites “to solidify their hold over power, instill new political affiliations and identifications among confused voters, and, to be sure, to undermine the authority of the Belgian nation-state.”25 By the 1990s, most of the main Flemish parties sought to anchor Flanders in the European context, where they could distance themselves from Wallonia and its economic problems, exploit the powers granted to the regions by the Belgian state, and find institutional and economic support for their respective party agendas. The Europeanization of the Vlaams Blok and Vlaams Belang Vlaams Belang is the only major party in Flanders to reject many of the developments emerging from the Maastricht Treaty. Similar to the CVP, SP, VLD, and Volksunie, the then Vlaams Blok found that Maastricht provided incentives to engage the European dimension of politics more closely. But the nature of these incentives differed: Vlaams Blok leaders recognized that the “new Europe” of 1992 and after posed significant challenges to their vision of an independent Flanders. With an unswerving commitment within the

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Vlaams Blok to a specific vision of Flemish cultural politics, party leaders could not avoid addressing the challenges posed by an integrating European polity. By the mid-1990s, the right-wing politics of the party led it into conflict with the EU. Although Europe came to be interlinked with the radical right-wing politics of independence for Flanders, the EU became a target of intense criticism by the party. Nonetheless the Vlaams Blok still believed in an ideal Europe that could provide the necessary international context to protect Flanders and its interests. Changes in Vlaams Blok strategy regarding Europe must be seen in the light of two developments in the party in the early 1990s: its electoral breakthrough in 1991 and the consolidation of power by Filip Dewinter and his anti-immigrant agenda in party politics. The 1991 triumph of the party revealed it to be a viable, growing electoral force that immediately became the subject of serious academic and popular interest: the newly scrutinized leadership needed to be able to present coherent policies, and the rise of Europe and Maastricht as issues across all member states in 1991–92 meant that the Vlaams Blok could not avoid presenting a position on these subjects. The salience of immigration questions in party politics and the rise of Filip Dewinter’s power in the party, however, resulted in the Vlaams Blok approach to integration being shaped definitively by questions of citizenship, immigration, and culture as much as by the question of the constitutional status of Flanders. Although European integration did not figure among the main concerns of the 1991 party campaign, the overriding theme of the election for the Vlaams Blok—immigration—foreshadowed how the party would shape its responses to Maastricht and the EU. As discussed in a previous chapter, Dewinter’s publication, 70 Solutions to the Immigrant Problem, became enormously influential in party policy, establishing the broad outlines of Vlaams Blok concerns about foreign residents and workers, and offering detailed discussion on why certain “foreign” cultures, in particular Islam, were fundamentally incompatible with the Flemish way of life as envisioned by the party. On constitutional issues and reform of the state, Gerolf Annemans emerged as the leading party member. Together, these two men represented the two main policy tendencies in the party, with elder statesman Karel Dillen the formal chairman of the organization until his resignation in 1996. Yet although the two primary policy trends in the party remain, these represent complementary, not antagonistic tendencies: in fact, it is difficult to see how dissent or radical reinterpretation of party policy could emerge from within its organizational ranks. The structure of decision making in the Vlaams Blok appears to militate against the emergence of significant dissent from the party leadership. Marc Swyngedouw describes an internal party

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structure in which power is exercised by a few individuals at the top of the organizational hierarchy. He states that the highest decision-making body in the Vlaams Blok is the general council, with about fifty people, but that in fact, the most powerful group is the party executive, with thirteen members. Yet “decisions can only be made if the members have the blessing of the chairman, who is not elected to his position.”26 That is, until 1996 Karel Dillen had the last word on party decisions; since then, Frank Vanhecke has held this position. In addition, the party executive exerts significant control over the activities of most of the national rank-and-file organizations, such as the Vlaams Blok Jongeren (Youth) and the Nationalist Broadcast Foundation, which produces mass media programs for the party. The structure of the party allows for a significant degree of control by the leadership.27 By the early 1990s, this “control” ensured the hegemony of the politics of Flemish cultural identity within the Vlaams Blok. Constitutional issues were still important: only with independence would Flemish identity be protected. But Filip Dewinter and his politics of cultural identity were ascendant in the Vlaams Blok, meaning that the party itself, its auxiliary organizations, and its representatives were all prepared to mobilize against perceived threats to Flemish culture, from within Belgium and beyond it, at the European level. Events of 1991 thus proved critical for shaping the approach of the Vlaams Blok to European integration. The general elections established the party as a force to be reckoned with in Flemish politics, and the campaign cemented the centrality of immigration issues to the Blok’s nationalism. The conditions created by the Maastricht Treaty were encountered by a strong party that possessed a deeply rooted worldview based on protecting Flemish culture, from which nearly all of party policy was derived. There was no discernable interest within the party in altering its ideology: the important question for the party became how the “new Europe” could, or should, fit into Vlaams Blok ideology. The Vlaams Blok Response to the Maastricht Treaty and Its Aftermath The accelerating supranationalism of the EU in the late 1980s and early 1990s clashed with the notions of sovereignty and national identity embraced by the Vlaams Blok and led it into a contentious relationship with the EU. Overwhelmingly, the Vlaams Blok reaction to post-Maastricht integration was negative. The “new Europe” became linked to Flemish independence in party literature at an early point, indicating that the Maastricht Treaty and European integration were significant enough to warrant serious party attention. In his introduction to an English-language document prepared in 1992,

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party chairman Dillen stated that the Vlaams Blok was a “party in the service of Flanders and Europe, of the Flemish and European people. A party, not from the past, but definitely directed toward the future.”28 Dillen’s assertion that the Vlaams Blok image of Flanders in Europe was a future-oriented vision is worthy of note: it suggests that he recognized that simply treating Europe as a cultural zone or as an ideological construct as had Flemish nationalists in the past would be to ignore the monumental institutional changes in the EU that would have a considerable impact on Flanders, independent or not. By the 1995 general elections, this recognition of the potential and actual impact of Europe had become central to the message of the Vlaams Blok. In the first paragraph of the party election manifesto, the potential independent state was situated unambiguously in a European polity: “Flanders must thus become an independent state in Europe with Brussels as its capital.”29 The party manifesto revealed that the EU represented the context in which Flemish nationalists needed to win their struggle for freedom. Ultimately, “The Vlaams Blok states very clearly that we are true Europeans and also intend remain so. Europe is a compelling necessity.”30 Yet to the Vlaams Blok, “Europe” would only be a desirable context for Flanders if it fulfilled certain criteria: without certain structural characteristics, the EU would be a potential threat or even a disaster as far as the party was concerned. The Vlaams Blok concept of the ethnic nation formed the basis of the party vision of Europe. Just as Belgium was “artificial” because it sought to regulate the relations of different “peoples” within a single political entity, so could the legitimate political order of Europe only be based on ethnic states. For the Vlaams Blok, there could be no distinction between a “Europe of states” and a “Europe of peoples” to achieve political justice. Describing the basis on which the EU should ideally be constructed, the Vlaams Blok president in the Chamber of Deputies Gerolf Annemans noted: [W]e want the European Union to be constructed on a natural base, which means not these artificial nineteenth century states that were made, like Belgium, were made by the big powers of those days … we want real and natural states being in Europe, participating in Europe. We want Europe to be constructed … based on their Volks—people—that people should be the structure, not the state, which … can happen to be artificial.31

Annemans’ colleague in the Flemish Parliament, Karim Van Overmeire, indicated that this vision of the basis of the EU also had implications for the structure that Europe ought to take.

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We don’t see Europe as a nation; we see Europe as a union of nations, which have something in common, common history, common culture, but [which] have also each their separate identity, and we should preserve those identities, we think. A Europe of the People is a kind of confederation, not a federation, a kind of cooperation between nations who want to do, who want to resolve certain problems in common, but who want to retain their identity … and their own nationality.32

The EU is, in this formulation, an arena for political cooperation among ethnic states, but it is only an arena. It cannot, or should not, be endowed with capabilities or autonomy that might interfere with the ability of national states to protect their respective identities. Party members conceded that taking the idea of the ethnic state to its logical conclusion might be problematic: small ethnic groups that could not be viable independent units posed a challenge for a true “Europe of the peoples.”33 But in principle, a Europe of ethnic states was the desired outcome that Vlaams Blok members felt would best accommodate the aspirations of European cultural groups. The EU could be the context in which, with their liberation, they would be able to cooperate as equals with their neighbors in pursuit of common goals. Consequently, certain forms of governance had to be ruled out: federalism or other power-sharing devices by which one ethnic group would govern another, or in which ethnicity would not be the organizing principle, were construed as philosophically out of order. However, Vlaams Belang argues that the EU is moving precisely in a direction that is eroding the ability of its nations to govern themselves. The EU is portrayed as overly bureaucratic and centralized, tendencies that are seen as anathema to democracy. In addition, these tendencies are seen as growing in strength, if not irreversibly entrenched. For Vlaams Belang, the Maastricht Treaty was the catalyst for other developments in the EU that the party believes are a danger to the Flemish nation and, more broadly, to democracy in Europe. The party is primarily concerned with the centralization and bureaucratization of the European polity that it argues are the result of Maastricht: these two terms frequently appear together in party rhetoric and almost always have negative connotations. Bureaucracy, to Vlaams Belang, implies a government that is unelected, “faceless,” and therefore unaccountable, or worse, able to act independently from the “actual” wishes of Europe’s citizens. Karim Van Overmeire emphasized this alienation of European officials from member state populations, contrasting EU ministers to the Flemish and Belgian first ministers, or even to the Belgian king: “and that is easy, that is the man who is responsible, you have to vote for him, or against him. But Europe, who is Europe? It doesn’t

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exist, it has no face. The European ministers have decided, but who has decided?”34 The lack of any electoral mechanism to hold European Commission officials accountable emerged as a key issue for the Vlaams Blok in the 1990s. Members referred to this problem as contributing to a dangerous autonomy of EU institutions as well as to the normative environment that they believed had been successfully created by European officials to discredit opposition to European integration. Van Overmeire’s words tied these issues together: [W]e are not against a united Europe, but the dream of Europe as we have it is quite different from the Europe as it is growing now: you see that Europe is very bureaucratic, not at all democratic, there is no democratic control, you have the kind of bureaucracy that has, as in the Soviet Union, it lives its own way, and it gives directives, and everyone follows, because when you are against then you are not a “good European.”35

Current Vlaams Belang president Frank Vanhecke echoed these sentiments, indicating that the kind of Europe that the party hoped to see develop was a far cry from the present EU. Discussing the ideal structure of the EU for the Vlaams Blok, Vanhecke gave as an example the problem that, when surveyed, the public generally agreed that the EU could do a better job of resolving ecological problems than could each individual state. However: [T]hat isn’t a real question to put. The real question should be: “Do we have to solve all these problems by … people keeping to their own cultural and political freedom working together in Europe, or do we have to solve the problems by a bureaucracy of people who have never been elected, and who are there because they are nominated by somebody else?” That is the real question to be put …36

An unelected bureaucracy was thus opposed to the “freedom” that the Blok desired. The EU in its present form detracted from the ability of its citizens to participate in a democratic public life and to manage the decision-making processes that increasingly affected their lives. Yet just as problematic as the fact that the bureaucracy was unelected was its composition, the people whom the Vlaams Blok argued populated its offices. These officials were described as out of touch with the citizens on whose behalf they supposedly act; furthermore, their existence contradicted the principles of ethnic government that the Blok believed essential for a properly ordered polity. The Vlaams Blok criticized the isolated culture of the “eurocrat” in which EU officials are socialized into an anational culture that detracts from their ability to recognize, and legislate for, the diverse nations of Europe.

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Those people who work in Brussels … they are I would say by definition “anational.” They are something like international and they are quite proud of it too! They are also very well paid, so they form in fact a class totally different from anybody else … I believe they have an international mentality and I believe they do not, honestly do not understand why people can be attached to their own language, to their own way of living, to their own culture. That’s in any case the impression I get from from speaking to many high ranking Commission and European Parliament officials: I have the impression of living in another world, or on another planet. Those are not bad people, those are not monsters. I honestly believe they do not understand our attachment to what we are … They think we are missing the progress toward the twenty-first century.37

This lack of understanding of national attachment indicated, for the Vlaams Blok, a major flaw in the structure of the EU: the economically privileged eurocrat may be socially removed from his or her constituents, but the “anational” eurocrat can never be an ethnically committed representative of any nation. Not only do such officials lack any understanding of particular cultural identities, but they also cannot understand the value of cultural diversity per se. This point was argued by Karel Dillen in the EP; he argued that integration should not entail placing the future of Europe in the hands of “technocrats” who do not respect cultural diversity. He suggested that one must question whether projects such as EMU were “yet another weapon in the hands of the dreadful eurocrats to be used against the multifaceted and colorful nature of the European spiritual landscape,” and indicated that integration was taking a form that should be condemned.38 Yet Vlaams Blok leaders believed that criticism of the EU was getting buried by a bureaucracy that did not wish to hear it or have it publicized. When asked whether he believed that the Vlaams Blok position was being silenced by the EU because it was dangerous, Vanhecke replied, “To them, yes, yes. But … [I believe] we would have a large majority among the voters, among the people of this country …, if only people knew what’s happening, if only people understood the way it’s going.”39 The fact that the public remained ignorant of how the EU was run was simply a further indication of the strength of the EU propaganda machine. The Vlaams Blok also argued that the EU ran a massive public relations campaign that drowned out the voices of the opposition. The ability of the EU apparently to shape discourse as it pleased was a phenomenon that the Vlaams Blok believed was unacceptable in democratic politics. The Vlaams Blok might be unable to counter the power and resources available to the EU, but the party could present itself as the champion of democracy, standing up to a bureaucracy with vast resources at its disposal.

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However, although criticism of the EU is now a prominent aspect of Vlaams Belang policy, the party did not choose to argue for an independent Flanders outside the EU. Instead of rejecting a Europe that was largely seen as antithetical to its aspirations, the party chose instead to embrace “Europe” as the only context in which Flanders could prosper and protect its culture. The Europeanization of Vlaams Belang resulted from the party recognizing that participation in Europe was necessary for Flanders ideologically, culturally, and economically. Although the EU must be reformed to meet the idealized Europe that suits party ideology, a task to which Flanders can contribute if it is independent, a European polity is critical for helping all Europeans to prosper and protect their respective cultures. Party members did not believe that their approach to European integration implied cultural insularity or xenophobia. Instead, the creation of an EU of ethnic states suggested the equality of all nations, and respect for the desire for self-determination of one’s neighbors. Despite the Vlaams Blok quest for a Europe of ethnic states, in the words of the 1995 party election manifesto: “This is not to agree with and not to lapse into a narrow sort of provincialism … Each people has a right to its cultural uniqueness. In this manner we come to a cultural Europe, a people’s Europe.”40 By promoting the ethnic state as a question of rights, the Vlaams Blok presented a vision of European integration that it claimed was liberating and progressive. This vision thus compelled the Vlaams Blok to assert its solidarity with other nationalist movements in Europe, including the Scottish, that it believed also sought to destroy artificial states and to replace them with a “natural order.” The general party philosophy of the ethnic state in the EU was ultimately reflected in party aspirations for Flanders in Europe: Flanders must be a full and sovereign participant in the EU, but it would not sacrifice its identity to do so. These aspirations are summed up in a statement from the 1995 election manifesto: “We want to go to Europe as Flanders, but we want in the first place to remain Flanders.”41 Gerolf Annemans pointed out that the European Treaty of Human Rights accorded all people the right to selfdetermination. This principle, combined with the potential opportunities created by the EU, created a powerful argument for Flemish independence in Europe. [O]ne of the reasons of our separatism is that we want to participate as Flemish at the European table, in the European Council [of Ministers] and as we consider it … as a major opportunity, we want to do it as Flemish. Now we are mediated by Belgian ministers, in some cases, ministers that don’t even understand our language, our aims, our Flemish interests; they are in fact dealing with some mixing result of Flemish and Walloon interests, or even

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only Walloon interests, and that’s why we want to participate on the European level as Flemish. And that is only possible, in the [current] state of the European Union … as an independent state.42

Without statehood, Flemish empowerment in the EU was impossible. Yet, given the circumscribed role that the Vlaams Blok envisioned for the EU, what was the incentive for Flanders to be independent “in Europe?” In the post-Maastricht era, the Vlaams Blok recognized the EU as the appropriate forum for promoting its politics of cultural identity, but also as the necessary context for articulating these policies. “Europe” certainly possessed instrumental value for a party that was politically marginalized domestically, as I discuss in later chapters. However, there was also a strong philosophical commitment to situating an independent Flanders in the EU. The Vlaams Blok constructed a vision of the EU that drew on its ideological legacy of Flemish identity politics, anticommunism, and European cultural militancy, and cast the party’s struggle for Flanders as elemental to a larger European struggle for the protection of culture and identity. The Vlaams Blok derived its principles about the role the EU ought to play in public life from the ethnic solidarism that underpinned party philosophy. Party policy was that a “Fortress Europe” needed to be constructed in order to protect the integrity of European civilization against perceived threats and that the institutions of the EU should be dedicated to these ends. In this point of view, the EU became a powerful ally in what was to the party not simply a domestic problem for each member state, but a Europe-wide crisis. Party members emphasized the need for the EU to act as a bulwark against Islam and “non-European” value systems and against those individuals who were the carriers of these values. To the Vlaams Blok, passivity about the state of European civilization was insufficient: a struggle was necessary to protect it. In the EP, Karel Dillen spoke about the responsibility he and his fellow MEPs had to use their office for the sake of this struggle: The centur[ies]-old tradition of Europe, of the Occident asks of us, demands of us, requires of us that we strive toward, that we work for, that we fight for a healthy Europe in unity and variety with respect for the peoples of Europe, their language, their culture, their essence.43

What, precisely, constitutes the “tradition” of Europe is never spelled out. The Vlaams Blok election program also stated that a common heritage unites European people, but it did not elaborate: “The unity of Europe is for the Vlaams Blok a unity of different peoples around common roots of civilization,

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but with the preservation of each people’s own abundance, language and culture.”44 What was clear was that Europeans share common cultural roots from which their diverse contemporary cultures developed. Two implications emerged: first, European integration could only occur on the basis of recognizing who shared the same “roots” and who did not and therefore ought to be excluded lest the “unity” of Europe be threatened. Second, protecting the diversity of European cultures was equally an imperative that the EU could not ignore if legitimate unity was to be achieved. Whatever European civilization might be, it “required” struggle, as did the cultures of the European peoples. Although European civilization was not defined, it was clear to the party who “the other” was and how the cultural unity of Europe must be achieved. As it did on the domestic front, the Vlaams Blok in the EU called for the immediate repatriation of non-European workers. This theme was reiterated in the European Parliamentary interventions of Karel Dillen, who linked the deportation of foreign workers to themes of social harmony and human rights within the EU. Dillen called for EUwide action to mandate the “supervised and assisted” repatriation of nonEuropean workers, which would be supplemented by human and financial resources provided by the EU to ease the transition of these workers to their home environments.45 As Dillen stated, “Fighting to maintain our own singularity as a people and as Europe, the refusal—following the death of colonialism—to see Europe colonized in turn, is our right and our duty, and has nothing … to do with racism and xenophobia.”46 This policy was argued to be necessary not because of racism but to avoid it. Party members recognized the right of non-European foreigners to retain their own cultural identities but insisted that this could not occur while they remained in Europe: the cultures of both foreigners and Europeans were undermined by such a policy. If xenophobia was the result of contact among Europeans and non-Europeans, the human rights of workers were thus best protected by repatriating them. Ultimately, “Europe must stay Europe” to prevent racism.47 The fight to “stay Europe” not only suggested immediate practical policy considerations but it more broadly describes the political environment that Vlaams Belang believes the EU should create. The party argues that EU institutions must be devoted to ensuring the literal survival of the European people: it thus also emphasizes the importance of the EU in the field of security and of developing the military and policing capabilities of the EU. With respect to internal security, the then Vlaams Blok insisted that the processes of integration benefited criminals without concomitantly empowering law enforcement officers to address the new international dimension of crime. Party members viewed the emergence of stronger, more closely integrated policing in the EU as a functional imperative resulting from open borders

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and the removal of internal passport controls. Referring to the problems faced by national police forces attempting to deal with criminal activity that crossed the French-Belgian border, Karim Van Overmeire noted that crossborder police cooperation needed to be encouraged. Ideally, European institutions would facilitate this cooperation or would even help police forces to deploy across borders. He noted, “United Europe shouldn’t mean that it’s [easier] to commit crimes and more difficult for the police to get the criminal.”48 Developing EU capacity in policing was seen as both desirable and necessary, an expansion of EU power that would contribute to, not detract from, the security of citizens in member states. This concern with security was more visible in the Vlaams Blok’s enthusiastic endorsement of an EU common foreign policy and common defense, to the extent of support for the creation of a common European army. Party literature and interviews reveal a consensus on the belief that in these areas, the EU was insufficiently active and that encouraging the development of such common policies was a high priority for the Vlaams Blok. Underlying this interest in a common defense is the anticommunism of the party, a salient element for decades of its vision of an “ideal Europe.” Yet anticommunism did not wane after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the former Eastern bloc; party leaders feared its resurgence and continue to worry about the intentions of Russian leaders. Only a unified foreign policy front and a strong military could enable the EU to stand against such potential threats. At the beginning of the 1990s, party members were calling for the EU to speak with a single voice against Soviet policy in the Baltics, a region in which the Blok saw struggles for ethnic independence that mirrored its own. Vlaams Blok member of the EP Karel Dillen castigated the then EC for not responding with threats of sanctions against the USSR for Mikhail Gorbachev’s treatment of Lithuania. For Dillen, Europe’s failure to stand up to Gorbachev was as dangerous for the EC as it was for the struggling Baltic democratic movements. The need for Europe to be vigilant and to coordinate its defenses against potential threats did not end with the breakup of the USSR. By the mid1990s, the Blok was concerned not only that the EU stop the reemergence of communism, but also that “Europe must be able to defend itself against all forms of aggression, terrorism and nuclear blackmail” and against “Russian imperialism.”49 To the Blok, it appeared that threats to the EU were clear: in addition, Europe possessed the potential to coordinate its response and to defend itself. Hence, the consolidation of a common foreign policy and defense seemed an obvious and achievable goal. To the Vlaams Blok, these common endeavors represented more than the ability of the EU to react against threats. A single foreign policy and unified defense would be an indicator of the independence of the EU and an

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opportunity to project European values on the international stage, as well as a guarantee of those values and independence. The Vlaams Blok was committed to an EU that was as independent from American power as it was from Soviet/Russian influence. Although the party accepted NATO as a “lesser evil” before a full-fledged European army could be deployed, party rhetoric suggests that European freedom could never be assured without the latter. In the Vlaams Blok’s Principles (published before the breakup of the USSR), the party agenda was clear: “For the Vlaams Blok, a united Europe must be at the same time a strong and armed Europe, capable of defending itself and of protecting its liberty.”50 Karel Dillen publicly reiterated the importance of a well-equipped armed forces for the security identity of Europe. Arguing that the “militarily adult Europe” in the long term needed to be responsible for its own security and defense, Dillen emphasized that military security was necessary to demonstrate European independence: “[A]s long as those conditions remain unfulfilled, we are not masters of our own destiny, we enjoy a sham, a parody of independence and remain, at best, subordinate to the United States.”51 Vlaams Blok members seemed particularly frustrated by the inability of the EU to construct coherent foreign policy and to act on its professed interests in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. To the party, this represented the utter failure of the EU as a foreign policy actor. As Van Overmeire put it: [W]e have to do something about our position in the outside world. Take Yugoslavia: we had a splendid opportunity to prove that we are something of a superpower or are becoming a superpower. The Americans have told us … it’s all yours, you do something. After four years we have to accept that after all, we are not able to manage the problem! So the Americans come in and they solve it now. It’s to be ashamed.52

For the Vlaams Blok, the establishment of a functioning common foreign policy and defense was critical to safeguarding the EU from external threats, to carving a distinct and independent role in world affairs for the EU, and to ensuring that the values and aspirations that the EU claimed to embody could be given life in its foreign policy. The Vlaams Blok’s various interests in strengthening the EU converged in party policy in the 1990s on eastward enlargement. The party leadership perceived enlargement to include the former Eastern bloc states first as an ideological necessity. The Vlaams Blok vision of who constituted a “European,” and hence of the responsibilities that the EU had, was far more inclusive than might be assumed from looking at the party record on immigration questions. The definition of a “European” was geographically broad; party

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members asserted that the EU was acting selfishly if it continued to exclude East European citizens: It’s a question of, how would I put it, ideology, of principles. How can we honestly think that we are Europe with fifteen countries, and without countries like Norway, like Switzerland, like Poland, like Hungary, we are not Europe … look on the map! We are not Europe … We are only fifteen rather small countries working together and keeping all the rest at our front gate.53

This latter comment, by MEP and current party president Frank Vanhecke, suggested the extent to which the party believed EU politics must be grounded in a set of principles: enlargement should not occur simply because it will bring practical benefits to East and West but because the EU has a moral responsibility to dedicate itself to improving the lives of all European peoples. Furthermore, with enlargement all cultural Europeans could be protected against potential external threats, that is, a resurgent Russia.54 Underlying the discussion of identity and moral community rested another very practical reason for Vlaams Blok support for enlargement. Enlargement, party members argued, would weaken centralized power in the EU, both in representative institutions and in the bureaucracy. MEP Frank Vanhecke urged that the EU should seek enlargement “as quickly as possible” because the larger the EU became with veto rights for member states, “the more difficult it will be for the bureaucrats to impose their system on everyone. So the larger the EU, the more we hope it will start to look like the European Union working together that we want.” Speedy enlargement was thus seen as “the way to destroy the system.”55 This hope that enlargement could severely weaken or destroy the “deepening” of the EU was augmented by a belief that this weakening could cause the entire European project to be called into question. Gerolf Annemans articulated this sentiment when he stated that, “[B]y integrating more and more states, I think the intensity of what the European message is will of course decline and fall apart.”56 The integration of Eastern European populations into the EU was thus morally necessary and politically desirable but for the Vlaams Blok this aspect of integration was ultimately subversive. By fulfilling a duty to protect European peoples, EU institutions would also be undermining themselves: enlargement to the east would raise new questions about the form and content of European governance and might contribute to a reappraisal of the EU experiment with new room for Vlaams Blok ideas about politics and government to make headway. Despite the importance of the Single Market project in the history of European integration, the party had relatively little to say about the potential value of a European market, except for arguing that the protection of European markets from influence by global actors was relevant to the protection of

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European cultures. The little that party literature mentions specifically about the role of the European Single Market generally confirmed the Vlaams Blok commitment to a free market. The broad principles of Vlaams Blok support for the market were outlined in the 1995 general election manifesto of the party: “The Vlaams Blok stands behind the principle of a free market economy and promises that this is the proper manner to promote prosperity and welfare in Europe.”57 Support for free markets was central to the party philosophy of minimal state intervention. Yet the party was not entirely comfortable with the free market, if such a market were to “delocalize” the economy or permit an excessive foreign presence in domestic economies. Karim Van Overmeire hinted at the appropriate balance the Vlaams Blok was seeking when he stated that the EU should have “some economic cooperation, but the sovereignty should remain with the people.”58 The party, however, never clearly defined the extent of either “cooperation” or the “sovereignty” of the people; from the above discussion of the role of the EU in guaranteeing cultural diversity and protecting European culture itself, it seems that the cultural sovereignty of European peoples was paramount, rather than the principles of a free market economy. Ultimately, the Vlaams Belang position on the role of a Single Market for the nationalist struggle is an ambivalent one, useful for the nationalists when the EU can be put in the service of protecting local economies and cultures but potentially negative if a free market disrupts these local networks. The Flemish Nation in Europe The EU thus plays a vital role in helping Vlaams Belang accomplish various programmatic elements of its agenda: achieving an interlinked set of political, cultural, and economic goals will be facilitated with EU leadership. Europe, however, also fulfils a key function in the nationalist project more broadly. Projecting a specific image of the Flemish nation in the EU can establish Vlaams Belang as the only legitimate interlocutor for Flemish interests in Europe while simultaneously delegitimizing the Belgian state in this role. The strategy involves two main arguments: first, the Belgian state has repressed the “natural” role that Flanders should play in European politics, a fact that legitimizes the destruction of the state. Second, the values attributed to the nation in Vlaams Belang discourse suggests that only this vision of an independent state in a sympathetic European arena will allow Flanders to blossom, which delegitimizes attempts by any other party, including the nationalist Volksunie, to promote other visions of Flemish governance. Vlaams Belang emphasizes that Flanders has a right to take part in the EU as a full and equal member based on the nation’s historic position in, and contributions to, European civilization. The historic cultural, economic,

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and military relations of Flanders and the rest of Europe prior to the creation of Belgium are presented as a justification not only of Flemish statehood, but also of Flanders’ meriting an equal role in the new European polity. In an English-language party publication, the party connects an independent, long-established Flemish identity to the heart of early European “civilization” and European polity building during the reign of Charlemagne. The party also points to medieval Flanders as a significant economic and political actor, contributing to the vitality of European trade and to the maintainence of European-Christian civilization. Furthermore, “Many Flemish knights participated in the Crusades and the Earl of Flanders was at one time crowned Emperor of Constantinople.”59 This overview of Flemish history, which includes a description of Flemish and Dutch resistance to continental hegemons during the Renaissance and into the modern era, is included in a section of the document entitled “History of Flanders from a European Perspective,” that is, not from a Belgian perspective. Invoking the grandeur of Flanders more than five centuries ago serves to establish the validity of a Flemish identity independent of that of Belgium, within a European context that allowed Flanders to prosper. Flemish identity is recontextualized out of Belgium and (back) into a greater Europe: in describing the role that a Flemish polity once played in European affairs, the Vlaams Belang is asserting that Flanders could again be a significant actor in continental politics and could reclaim its long-lost position at the heart of Europe. Alongside this resituation of Flemish political identity in a European context is the portrayal of Belgium as an artificial and inappropriate vehicle for Flemish national aspirations. Flemish interests will not, and cannot, be represented at the European level because Flanders is mediated by Belgian institutions peopled by politicians who have little interest in or ability to project a specifically Flemish identity. The Vlaams Belang leadership argues that the Belgian ministers who are supposed to represent the interests of the country in the EU in some cases do not even speak Dutch and therefore cannot understand “our aims, our Flemish interests; they are in fact dealing with a mélange, some mixing result of Flemish and Walloon interests, or even only Walloon interests.”60 Former Belgian member of the European Commission Karel Van Miert was offered by the Vlaams Blok as an example of how the Belgian identity precedes, or even effaces completely, Flemish identity in the EU. Because of Van Miert’s obligations to serve the interests of Europe, he is a step removed even from Belgian concerns, but his absence from defending Flemish interests is perceived as betrayal of the ethnic group: Not even with, by mediation of this member in the Commission … who is not at all interested in Flemish views and even if he was, he would be corrected

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by Walloon or French-speaking Socialists who say, uh, “Charles, shut up, you know, you mustn’t be Flemish, you must be Belgian.” And this asexuality of all European, Belgian European members, is a major difficulty; to be able to say that Flanders should be represented on the European level, it is not a fact, it is not, and there is no opportunity in this Belgian state to do so.61

The failure of Flanders to have a voice in the Commission is seen as, in part, a failure of individual will (Van Miert’s and Belgian ministers’ in general) but also as institutionally impossible: the EU magnifies the flaws of representation evident in the Belgian federal state, that is, the muffling of a Flemish voice and Flemish concerns, and projects them onto the supranational arena. The party also points to numerous instances in European policymaking where Belgian and Flemish interests differ and where Belgian interests have triumphed in the EU at the expense of Flanders. The party holds up Belgian acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty as the prime example of how state interests in Europe have proven detrimental to Flemish national interests. Aside from ushering in a bureaucratic, undemocratic EU that Vlaams Belang strongly condemns as a threat to Flemish culture, Belgian acceptance of Maastricht is argued to be at odds with what “the people” of Flanders want. Because of Belgian actions, Maastricht will damage Flemish interests domestically and in Europe. According to Vlaams Belang, Belgian politicians neglected to protect Flemish linguistic and cultural rights in Flanders itself, which undermines the principles for which the linguistic regions were created: to protect Dutch in Flanders from further incursions by French. By accepting the Maastricht Treaty, Belgium acquiesced to the Treaty provision that citizens of any EU member state would have voting rights, in European and local elections, in whichever state they reside. This provision is seen by many Flemish nationalists, not only Vlaams Belang, as a disaster for Flemish Brabant, which is contiguous with Brussels. Flemish Brabant has become a “commuter suburb” for Brussels and an attractive area for many EU employees to make their homes. However, foreign EU employees tend to speak French and prefer to educate their children in French. They have thus begun to demand public services in French and, it is feared, will vote for French-speakers when given the opportunity to do so in local elections, a situation that Flemish nationalists claim is leading to the erosion of the linguistic boundary and the further weakening of Dutch. The Vlaams Blok denounced Belgium for allowing this voting provision of Maastricht to pass without protest. Karel Dillen described the consequences of future foreign voting rights in Flemish Brabant as “a direct assault on the language, culture and identity of the Flemings who live there,” arguing that with Maastricht “Belgium has yet again trampled

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Flemish interests under foot.”62 Gerolf Annemans pointed out that other countries had managed to delay the enactment of the voting provision until after 2000, indicating that many Flemish politicians alongside the Vlaams Blok pressured the then prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene to delay enactment.63 Not only do Belgian interests dominate Flemish ones in the implementation of European policy at the domestic level, but Belgian interests are paramount in European institutions as well. Vlaams Belang argues that Belgium does not defend, and even contributes to, the decline and marginalization of Dutch as an official language in the EU. Vlaams Belang members of the EP criticize their Flemish colleagues for not speaking Dutch in plenary sessions, thereby undermining the status of the language.64 The 1995 election manifesto of the party pointed to a 1993 European resolution that Dutch would not be one of the main working languages of the EU and indicated that a “rumor” in circulation pointed to Jean-Luc Dehaene himself as a promoter of this compromise proposal.65 Vlaams Belang thus attempts to portray Belgian, and other Flemish, politicians as traitors to what the party believes are the “genuine interests” of the people. If the Dutch language, intrinsic to Flemish identity and culture, is not being protected at home or in Europe by these non-Vlaams Belang politicians, the party can argue both that Belgian and Flemish interests diverge and that claims that Flanders is being represented are simply duplicitous. Hence Flanders itself must participate in the EU as an equal, as a separate state; otherwise, in the words of Gerolf Annemans, in the European arena, “Flanders is a prisoner in the Belgian state.”66 Vlaams Belang portrays the assertion of the repressed Flemish identity as the duty of all “true” Flemish but also as a right derived from the principle of self-determination. Along with his criticisms of Belgian representations of Flemish interests in the EU, Dillen once asserted, “The right of self determination gives Flemings the right and the duty to demand an independent Flemish state of their own.”67 The notion of duty is portrayed as a key element defining those who belong to the Flemish nation. Drawing on its ethnic solidaristic vision of the nation-state, Vlaams Belang asserts that the Flemish nation in Europe is not simply a Dutch-speaking ethnic group founded on Catholic values and a historic Flemish culture. The Flemish nation is composed of vigilant individuals on guard to fight threats to the integrity of the nation itself. Furthermore, this portrait of Vlaams Belang in the service of Flanders and Europe is contrasted to a portrayal of the other Flemish parties, including what Vlaams Belang refers to as the “former” Flemish nationalist Volksunie, as corrupt and ignorant of their duties to Flanders. Other parties cannot and will not represent Flanders; therefore self-government for Flanders in the form sought by the Blok is the only legitimate option. Flemish cultural,

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political, and economic interests can be understood and properly translated into political action only by ethnically aware activist Flemish. However, European integration reveals to Vlaams Belang that even Flemish politicians can mistake or ignore “Flemish interests.” Thus, the party needs to assert continuously that Flemish identity entails a particular set of values that a “true Fleming” has a duty to protect. The growing disjuncture between Flemish history, identity, and interests and Belgian representation in the European arena serves to frame Vlaams Belang arguments that, whereas the EU may serve important functions for Flanders, this will only occur with Flemish independence and not with the Belgian constitutional status quo. Embracing Europe in Order to Change It The Vlaams Blok Europeanized its strategy in the context of the constitutional transformation of Belgium and the acceleration of European integration. The federalization of Belgium occurred alongside the political and economic integration of Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s but the supposed autonomy of Flanders was rendered problematic by European and global developments. Regions gained power to operate in European institutions but this power was limited. In addition, the leaders of the Belgian state seemed unable or unwilling to respond to Flemish concerns about the internationalization of the Flemish economy and about the economic burdens being placed on the region by European monetary regimes. Whereas many Flemish political parties eventually embraced the EU as a means to address perceived problems of Belgian governance and to promote regional interests, the Vlaams Blok response was more complex, emerging from the idea that the EU itself might constitute a threat to Flanders. Europe only became the overarching framework for Flemish nationalism when integration took a form that collided with Vlaams Blok philosophy. Although the party exhibited little interest in the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty was perceived as a significant challenge to party ideas about cultural and political sovereignty. The electoral success of the Vlaams Blok and the rise of anti-immigrant politics in the party ensured that any perceptible threat to Flemish culture, identity, or potential statehood would receive harsh criticism from the party. Furthermore, the Vlaams Blok confronted European integration in the late 1980s as a highly centralized, ideologically driven organization. There was little chance the party would alter its fundamental principles as the EC, and then the EU, transformed the political and economic environment in which its members were undertaking the struggle for independence. The question was, rather, how the European environment would suit or not suit Vlaams Blok ideology.

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Yet the Vlaams Blok, and later Vlaams Belang, never proposed that Flanders should exit the EU. Despite its criticisms of European institutions and integration, the party remains dedicated to situating a future independent Flanders in the EU: the EU is argued to be necessary to achieve its ideological, cultural, and economic goals. The party depicts the EU as a potential protector of the values it cherishes: European civilization and the “native” cultures of Europe. The institutions of the EU could be devoted to protecting Europeans from subversion by non-European cultures, communism, or American cultural imperialism. In addition, the EU could project European values internationally through common military endeavors. However, the party has rejected any notion that Belgium could contribute to shaping this desirable version of the EU. Rather, party leaders seek to demonstrate that Belgian and Flemish interests diverged with respect to EU politics. Only an independent Flanders governed according to Vlaams Belang philosophy could negotiate the EU. The Europeanization of Vlaams Belang emerged from a recognition among party leaders that, in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty, EU institutions, policies, and norms would have as much influence on the quest to protect Flemish identity as would the Belgian state. The leaders of the then Vlaams Blok argued that if the interests of Flanders were to be protected and advanced, it no longer served any useful purpose simply to criticize the relationship of the central state to the regions, or to use the time-honored Belgian strategy of carving up the center in order to win more power for the regions. The Belgian state no longer controlled those policy areas with which the nationalists were concerned but neither did the Flemish executive: for the Vlaams Blok, the true point of contention had become the relationship of Flanders with Europe. The Vlaams Blok thus asked its constituents to choose the terms on which Flanders would confront European integration: as a region with little power to protect itself or to work for change within a state that had itself lost the ability to protect its regions in Europe, or as an independent state that could meet the challenges of integration on its own terms. By the early 1990s, the SNP and the Vlaams Blok had recast their struggles for independence in the context of an integrating Europe. But having converted party organizations to the cause of self-government in the EU, nationalist leaders encountered new questions. How could they convince potential voters of the value of their party’s new position on Europe and of its consistency with established party goals? Furthermore, could parties use European institutions themselves as new tools to bolster the cause of nationalism? Although the SNP and the Vlaams Blok both confronted these questions, their differing attitudes toward and strategies concerning European institutions and integration became apparent in the ways in which each party chose to participate in politics at the European level.

PART III

Separatism at the Heart of the European Union


CHAPTER 7

The European Parliament: The Nationalist Presence in a European Institution

“E

urope” emerged as a valuable asset for the SNP and the Vlaams Blok only after an internal debate that resulted in the nationalists recasting their struggles for self-government in the framework of the EU. Yet along with recognizing the importance of the context of Europe for advancing nationalist goals, as early as the 1970s these parties had also come to recognize that the institutions of Europe might prove a valuable resource in nationalist politics. The introduction of popular elections for the European Parliament in 1979 created the first opportunities for nationalist parties to participate directly in European policymaking, albeit only in the limited capacity accorded to the parliament at that time. The legislative powers of the European Parliament have since expanded; furthermore, the Maastricht Treaty created a consultative Committee of the Regions in which nationalists might be represented. The explosion of regional lobbying offices in Brussels since the mid-1980s also presented nationalists with new possibilities to press their respective cases to European officials through informal channels, in an effort to shape policy agendas and outputs. How have nationalist parties chosen to participate in European policymaking, and what do they hope to achieve with this participation?1 This chapter and the next explore nationalist participation in EU-level politics, both formally (through the representative institutions of the EU) and informally (by attempting to operate as pressure groups to influence other policymakers in the EU). During the period 1985–2002, the SNP and the Vlaams Blok elected members to the European Parliament and devoted energy to promoting their interests with respect to EU policy. This chapter focuses on the EP: where nationalists have secured seats in a representative institution

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of the EU, have they, in fact, been “active”? What types of activities have they undertaken and how do these serve the nationalist agenda? What best explains nationalist activism in the EP, and do any broad trends across the parties emerge? Literature on the behavior of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) proposes that they can be constrained by two principals: their respective domestic parties and the leaders of their transnational EP party groupings. Analyses of the roll-call voting of MEPs indicate that voting in the EP is largely determined by national party preferences and membership, and “clearly refutes the argument that individual MEP preferences drive voting behavior”; these findings also challenge the view that transnational groupings drive EP voting.2 The previous chapters highlighted the tactical importance of EP elections for Vlaams Belang and the SNP, suggesting that nationalist and regionalist parties might also hope for strong ties with, and influence over, MEP behavior. However, findings that apply generally across MEP voting seem less relevant for understanding nationalist and regionalist party behavior. Qualitative research on regionalist parties initially suggests that they differ little from the main party “families” in the EP, with regular consultation between MEPs and their domestic parties, and with guidance or mandates to MEPs from home on important issues. But some regionalist parties fall outside the norm: in response to survey questions about how influential the party is in guiding the work of MEPs, the SNP ranked in the middle of the scale but Vlaams Belang responses indicated that the party had no influence at all over MEP behavior. The same research suggests that MEPs are relatively autonomous in their daily legislative work, and that neither the SNP nor Vlaams Belang issues voting instructions to MEPs. The author of the study emphasizes that small parties such as the SNP and Vlaams Belang may not formally need to try to “influence” their MEPs (in part because MEPs are, in these cases at least, already influential party members). However, this research does suggest that we must look beyond the tactical interests of parties in guiding MEP behavior to understand what European Parliamentarians actually do and why, particularly if they are relatively unconstrained in their everyday activities.3 Furthermore, studies of roll-call voting examine only one area of MEP activity (and do not capture all voting behavior, given that many votes are taken by a show of hands or are recorded electronically as vote totals). This and the following chapter seek to explain a wider range of MEP behavior, including behavior that appears to be symbolic or to have little direct application to immediate domestic party tactical concerns. After describing the opportunities available for nationalists in the EP to participate in EU policymaking, this chapter outlines the activities of SNP and Vlaams Blok members. Then I advance several hypotheses to explain

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nationalist behavior in the European Parliament. First, individual nationalists may be motivated by pure self-interest, by financial or political gain accruing from their activities in European politics. This explanation accords with popular perceptions that the EP is a “talking shop” full of overpaid members who live in luxury at the public expense. Second, nationalists may seek primarily to have an impact on the legislation of the EU. By participating in EU institutions, nationalists hope to influence policy so as to promote their struggles for self-government and their related policy goals. Third, these parties may seek to win international support or recognition for their movements, or may hope to convince the international community to pressure their respective domestic governments to grant their demands. The point of participating in European institutions is thus to address an international audience, a strategy that recalls nationalist efforts in other international organizations. Although these dimensions are not absent from nationalists’ considerations, they are insufficient to explain the forms of, and primary objectives of, nationalist participation in EU institutions. Instead, I argue that nationalists seek to participate in European institutions primarily because they believe it is valuable for promoting the domestic political interests of their parties, and that this participation may have an important symbolic dimension. Nationalists use European institutions to establish a presence that they believe legitimizes themselves as parties and contributes to bolstering their causes. The importance of presence can be demonstrated by the fact that nationalists are highly active in EP politics in ways that can only be understood as symbolic and that do not always appear directly related to party policy. Nationalists may also attempt to attract international support, pass legislation that will benefit their constituents, and pursue self-interested goals. Yet overall, the behavior of nationalists in the EP should be understood as part of an effort to establish an image of nationalists as legitimate actors in the European arena for a domestic audience. Opportunities for Nationalist Participation in EU Institutions The opportunities for nationalist parties to participate in EU institutions are similar to those available to other political parties that are not in government in their respective states. The Council of the EU remains the creature of member state governments, although the Maastricht Treaty empowered regional government leaders (such as the minister-presidents of the Belgian regions or the leaders of the German Länder) to vote in the legislative proceedings of the Council. Nor have nationalists been appointed to the European Commission, the college within which most EU legislation originates and which undertakes many of the executive functions of the Union, including the oversight of

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policy implementation by the member states. Commissioners are selected by member state governments, and governments can appoint (and have appointed) members of opposition parties, but no (admitted) separatist has ever been named to the body. In neither the Commission nor the Council are separatist nationalists likely to be able to make their voices heard. However, the European Parliament is a different story. Nationalists have the opportunity to take seats as equals alongside members of government parties. National parliaments once nominated the MEPs from their own ranks, but popular elections for the EP were introduced in 1979. There are currently 732 seats in the EP; larger states receive more seats, but smaller states have more representation relative to their populations than do large ones. Before 1999, all member states with the exception of the United Kingdom used some form of proportional representation (PR), although there were variations in the types of PR used. In 1999 the United Kingdom adopted proportional representation based on regional lists, which transformed the European electoral arena and directly contributed to the increased representation of minor parties among the UK delegation to the EP (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2).4 Although the democratic credentials of the EP are frequently criticized because of poor European election turnouts and the unclear motives of voters, small parties—including nationalists—may benefit from some of the quirks of EP electoral politics. Many commentators accept that European elections are second-order elections, in which voters cast their ballots not on European issues but on issues that they associate with their national political arena.5 Second-order elections may offer some advantages for small parties. Voters may vote for a different party in EP elections than they would in domestic elections for tactical reasons or to “send a message” to domestic politicians. In this scenario, voters do not believe that real power is at stake in EP elections and therefore feel free to protest or communicate their sentiments to national governments with their EP vote.6 Or, voters may “vote with the heart” and express a sincere preference in European elections because the elected EP members do not form a government; therefore one’s vote is not wasted by supporting a small party.7 Other studies have found some evidence that positions on Europe do matter to voters; this may also benefit nationalists if they have distinctive positions on Europe in their respective domestic electoral spaces.8 Thus European Parliament elections may offer opportunities for nationalist and other small parties, who can profit from voter disaffection with national governments or from the expression of “true” voter sentiment. European election results for the SNP and Vlaams Blok and Belang are shown in Tables 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3. The powers of the European Parliament have increased significantly since the introduction of direct elections, offering possibilities for nationalist parties


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to influence EU policymaking.9 The EP is still not a full coequal with the Council of Ministers. Nor can the EP propose legislation, a function that is primarily reserved for the European Commission, although both the EP and the Council can request that the Commission submit legislative proposals. However, despite the image of a powerless “talking shop” that continues to haunt the EP and its members, the EP has acquired significant legislative powers since the Single European Act of 1987, rendering it critical that the other legislative institutions of the EU, and actors who wish to influence the European policymaking process, take its role seriously. Complete data for EP elections are only available at the UK-wide level; regional election data before 1994 could not be located. Percentages do not total one hundred because figures exclude votes and seats for Northern Ireland, which uses a different system from the rest of the UK to elect its three MEPs. “Lib Dem” data include the Liberal Party, the Liberal-SDP Alliance, and the Liberal Democrats; the SNP only stands candidates in Scotland. The “Others” category includes the UK Independence Party, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and other small parties. Table 7.1

European Parliament election results, Great Britain

Percentage of the British vote (seats) Year 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 Table 7.2

Labour 33.1 36.5 40.1 42.6 28.0 22.6

(17) (32) (45) (62) (29) (19)

Cons. 50.7 40.8 34.1 27.0 35.8 26.7

(60) (45) (32) (18) (36) (27)

Lib Dem 13.2 19.5 6.9 16.1 12.7 14.9

(0) (0) (0) (2) (10) (12)

SNP 1.7 1.7 2.7 3.1 2.6 1.4

(1) (1) (1) (2) (2) (2)

Others 1.3 1.5 16.2 11.2 17.4 34.4

(0) (0) (0) (0) (7) (15)

European Parliament election results, Scotland

Percentage of the Scottish vote (seats) Year

Labour

Cons.

Lib Dem

SNP

Others

1994 1999 2004

42.5 (6) 28.7 (3) 26.4 (2)

14.5 (0) 19.8 (2) 17.8 (2)

8.7 (0) 9.8 (1) 13.1 (1)

32.6 (2) 27.1 (2) 19.7 (2)

1.7 (0) 14.6 (0) 23.0 (0)

Sources: Keesing’s Contemporary Archives (London: Longman Group, 1979), 25:29898; Keesing’s Record of World Events (London: Longman Group, 1989), 35:36877; “BBC News Euro-Election Results,” news.bbc.co.uk/ hi/English/static/euros_99, accessed on March 23, 2002; David Boothroyd, “European Parliamentary Elections,” www.election.demon.co.uk, accessed on March 23, 2002; Adam Mellows-Facer, Richard Cracknell, and Jessica Yonwin, European Parliament Elections 2004 (London: House of Commons Library, 2004), research paper 04/50, June 23; UK Office of the European Parliament, www.europarl.org.uk/index.htm, accessed on June 18, 2008.

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Table 7.3

European Parliament election results, Flanders

Percentage of the Flemish vote (seats) Year 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999

2004

CVP 48.1 32.4 34.0 27.4 21.7

(7) (4) (5) (4) (3)

SP 20.9 28.2 20.2 17.6 14.2

(3) (4) (3) (3) (2)

VLD 15.3 14.4 16.8 18.4 21.9

(2) (2) (2) (3) (3)

VU 9.7 13.7 8.6 7.1 12.2

(1) (2) (1) (1) (2)

VB – 2.0 (0) 6.3 (1) 12.6 (2) 15.1 (2)

Agalev 2.3 7.2 12.2 10.7 12.0

(0) (1) (1) (1) (2)

CD ⫹ V NVA

SP.A – Spirit

VLD Vivant

VB

Groen!

28.3 (4)

18.2 (3)

21.6 (3)

22.9 (3)

7.9 (1)

Total Seats 13 13 13 14 14

14

CVP ⫽ Christian Democratic Party; SP ⫽ Socialist Party; VLD ⫽ Flemish Liberals and Democrats (name of Flemish liberals since 1991); VU ⫽ Volksunie (reconstituted as VU-ID in 1999); VB ⫽ Vlaams Blok; Agalev ⫽ Ecology/green party. Percentages may not equal one hundred due to exclusion of minor parties from these figures. The entire Dutch-language electorate is included, that is, figures include Dutch speakers from Brussels. Sources: William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 13 octobre 1985,” Res Publica 28, no. 2 (1986): 213–33; William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 24 novembre 1991,” Res Publica 34, no. 2 (1992): 131–53; Vrije Universiteit Brussel, “Elections Belges,” www.vub.ac.be, accessed March 22, 2002; elections2004.belgium. be/fr/eur/results/results_start.html, accessed August 15, 2007.

Under the Treaty of Rome, the EP was a purely consultative body. In 1987, the Single European Act gave the parliament the right to a second reading of some legislation (the so-called cooperation procedure) and introduced the assent procedure, under which parliamentary assent is required for legislation to pass, although the EP cannot amend a proposal.10 The cooperation procedure was largely eliminated by the Treaty of Nice in 2000; however, its introduction represented a considerable expansion of EP power and provided incentives for the transnational party groupings within the EP (see below) to seek more cohesion and discipline in order to assure passage of crucial votes.11 The Maastricht Treaty (1991) introduced a new legislative procedure that further enhanced the power of the parliament in EU policymaking. The complex codecision procedure provided for the creation of a conciliation committee if the Council rejected EP amendments on a second reading, and it granted the EP the right to a third reading of legislative proposals; codecision initially applied primarily to Single Market legislation. Maastricht also extended assent to new areas and created requirements to consult EP on some new treaty provisions and overall, the changes at Maastricht were interpreted by some as “the beginnings of a bicameral system.”12 Despite the continuing credibility problems that the EP has with the European public, after a decade and a half of the enhancement of its legislative powers, the impact of these changes is that “the EP is now a force to be reckoned with across a wide range of policy


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domains.”13 Thus, the expanded powers of the EP may provide an incentive for political actors wishing to influence EU policy to seek office. Individual members seeking to influence policy in the EP can do so in a number of ways. MEPs sit on the specialized committees of the EP, where most of the work of the institution is prepared, produce reports on legislative proposals from the Commission, make recommendations including amendments on the Council’s positions (on second readings), and can draw up “own initiative” reports (which are technically opinions upon which the Commission is not obliged to act). The Maastricht Treaty created a new provision according to which the parliament may, with a majority of its members voting, request that the Commission submit proposals. Members also have numerous means of scrutinizing and influencing the policy output of the EP even when they are not on the committees that produce reports and amendments. Ultimately, of course, they can vote, and MEPs may have an explanation of their votes included in the official proceedings of the EP. Speaking periods during the plenary sessions allow MEPs to debate reports and amendments to proposals, and time is also set aside for oral questions, including questions to members of the Council and Commission, debate on the budget, and comments on statements by the Commission and Council. Furthermore, MEPs may submit written questions at any time. Finally, the EP sees extensive use of motions for resolution on urgent and topical matters (for example, current foreign affairs, human rights issues, international disaster relief); however, these resolutions are considered the opinion of the EP and are not part of the formal legislative process. The EP is unusual for an international representative body in that much of its activity is structured by transnational party groupings, composed of various national party delegations with similar ideologies or broad interests. Under certain legislative procedures—for example, when absolute majorities of EP members are needed to pass legislation or override a position of the Council of Ministers—the ability of the groupings to organize interests (that is, to whip effectively) may be crucial. The groupings are also afforded a formal role in the legislative process under the parliament’s Rules of Procedure, and they shape the distribution of political resources among members of the EP. Groupings have guaranteed representation on EP committees, the seats on which are divided by the EP leadership among groups according to their strength in the EP, and have the right to be represented on other EP bodies, such as the Conference of Presidents, which deals with organizational matters in the EP. Furthermore, groupings have speaking rights in plenary sessions and can call roll-call votes. Political groups get their own secretariat in Brussels, with resources accorded depending on the number of group members, including paid staff, funds for publicity, expenditures,

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offices, and computer support. Nonattached members are considered “a grouping” that receives research and administrative funds, but larger organized groupings are clearly at an advantage for funding.14 Most observers have noted that MEPs who are not formally attached to a grouping are at a disadvantage in terms of their ability to participate in the legislative process.15 Nonattached members are not completely shut out of participation but are disadvantaged in terms of chairing committees or participating in the preparation of the EP plenary agenda. Because of time constraints during plenaries, speakers may be restricted to committee and group spokespeople; the allocation of resources thus encourages MEPs to join transnational groupings. If nationalists wish to maximize their participation in, and ability to have an impact on, the legislative process in the EP, it is clearly in their interest to join party groupings, with the greatest advantage coming from membership in a large grouping. However, nationalists may have goals beyond directly influencing policy: they may have an interest in using the EP as a forum for publicizing their goals or in benefiting from the resources available to members of the EP. A variety of EP procedures could contribute to these goals. Nationalists may raise issues of particular concern by asking questions to rapporteurs when a report is presented in plenary for comment and debate; they may propose and debate motions for resolution on urgent and topical matters16; and they may participate in the EP debate on the European Commission’s proposed budget. The scrutiny functions of the EP provide numerous opportunities for members to pose oral and written questions to Commissioners and to the ministers of the country holding the Council Presidency, which rotates among member states every six months. Oral questions are scheduled with and without debate and in 1973, a “Question-Time” was introduced; written questions may be tabled at any time.17 Voting also offers the opportunity for expressive (or symbolic) behavior. Analyses of roll-call votes indicate that these are usually called for strategic reasons: roll-call votes are used for control and information, that is, party group leaders want to enforce or test the strength of party discipline. However, roll-call votes might be called by smaller groups to differentiate themselves from the compromise positions frequently adopted by the two largest groupings, or to draw attention to the group or individuals calling the vote, for example to show that they are voting in support of the “home state” or domestic party interests. In other words, behavior in the EP can be directed toward a domestic audience or be used for symbolic purposes, regardless of the power of the EP grouping or individual party.18 Nationalists may also benefit from a variety of material resources available to MEPs. All MEPs, and more so those belonging to the larger party groupings,


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receive staff, office support, and expenses; these resources may be particularly valuable to small parties that have fewer such resources to draw on in their home regional assemblies or national parliaments. Similarly, the very fact of having additional paid members of an electoral body may be a boon to a small, cash-starved party. European Parliament-sponsored travel, in particular for the EP’s numerous delegations to non-EU countries, also provides a potentially useful resource for nationalists. Travel may enable them to promote cultural, ideological, or constitutional agendas abroad, allow them to foster contacts with sympathetic public officials and private interests abroad (particularly if they are in contact with diaspora national communities), and otherwise provide opportunities for them to seek additional sources of support for the nationalist agenda. Finally, the very presence of nationalists in the EP may be valuable for the party to bolster its claims of being a legitimate political actor: small parties may use their election to the European Parliament to argue that they have a popular mandate to act in European politics; that is, that they “matter” as a political force. These opportunities are not specific to nationalists but are shared by all members of the European Parliament. But for nationalists and other small party members, these resources may be relatively more important.19 The EP provides a forum in which to articulate the nationalist agenda, both to “conationals” who oppose the nationalist project and to an international audience; furthermore, nationalists may use various means of participating in the business of the EP (such as question procedures or roll call votes) to state their case on the record, for consumption by their domestic party organizations or by wider domestic public audiences. Ultimately, and perhaps of greatest potential value, nationalists can participate in the legislative processes of the EP and may use their status as elected members to shape the policy outcomes of the parliament. Because the EP parties do not create a government, minor parties do not simply sit in opposition. Instead, small parties, and even nonattached individual MEPs, have numerous opportunities and rights to participate in the legislative process and to attempt to bring their interests to bear on the output of the EP. Possible Explanations of Nationalist Participation in the EP The above discussion of the opportunities available to MEPs suggests four possible explanations of nationalist participation in the EP. A popular explanation for nationalist participation in the EP is that they, like other MEPs, are motivated by pure self-interest. Given access to such perks as travel, coverage of expenses by EU funds, staff support, and salaries, we might hypothesize that nationalists participate in the EP for purposes of financial

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or personal political gain. Nationalists may hope to gain individually from benefits associated with their member status; parties may, in addition, be interested primarily in receiving support in the form of extra paid staff or expenses, in order to supplement their domestic resources. Clear evidence for this hypothesis would be difficult to establish. Party members are highly unlikely to admit that this is their main motive for participating in the EU. Furthermore, the self-interest hypothesis suggests little in the way of specific forms of participation or behavior in the EP. Nationalists with purely self-interested motives might choose to set aside their ideological or party programmatic goals and ally themselves with a large party grouping, in order to secure maximum resources, or undertake some constituencyrelated work in the EP, or otherwise engage in high profile activities, in the hopes of securing continuing time in office. The self-interest hypothesis is difficult to confirm; however, it may be possible to reject this hypothesis if sufficient evidence exists that MEPs have other priorities aside from simply earning their salary and enjoying the perquisites of office. A second explanation points to the accumulation of legislative power by the EP since the mid-1980s and suggests that political parties that wish to have an impact on EU legislation could pursue this goal via EP membership.20 Thus nationalists may participate in EP politics to shape the legislative output of the parliament and to have an impact on EU law. The types of legislation they will work to produce will depend on the specific interests of each party, but each party will attempt to influence policy in such a way as to promote its struggle for self-government or to benefit constituency interests. For example, the Vlaams Blok and Belang might be active on legislation that would restrict immigration into the EU or that would promote the use of small and minority languages; the SNP might work to secure EU regional development funds for Scotland or to protect the livelihoods of local fishing communities. The behavior of nationalists in plenary sessions can be used to evaluate this explanation. Behavior intended primarily to have an impact on legislative outcomes would include committee work, in particular rapporteurships on policy questions that are important to nationalists, as well as participation in debates on reports and amendments during plenary sessions. The opinions of nationalist MEPs themselves could also provide support for this hypothesis. We should expect MEPs to state that they are fighting for constituency interests in the EP, but nationalists would in addition need to believe that they could actually have an impact on legislation. A third explanation proposes that nationalists seek to influence not the outcomes of EP decision making but the perceptions of the international audience that they can reach through it. In this view, nationalist strategies in the EP can be understood in the light of the historical record of how


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nationalists have sought to use international organizations. Beginning in the twentieth century, nationalists have used international organizations (IOs) to try to win support for their causes from international players—major powers—that have been in a position to advance their interests. Such support may take the form of material resources to aid the nationalist movement, pressure on domestic governments to grant the demands of nationalists, or— most radically—recognition of break-away states. The EP is a novel IO in that representatives from nonstate political parties have equal say alongside those of state government parties. However, IOs that have privileged state actors provide lessons about nationalist interests and activity that might be applicable to the EP. Minority groups petitioned the League of Nations directly for protection of their cultural and other group rights, and nationalists sought to use the League to appeal for the direct support of the international community.21 Nationalists have also recognized the United Nations and human rights IOs as potential sources of support and as arenas in which to seek international support. These IOs can serve as forums for communication or propaganda to third parties (other states or diaspora groups); for soliciting direct aid in the form of financial support, weapons, food, or other aid; for challenging general norms of international behavior or the conduct of specific states (and for seeking international responses to injustices therein); for helping to forge linkages with similarly-minded organizations or interest groups; for the creation of political networks to serve future interests; and for simply publicizing the existence of a group and its grievances.22 The European Parliament, by creating the novel situation in which nationalists may speak for themselves in an IO, offers a means for nationalist MEPs to pursue these types of goals directly. We would thus seek evidence of behavior that allows nationalists to publicize their causes to an international audience. Numerous procedures in EP plenary sessions would allow nationalists to engage in this behavior, including comments on statements by the Commission and Council, and oral questions (of all forms). The EP in addition has numerous delegations dedicated to relations with non-EU states, which offer opportunities for travel and contact with foreign governments and interest groups. However, we would need additional evidence that nationalists hope to have an impact on international audiences, such as explicit recognition by nationalists that this is their goal, or direct references in nationalist discourse to the importance of international support for their causes. A final hypothesis proposes that nationalist participation in the EU is ultimately directed at a domestic audience and is designed to appeal to domestic constituencies in order to generate support for nationalist parties. This may include the symbolic use of roll-call votes, although there is no reason to assume that roll-call votes are the sole location of this type of symbolic politics

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in the European Parliament. Behavior such as participation in debates, questions posed in plenary sessions, and motions tabled for EP resolutions (i.e., nonbinding opinions) may also serve the domestic policy interests of parties by creating an image of what the party stands for, calling attention to its cause, or by affirming its legitimacy as a political force.23 As support for this hypothesis, we would expect to see nationalists engaging in behavior that is as much symbolic as oriented to achieving substantive policy outcomes. Numerous forms of activity in the EP could be used to this end, including the symbolic powers of the EP: proposals for motions for resolution that would publicly record nationalists’ position on an issue, oral questions or debates that would allow nationalists to sketch their visions of the national interest, and comments on fellow MEPs’ legislative reports or motions for resolution. This does not exclude from consideration the possibility that nationalists may wish to have an impact on policy outcomes, present their case to an international audience, or pursue their own self-interest. However, this explanation for nationalist participation in the EP suggests that much of what nationalists do cannot be explained by these other factors. An Overview of Nationalist Activity in the EP Exploring the behavior of MEPs representing small or ideologically marginalized parties allows us insight into the activities of elected officials whose incentives and opportunities for participation in the EP may differ from those of MEPs in the larger and more powerful European party groupings. With only a small number of MEPs in my total population, I cannot attempt a systematic comparison with larger parties or with larger scale quantitative studies of MEP behavior. However, studying the behavior of SNP and Vlaams Blok and Belang MEPs is valuable precisely because it may suggest where and how the institutional effects of the EP that are understood to be significant for large parties are also now fundamental to the political calculations of small and even radical political parties. To evaluate possible explanations of MEP behavior, I examine data gathered from the period 1985–99, which marks the period from the start of the intergovernmental conference that culminated in the Single European Act through the completion of the fourth EP session, which covers the signing of the Amsterdam Treaty. This time period encompasses the period of greatest institutional change for the European Parliament, with the introduction of the cooperation procedure by the Single European Act in 1986 and the codecision procedure by Maastricht in 1992. Thus with its new powers, the EP became the subject of greater public attention than ever before. Furthermore, its empowerment during this period offered nationalists unprecedented possibilities


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for influencing European legislation, for securing resources, and for capturing the attention of international and domestic audiences with their actions. I rely on several sources of information to shed light on nationalist behavior. The most important source is the complete record of activities in plenary sessions from January 1985 to April 1999 published in the Annex to the Official Journal of the European Communities (Debates of the European Parliament).24 These data can be used to examine general trends in MEP behavior (e.g., types of activity and levels of participation) as well as specific issues that nationalist MEPs brought to the floor of the parliament. Secondly, interviews with MEPs and other primary source materials (such as party manifestoes) allow me to discuss how MEPs justify their behavior and how they evaluate their roles in the EP. Finally, secondary sources also provide insight into nationalists’ motives for participating in the EP. Data gathered on MEP participation in plenary sessions provides an initial “big picture” of how nationalists spend their time in the EP. The data are presented in three tables, each of which provides information on MEPs for a separate legislative session.25 The data presented are not strictly comparable across parliamentary sessions: Table 7.4 covers 1985–89; Table 7.5 covers 1989–94; and Table 7.6 covers 1994–99. During the years 1985–89, Winnie Ewing of the SNP was the only elected MEP from the parties that are the focus of this study. Ewing had initially been elected in 1979 and had served as an MEP for several years prior to that, when members were still appointed by the governments of the member states. In 1984, she joined the European Democratic Alliance group (RDE, the French acronym), comprised of French Gaullists, the Irish Fianna Fáil, and Ewing. The RDE had 29 members, out of a total 436 EP members.26 As a member of a formal grouping (and a member with a degree of seniority, as well as familiarity with EP procedure), Ewing had opportunities to be active in committee work, serving as rapporteur on five pieces of legislation presented to the plenary on which the EP had a first or second reading (see Table 7.4). Furthermore, her membership in the RDE allowed her considerable access to speaking time on the floor: she was given floor time to comment on statements by members of the Commission and the Council Presidency eleven times; on five dozen occasions offered comments or points for discussion on the committee reports and motions for resolutions raised in the plenary; and she submitted, either alone or with others in the RDE, eight motions for resolution, the passage of which would result in the EP’s issuing a nonbinding opinion. Most striking was her use of oral questions: in the four-year period considered, she offered 132 oral questions in the plenary session.27 Given that the EP met in plenary for only 245 days during the four-anda-half-year period,28 Ewing was on average asking a question every other day

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Table 7.4

Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1985–89 Ewing – SNP (RDE Group)

Explanations of votes Comments on statements by the Commission and Council EP procedure (e.g., Minutes, Agenda, Points of Order) Interventions on committee reports Interventions on motions for resolution Oral questions (with and without debate; question time; debates)a Motions for resolution tabled for debate Rapporteurshipsb Budget debate Other/uncategorizablec

22 11 24 48 12 132 8 5 4 4

RDE ⫽ European Democratic Alliance (Rassemblement Démocratique Européen) a Oral questions include questions tabled but answered in written form (i.e., not answered in the plenary session) and include the count of questions tabled as well as the MEP’s follow-ups to that question. Written questions are excluded from these figures because they can be submitted to the Council and Commission at any time, are not answered in plenary sessions, and are not always recorded by individual MEP’s name in the Annex to the Official Journal (Debates of the European Parliament). b Rapporteurships include only reports formally submitted for discussion in plenary sessions under the name of the MEP. c Other or uncategorizable includes intercessions that were ambiguous (i.e., could be placed in more than one category) or that did not fit into any category, such as protests, interruptions, or miscellaneous queries.

that the EP met. Ewing also raised two dozen points of order, intervened four times in budget debates, and submitted twenty-two explanations of voting.29 During the third EP legislative session it is possible to compare activities of SNP and Vlaams Blok members. Ewing retained her seat in 1989 and joined the new “Arc-en-Ciel” (ARC) group, composed primarily of small nationalist parties. ARC had 13 members out of the EP total 518. Karel Dillen entered the EP as the first member to be elected from the Vlaams Blok. He joined the grouping of the European Right, which was predominantly composed of members of the French National Front and the German Republikaner. The Group of the Right (DR) had seventeen members.30 Ewing and Dillen differed significantly on two dimensions of participation and differed slightly on three others. Dillen made much higher usage of the practice of submitting explanations of his vote: he submitted 125 explanations of his vote, compared to Ewing’s 33 (see Table 7.5). Dillen intervened somewhat more frequently than Ewing when members of the Commission or Council Presidency addressed the plenary: twenty-four times to Ewing’s sixteen. Ewing, however, far outpaced him in oral questions, raising 106 questions to Dillen’s 10; she was also somewhat more active than he was on raising points of procedure (sixty times, compared to his twenty-seven) and on intervening in discussion on committee reports (seventy-six times, compared to his


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Table 7.5 Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1989–94

Explanations of votes Comments on statements by the Commission and Council EP procedure (e.g., Minutes, Agenda, Points of Order) Interventions on committee reports Interventions on motions for resolution Oral questions (with and without debate; question time; debates)a Motions for resolution tabled for debate Rapporteurshipsb Budget debate Other/uncategorizablec

Ewing – SNP (ARC Group)

Dillen – VB (DR Group)

33 16 60 76 38 106

125 24 27 51 36 10

22 0 0 7

21 0 3 1

ARC ⫽ Rainbow Group (Arc-en-Ciel); DR ⫽ Technical Group of the European Right (Le Droit) abc See notes from Table 7.4.

fifty-one). Ewing and Dillen were similarly active in their interventions on motions for resolution raised in the plenary (thirty-eight times for Ewing and thirty-six times for Dillen), and on actual motions for resolution that each tabled, either alone or with members of their respective groups (twenty-two for Ewing and twenty-one for Dillen). Dillen intervened three times on budgetary debates, while Ewing did not participate. The fourth legislative session of the EP permits comparison within the SNP and Vlaams Blok as well as across them. Ewing and Dillen were reelected in 1994. Allan Macartney was also elected as an MEP for the SNP; he and Ewing joined the European Radical Alliance (ERA) group, composed predominantly of members of the French Radical Party, of small left liberal parties and leftist nationalists (Ian Hudghton of the SNP replaced Macartney in September 1998). The ERA had 20 members of the 626 total EP members, or 3 percent of the members of the EP.31 Dillen was joined by Frank Vanhecke, also elected for the Vlaams Blok in 1994. However by 1994, the far right no longer had enough MEPs to form a group. At this point, Dillen and Vanhecke joined the list of nonattached MEPs (indicated by “NI”), who were entitled to limited staff support and expenses, but who, because they were not members of a party grouping, received lowest priority for speaking time during plenaries, had limited seats on EP committees, and had few opportunities for positions of leadership in committees. There were thirty-seven total independent members, comprising 6 percent of the total EP membership.32 A few slight differences emerge in levels and types of activity within each party. The two SNP members were most active in commenting on the statements by the Commission and Council Presidency, in intervening on

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Participation in European Parliament plenary sessions, 1994–99 Ewing – SNP (ERA Group)

Macartney – SNP (ERA Group) [until Sept. 98]

Hudghton – SNP (ERA Group) [from Sept. 98]

Dillen – VB (NI)

Vanhecke – VB (NI)

22 14

14 13

0 1

41 4

45 12

24

29

0

2

1

44 1 16

66 28 18

8 0 1

7 4 3

39 22 3

11 0 3 0

9 3 1 1

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

Explanations of votes Comments on statements by the Commission and Council EP procedure (e.g., minutes, agenda, points of order) Interventions on committee reports Interventions on motions for resolution Oral questions (with and without debate; question time; debates)a Motions for resolution tabled for debate Rapporteur-shipsb Budget debate Other/uncat.c ERA ⫽ European Radical Alliance; NI ⫽ Nonattached members. abc See notes from Table 7.4.


Table 7.6


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committee reports on legislation, in budget debates, in oral questions, and in tabling motions for resolution, although there is some duplication in this figure; Macartney and Ewing occasionally joint authored motions (see table 7.6). Macartney, however, was far more active than Ewing in interventions on committee reports and motions of resolutions presented in the plenary; Ewing was slightly more active in explanations of votes. The Vlaams Blok MEPs were significantly more involved in presenting explanations of votes than any other form of activity: Dillen submitted forty-one explanations and Vanhecke forty-five. Vanhecke was slightly more active in commenting on Commission and Council Presidency statements and in intervening on committee reports and motions for resolution. In other areas, both MEPs were less active: Vanhecke and Dillen posed only three oral questions each during the four-year session. This behavior contrasts sharply with the activities of each party’s MEP in the previous legislative session. Ewing and Dillen are generally far less active than each was previously, although their relative slowdown may in part be attributable to their ages. Clear differences are also visible between the parties in the fourth legislative session, and in some cases indicate a trend reflected in the earlier session. The Vlaams Blok made much greater use of the option to submit explanations of votes than did the SNP, as they did in the 1989–94 session. The SNP continued to be much more active than the Vlaams Blok in oral questions, procedural points, and interventions on committee reports. Both parties were similarly inactive regarding rapporteurships that came to the floor of the EP (although Macartney was more active in this area) and active regarding interventions on motions for resolution, both in the fourth session and compared with their previous records. By the fourth session, however, the SNP was more active in tabling motions for resolution, in commenting on Commission and Council Presidency statements, and in budget debates. In no area did the Vlaams Blok become more active than the SNP than it was in the previous session. Overall trends across the fourteen-year period are difficult to establish with certainty, in part because of the small number of MEPs involved but also because of the problems of comparing data across the three unequal time periods. However, a few general observations can be made. Both parties, but more so the Vlaams Blok, used the submission of explanations of vote as an important part of their parliamentary activity. What is noteworthy here is that the explanations may be written statements, inserted into the official record of the plenary session but never actually presented orally to the plenary. Other MEPs might read them when reviewing the minutes of the session, but most MEPs are more concerned to ensure that their own positions are properly recorded in the minutes. Few members of the public are likely to read the

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explanations: the lack of a written index by member to the early years of EP activity makes it difficult for anyone to search the explanations of vote for a specific MEP. Furthermore, the explanations are recorded in the Official Journal, which was usually only found in EU depository libraries and was not readily available to any member of the public wishing to examine a member’s record until it went online. Hence the high level of activity in recording explanations of vote is noteworthy. Nationalists are also active in areas that do not bear directly on the formal legislative output of the EP. The tabling of motions for resolution may result in the EP issuing opinions that are essentially symbolic, with no obligation for further action from the Commission or the Council of Ministers. They reflect the view of the EP but accomplish little else, except to put this view on the record. Similarly, oral questions, as well as interventions in discussions of motions for resolution and committee reports allow nationalists to air their opinions and concerns but do not necessarily directly influence EP decisions. Rather, these types of activity may serve to solicit information, allow the MEP to challenge members of other party groupings, and offer the MEP a chance to scrutinize officials in other EU institutions. All of these activities provide opportunities for MEPs to ensure that their opinions and interests are formally noted in the public record of European Parliament sessions. Furthermore, the parliament’s rules of procedure clearly have an impact on MEP behavior, as a comparison of Vlaams Blok activity in the third and fourth sessions demonstrates. Before 1994, when Karel Dillen was a member of the DR group, he could participate in plenary sessions with the privileges accorded to group members, with speaking time on reports and motions for resolution, and opportunities to ask questions. These privileges lapsed in 1994 with the collapse of the DR group. Even though the Vlaams Blok presence in the EP was enhanced with the arrival of Vanhecke, the inability of the far right to form a group eliminated or severely reduced many of the opportunities the Blok had to participate in the business of the EP and plenary sessions. Nonattached members have minimal speaking time, which may account for the low levels of activity by Dillen and Vanhecke in oral questions. And although nonattached members take seats on committee seats, the ideological extremism of the Blok MEPs makes it unlikely that committee chairs would offer them rapporteurships or that their motions for resolution would ever get raised in plenary sessions. These factors may explain why the preponderance of Vlaams Blok activity involves filing explanations of vote, which can be done by all members. Thus whatever the motives or interests of nationalists may be, procedural problems may force them into certain types of “symbolic” behavior, such as explanations of votes, to voice their opinions and raise questions.


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The small sample size should, however, leave us wary of generalizing beyond the MEPs considered here. Differences in behavior (across sessions, within and across parties) may be largely due to the idiosyncrasies of individuals. The decline in Ewing’s participation in the fourth session may have had more to do with personal reasons such as health than with SNP politics. In addition, the arrival of Macartney as an MEP in 1994 may have allowed her to reduce her workload by sharing responsibilities with him, an option she previously lacked. This overview of nationalist activity reveals the variety of ways in which nationalists have opted to participate in EP politics. Nationalist activism includes actual work on the formal legislative output of the EP, involvement in the EP’s role as a scrutinizer of other EU institutions, and participation in the symbolic politics of the EP, such as the tabling of motions for resolution. I turn to evaluating the hypotheses proposed above to explain nationalist participation in the European Parliament. Self-interest and Nationalist Participation in the EP The image of overpaid MEPs living well at the expense of European taxpayers is a common one. In his study of media coverage of the European Parliament in the mid-1990s, David Morgan noted that EP stories are frequently presented in the context of issues such as the cost of travel “junkets” for MEPs and MEP salaries. He notes that this type of story was not new, but “fed the image of the parliament as an expensive, powerless ‘talking shop’ which was a ‘gravy train’ for members and a scandal for [the] EU generally.”33 The salaries of MEPs continue to be the subject of contention. MEPs now receive the same salary as do national MPs from their member states; however, the result is that some MEPs earn much more than their colleagues in Europe. In 2002, Italian MEPs were the best paid, at ‘10,644 per month (four times as much as what Spanish MEPs earned), and the average of the fifteen countries’ MEP salaries was ‘6,350 per month.34 The Vlaams Blok indicated that their MEPs earned BFr 600,000 per month in 1996. Although this figure seems inflated (and likely included expenses, along with salary), Blok MEP Frank Vanhecke described it as “a fortune,” stating that he earned more in one month than his wife, a trained nurse, earned in a year.35 An MEP salary may be attractive for an individual, and as noted above, the expenses that an MEP can claim may be useful for that individual or for his or her party. However, it is difficult to judge how important these aspects of membership in the EP are, given the unlikelihood that MEPs will admit to this being their primary motivation. Some outside observers have concluded that, at least for small parties, having a member in the EP is a significant resource.

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In the case of the SNP, Ewing’s election to the EP in 1979 tripled the party’s electoral presence; having an additional paid member may have been financially, as well as symbolically, important to the party.36 In the case of the Vlaams Blok and Belang, members surrender a percent of their income to the party.37 Hence it is not unreasonable to think that parties in general may see some financial gain from having elected members in the European Parliament. However, establishing the case for personal self-interest is more difficult. Vanhecke candidly stated that the party listed him for a European Parliament seat because he had not been elected in his own constituency in Belgian elections, and that despite his qualms about the EP as an institution, “we earn a very nice living.” Yet admitting that the lifestyle of an MEP is a comfortable one is far from stating that one is doing the job for that lifestyle. The major problem with accepting the “gravy train” hypothesis of MEP participation is that all of the MEPs studied here have been reasonably, if not extremely, active in the European Parliament. Whereas one could argue that they needed to be active to be reelected, only Ewing and Macartney during this period ran in single member districts; the Vlaams Blok MEPs were elected from party lists in multiple member districts. Their placement on the list was determined by party preference (and with Dillen the party president and Vanhecke his successor, the order of the list was not surprising). Furthermore, Ewing and Macartney were highly active constituency politicians, as will be discussed in the next chapter; whereas reelection may have been important to them, again, it is impossible to sort “personal advantage” out of the myriad motives that might have led them to seek office in the EP, and no evidence presents itself to suggest that personal advantage was a motive at all. Whereas the material benefits of EP membership may be clear to the public and to members themselves, it is not possible to establish based on available sources that officeseeking is motivated primarily by these benefits. Self-interest may not be absent from MEPs’ considerations, but it is insufficient to explain much of their participation. Nationalists as Legislators With the empowerment of the European Parliament as a legislative body in the EU during the 1985–99 period, nationalists may have recognized that opportunities existed for them to play a role in shaping EU legislation and may have been motivated to participate in the EP for this reason. However, nationalist behavior does not suggest that influencing legislation is a top priority. For example, nationalists could have joined transnational party groups with greater influence on EP decisions. But Ewing was a member of three small groups: the RDE, which had 5 percent of the EP seats from


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1985–89; the ARC, which had 3 percent of the seats from 1989–94; and the ERA, which had 3 percent of the seats from 1994–99. Even though SNP ideology shifted decisively toward the left in the late 1980s, there is no evidence that Ewing, or later Macartney, considered joining the Socialist group, which was the largest EP group during this eleven-year period. The inclusion of the UK Labour Party in the Socialist group would have made SNP membership politically difficult for Labour (and would have been politically unacceptable within the SNP in any event). In fact, Ewing broke with the RDE in 1989 to join the even smaller ARC grouping, allowing her to sit with MEPs whose sympathies for regionalism and separatism more closely reflected the constitutional goals of the SNP, despite the fact that this may have reduced her power as a legislator. Dillen and Vanhecke elected to remain nonaffiliated after the 1994 elections, despite the severe restrictions this placed on their ability to be effective parliamentarians. The far right ideology of the Vlaams Blok meant that they could not (and would not) join leftist separatists like the SNP in the ERA.38 Nor did they choose to join the European People’s Party (PPE), the grouping of Christian Democrats and Conservatives, which was the second largest group in the EP during the time considered here. The then president of the Vlaams Blok in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, Gerolf Annemans, indicated that the Blok was not in principle opposed to joining coalitions, even with Christian Democratic parties. However, he noted that “we are very strongly attached to our program and to the principles of our program,” and that coalition government had been the catalyst that split the Volksunie in the first place in 1978, leading to the creation of the Blok by those who felt that joining a coalition had compromised Flemish nationalism.39 By joining extremely small groups or by opting out of group membership, the SNP and Vlaams Blok undermined their ability to play a decisive role in the decisions of the EP. In their study of roll-call votes under the cooperation procedure, George Tsebelis and Amie Kreppel conclude that coalitions that formed in opposition to the two major party groups were almost always unsuccessful, because they could not muster the votes for a blocking minority on the second reading of a bill. They also indicate that the ARC and DR groups had relatively poor cohesion (party discipline), further reducing the ability of the SNP and Vlaams Blok in the 1989–94 parliament to use their groups as vehicles for delivering votes. They conclude that the DR, ARC, and another small group were basically the “permanent opposition groups” of the EP, with almost no capacity to contribute to passing or blocking votes.40 Furthermore, the nationalists themselves express little faith that they can be effective legislators in the EP. This tendency is most clearly expressed by

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Vlaams Blok and Belang politicians, who assert not only that the EP is a powerless institution but that they are marginalized within it. Annemans, MEP Vanhecke, and the Flemish Parliament Vice-President of the Commission on Foreign Relations, Karim Van Overmeire all described the EP as an institution with no real power or influence in the EU, a body that “talks about everything that is happening everywhere without any real power to do anything,” and that served only as the “democratic façade” or “democratic alibi” of an undemocratic EU where real power was in the hand of unelected bureaucrats.41 Vanhecke bluntly stated that the ideas of the Vlaams Blok were “marginal,” a “quantité negligeable” in the EP, and that he believed he had no influence whatsoever. He added: If we would have any influence in the European Parliament, it would be negative influence. I could see it happen that if we said “yes” everybody else would say “no”, or if we said “no” everybody else would say “yes”. But that’s our only and sole influence in the whole European Parliament … I have to say that it seems difficult for most colleagues to say “good morning” or “good evening” to us, let alone listen to our political arguments.42

Vanhecke argued that he was simply being realistic, and his comments underscore the conclusions of Tsebelis and Kreppel about the marginalization of extremists in the EP. SNP members present a more ambiguous picture of what they believe their role in the EP can and should be. Following the 1984 European Parliament campaign, SNP literature highlighted the importance of Winnie Ewing’s presence in the EP for Scotland and emphasized that Scottish independence would allow the country to have additional members in the European Parliament. Ewing’s role in securing additional European Regional Development Fund monies for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland featured prominently in SNP literature. When European Commission proposals for the areas to be included in one category of funding excluded part of Ewing’s constituency, she pushed for restoration of funding to these areas.43 As described in a party publication, senior Labour and Conservative politicians advised her not to challenge the proposal but Ewing “lobbied hard at the Euro-Parliament, which supported her by a spectacular 277 votes to 27. Then she took the case to the Council of Ministers—and won.” The publication goes on to note: “If that’s what one effective Euro MP can achieve, think what an independent Scotland could gain in Europe.”44 Party leader Alex Salmond noted that the results of Ewing’s work provided a good example of the “European Parliament voting for something in Scottish interests that the UK government refused to make a case for.”45


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Yet aside from Ewing’s success on this vote, there are few references to specific votes or EP policies in SNP materials (although Salmond noted that the party MEPs worked to get the EP to support exclusions for Scottish beef during the BSE crisis of the mid-1990s). Beginning in the 1980s, SNP European campaign materials have emphasized that Scotland would have more MEPs if it were independent, but the literature does not emphasize the legislative role of these MEPs.46 In addition, SNP discussions of legislative power in the EP have an ambivalent quality. Even in its European campaign materials, as it urges voters to send more SNP members to the EP, the party underlines the importance of the Council of Ministers as the locus of decision-making power in the EU. That is, SNP discussions of the powers of the EP ultimately reflect the party’s concern that Scotland be represented at the “top table” of the EU—the Council—if its citizens are to have any say in European policy-making. Thus the EP appears rather peripheral as far as achieving “outcomes” in the EU is concerned.47 The party argues that it is important to have its members in the EP, but it does not always link this to a desire to use the institution to influence legislation. Finally, the summary of nationalist activity in the plenary sessions of the EP also suggests that legislation is not the sole concern of these MEPs, and in some cases may be a minor concern, not the main motivation, of nationalists. The SNP and Vlaams Blok MEPs all engaged in significant amounts of what could be considered symbolic activity: comments on Commission and Council Presidency statements, explanations of vote, and the tabling of and debate on motions for resolution. Furthermore, the record of the fourth legislative session clearly indicates the degree to which the Vlaams Blok nonattached members are marginalized from the legislative process, revealing the limits on their participation in plenary sessions and their reliance on procedures such as the explanation of votes to make their positions known. Even during the third session as a member of the DR group, Dillen was unable to play a role in the legislative process as a rapporteur. This is not to state that having an impact on the output of the EP does not matter to nationalists. Yet it seems clear that pursuing a legislative agenda is not the primary motivation for MEPs who, given their small numbers and membership in small EP groupings, cannot be confident that they will have any impact on the decisions of the European Parliament. Nationalists and the EP as a Forum for Diplomacy A third possible explanation of nationalist behavior is that nationalists seek to influence the perceptions of the international audience that they can reach by participating in the EP. Nationalists are in a position to draw attention

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to their causes by appealing to individuals, parties, and governments of other EU member states as well as to actors in other EU institutions, such as the Commission and the Council of Ministers. They could thus use speaking time in plenary sessions to foster international support and might engage in EP activities such as participation in international delegations to broadcast their goals to a wider international audience. The plenary sessions of the EP offer numerous opportunities for nationalist MEPs to present their arguments to an international audience, including representatives of EU institutions. Yet certain circumstances might be more useful for nationalists to communicate their political agendas and to draw attention to the nationalist project, for example by attacking the legitimacy of their respective states. During the six months of each European Council presidency, the presidency traditionally makes at least two formal statements to the EP (at the beginning and end of the term), and takes oral questions from MEPs. Nationalists would thus have an ideal situation in which to communicate their party’s message, and to confront representatives of their respective states, in order to attack their legitimacy in front of an international audience. The record of plenary session activity permits an examination of interactions between nationalist MEPs and their respective governments’ presidencies. The United Kingdom held the presidency from July to December 1986 and from July to December 1992, during which Winnie Ewing could have challenged UK governance of Scotland; Karel Dillen was able to confront the Belgian government during its 1993 presidency. During the 1986 UK presidency, in her exchanges with UK government representatives, Ewing at no time used rhetoric that emphasized her Scottish identity or highlighted her party as distinctive in who it represented (i.e., Scottish interests instead of UK interests). Her political identity as an independence-seeking nationalist was not overtly broadcasted to an international audience. During the 1992 UK presidency, however, Ewing did attempt to forge an identity for her party, as well as for her constituency, presenting an image of Scotland and its people as distinct from the rest of the UK, in terms of economic and environmental interests, and geographical conditions (remoteness and climate) requiring special consideration. She furthermore argued that the UK government was unwilling to defend the interests of Scotland in Europe, noting in particular that the government’s monetary policy and its refusal to devalue the pound early in the autumn of 1992 had hurt Scottish exports. She also noted that the United Kingdom had been unwilling to lobby for additional regional development funds for Scotland, suggesting that it was unable to manage economic affairs in a way that would benefit Scotland. However, although Ewing called attention to the inability of the UK government (i.e., Conservative administrations) to


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represent Scottish interests, she did not, in her confrontations with Conservative government members, state that independence was the only means to achieve the changes she and the SNP sought. She attempted to demonstrate the illegitimacy of Conservatives to make policy and representations on behalf of Scotland but did not show her opposition to the United Kingdom as a polity.48 Karel Dillen, representing the Vlaams Blok during the Belgian presidency of the council, engaged in more limited interaction with his state’s representatives than Ewing did with hers. Yet Dillen more clearly showed himself and his party to favor independence for Flanders and to oppose Belgium as a state. When he confronted Belgian ministers, Dillen clearly identified himself as a nationalist and a right-winger, who, along with his colleagues in the European Right grouping, “fight[s] for the maintainence of their language, culture, religion and civilization—in short, for the essence, singularity and culture of their people and of all the peoples of Europe.” He noted that Belgium failed to protect Flemish linguistic, cultural, and economic interests in Europe, accusing the Belgian presidency of “submissively” accepting a Maastricht Treaty that endangered Flemish interests. And Dillen explicitly dismissed his state as an illegitimate entity with no ability to tend to the interests of the Flemish nation, invoking “the right of self-determination [that] gives Flemings the right and duty to demand an independent Flemish state of their own. Then Flanders will be a fully-fledged member of the greater European family of nations.”49 Thus each MEP used interactions with his or her respective government to highlight some aspect of the nationalist agenda. In Ewing’s case, this tended to take the form of challenging the Conservative government on specific policy issues (including fisheries policy, monetary policy, and European funding for Scotland); Dillen more explicitly raised constitutional questions, challenging the legitimacy of the Belgian state. The difficulty lies in interpreting the value of these interactions. It is impossible to determine based solely on the content of these statements whom the most important audience was for the nationalists: they may have been hoping to influence international opinion by communicating their messages to their colleagues in the EP, but they may equally have seen themselves engaged in domestic politics, raising issues with their governments that their parties or constituents would have expected them to raise. Nor does the frequency or variety of their participation in plenary sessions itself indicate that nationalists are trying to influence international opinion. Whereas this participation is clearly occurring in front of an international audience, other factors may explain it. However, MEPs did explicitly emphasize the importance of other aspects of their EP activities in forging relations with an international audience and

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communicating their positions to this audience. Although the Vlaams Blok did not participate in a formal transnational grouping during the 1994–99 parliamentary session, Blok MEP Frank Vanhecke emphasized that the personal relations that he and his colleague Karel Dillen formed with other right wing MEPs were valuable for the party. Vanhecke noted that the Blok has “personal and political ties with the French National Front” as well as with other right wing parties in the EP; although the ties were not institutionalized in a party grouping, these MEPs had informal meetings. Vanhecke also made use of his position on one of the EP’s foreign delegations to strengthen Vlaams Blok relations with an international audience. As a member of the EP delegation to South Africa, Vanhecke had opportunities to meet with a delegation from the South African parliament, and he pointed to the cultural relationship that Flemish people had with the Afrikaans-speaking population of South Africa as a bond that was important for the Vlaams Blok to develop. However, Vanhecke also implied that the ideological marginalization of the Blok made it difficult for the party to form overt political ties with other actors who might be tainted by their affiliation with the Blok. He suggested that officials of various nationalities working for the EP and the Commission were sympathetic to the Blok agenda and were valuable for the party, enabling it at times to get inside information from the offices of the Commission, but he declined to name names, indicating that these sources needed to remain anonymous.50 Similarly, the Vlaams Belang has noted that the UK Conservative Party is sympathetic to it on the question of European integration, but there is little in the public record to indicate actual cross-party support. Thus even when the party does explicitly seek to form international or transnational alliances, it may be limited to doing so with acknowledged actors on the extreme right who have nothing to fear politically from an association with it.51 The SNP also views the European Parliament as a base from which to develop international ties. As early as the campaign for the second elected parliament in 1984, party literature argued that additional MEPs would help Scotland by bringing “[g]reater national and international prominence so that we are not treated as at present as an insignificant province whose needs are of no account.”52 SNP MEPs have continued to stress the importance of the EP for projecting the nationalists’ case to an international audience and for emphasizing the difference between Scottish and UK government attitudes toward Europe. Allan Macartney noted that having an international forum was particularly crucial for the SNP at a time when the UK government was seen as hostile to the EU: by directly appealing to the international community via the EP, the SNP hoped to communicate both that Scotland was more favorably inclined toward the EU than was the UK government


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and that Scotland had little control over UK government actions. Macartney stated: [T]he Parliament is an additional platform for our campaign, such as in terms of getting across that, although Scotland is a recognized term and entity in a sense, they [the other MEPs] don’t know quite what it means … We’ve got to try to use every opportunity to try to get them to take [notice] that under the present administration, that we don’t have democratic control. In the present climate [i.e., spring 1996], with the Tories declaring a Cold War on Europe, you’ve got a double disassociation, saying it’s got nothing to do with us, firstly because Scots don’t think like that! … So, we’re basically using the Parliament as a platform.53

When pressed as to whether he placed importance on the diplomatic aspects an MEP’s job, and whether the international communication that he had, or the international delegations that he was a member of, helped specifically to contribute to the long-term goals of the SNP, Macartney responded favorably: I think any international contacts help, and I’ve really felt that whether it’s visiting journalists from India or senators from the United States or from Germany or whatever, obviously if they want to talk to … us, we tell them what we’re about, and hopefully convince them that we’re fairly rational, normal people who believe in democracy and independence for our country. So yeah, and the same applies with our European Parliamentary contacts, because the Scottish National Party is always recognized as a legal independence movement, we tend to get asked what we think more than if somebody turns up from, say, the Danish Liberals or something … so every forum is appropriate, or could be.54

More explicitly than Frank Vanhecke, Macartney asserted that the contacts that the SNP formed in the European Parliament could help the party to explain its goals to an international audience, and that these contacts could potentially prove useful for building support for the party. Furthermore, the SNP emphasized the importance of distinguishing Scottish interests from UK interests to an international audience, and of arguing to this audience that the UK government was unable to represent Scottish interests in the European and international arenas. The parties also differed in the extent to which they believed they were actually successful in having an impact on an international audience. Vanhecke emphasized the ideological marginality of the Vlaams Blok as an obstacle to the party’s ability to communicate its views, but he also implied that the EP itself was a poor forum in which to attempt to communicate any kind

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of message. Asked whether the Vlaams Blok was in a unique position in the EP, in having an international audience to whom it could communicate issues about Flanders and Flemish national interests, Vanhecke asked his interlocuteur whether she had ever visited an EP plenary session. You should visit it. Because it’s hallucinating … Outside the voting hours, you get some twenty colleagues in a Parliament of six hundred twenty, and then of course I speak in Flemish, and from those twenty there, there are perhaps ten who have their headphones on; I don’t even know if they’re listening.55

Vanhecke’s emphasis on the inability of the Blok to get its position “heard” echoed his comments that many MEPs wished to have nothing to do with the Vlaams Blok. It seems unlikely that the Vlaams Blok’s primary motivation for participation in European Parliamentary politics, in particular the plenary sessions, is to communicate the message of Flemish nationalism to an audience that is not even listening. The SNP offered a different view of whether it was possible for nationalists to succeed in communicating their interests to an international audience. The European Parliament is portrayed as a forum in which the international community is listening to the SNP and is receptive to its message. In its early EP campaign material, the SNP stated that its efforts in the EP had already met with success in getting the attention of the international community. In the party manifesto, SNP Chairman Gordon Wilson wrote: Mrs. Ewing’s presence in Europe has alerted, not only the member states but also the many other countries of the world with which Europe trades, to the right of Scotland’s people to regain their independence … The fact is, the European Parliament has shown more understanding and sympathy for Scotland’s distinctive problems than is ever on display at Westminster.56

But along with this “sympathy,” the SNP argues that it has been effective in getting its message across to the international community. When asked whether he had seen any growing recognition in the EU that Scottish interests might be different from British interests, Macartney answered: “I think actually on that one we are getting it across.” Referring to an incident in which Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth banned the flying of the European flag, he noted that the then president of the European Parliament Klaus Hänsche referred to the incident in a major speech. Macartney added: “[I]t’s unusual to single out Scotland in an address about Europe, so I was quite encouraged by that.” Other members of the SNP have pointed to the “very high respect from other countries” that the party has in the EP and claim that the party has made important international contacts


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through its MEPs’ work in a variety of policy areas, including the Lomé Convention (the former EU trade agreements with African, Caribbean, and Pacific states), and the whisky industry, where the SNP has worked with French and Irish MEPs to lobby the European Commission.57 The SNP interpretation of its efforts to use the EP to present an argument to the international community is that these efforts have met with some success, at least in terms of making other actors aware of the SNP position and of Scottish interests as distinct from UK interests. Vlaams Blok and Belang members are less convinced that their participation in the EP is actually serving to heighten awareness of their politics or of Flemish nationalism. However, in neither case do nationalists make an explicit argument about what ultimate purpose this awareness, or sympathy, is supposed to serve. The SNP hints that international support may help the party press its case in specific policy areas (like the whisky industry, as noted above), but neither party clearly states how international interactions are supposed to help the nationalists’ constitutional agendas. Instead, these interactions may be important because they are part of a broader nationalist concern with using EP activity to legitimize themselves and to promote their domestic political interests. Nationalism and Presence in the European Parliament A fourth possible explanation of nationalist activity in the EP focuses on its function in legimitizing the party and its agenda, ultimately for purposes of winning greater support domestically. In this perspective, symbolic politics may be an important component of nationalist politics in the EP: nationalists may wish to call attention to their actions in the EP to create an image of the party that can be useful in domestic political competition. Nationalists themselves recognize that much of their activity in the EP is symbolic, but argue that it is still valuable for promoting their agendas. Members of both the SNP and the Vlaams Blok indicated that simply having a presence in European institutions was valuable for offering them new forums in which to operate and because it conferred legitimacy on them as political actors. Furthermore, whether they were speaking of the EP or, with the SNP, of the consultative Committee of the Regions, nationalists argued that even being “powerless” actors in relatively powerless institutions contributed to their causes: they had forums in which to articulate their positions, and they could represent a set of viewpoints that would otherwise be absent from these institutions. The SNP overwhelmingly supported the viewpoint offered by Margaret Ewing on the EP: “It’s a forum, where we argue our case.” But more importantly, SNP members were quick to dismiss those who suggested that their

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participation in the EP, or in the Committee of the Regions, was useless because they had little political clout in these institutions, which many viewed in any event as “talking shops.” Ewing responded that although European institutions might be talking shops, so was Westminster, but that this did not mean it was not useful or important to the party. She asserted that nationalists could take a talking shop and “use it to project a philosophy.” When asked whether it was contradictory for the SNP to participation in organizations such as the Committee of the Regions (the party defines Scotland as a nation, not a region of the United Kingdom), Ewing responded that the SNP found it valuable to participate in all European institutions. Noting that the SNP was “not an abstentionist party,” she stated that whatever reservations the party might have about Europe and European institutions, “if people elect us, we’ll serve.” Party leader Alex Salmond echoed this perspective, pointing out that even though some EU institutions might be dismissed as talking shops, “talking can be quite important in politics,” and that “where there is an institution, we want to use it.”58 The Vlaams Blok were even more strident in their convictions that participation in the EP mattered, even though the party viewed the EP as powerless and recognized their own lack of power within it. MEP Vanhecke, again emphasizing that the EP had no real power or influence, described it as “a place where a lot of talking is done, and that’s about it.” Yet when asked why it was important for the relatively powerless Blok to participate in such a weak institution, he responded: We want to play a role even if it is a role of critics … If you’re not represented in the European Parliament, you don’t exist. So we are there, we see all the dossiers, we follow them, we make notes for our own groups in the Belgian parliament, we do what we can, but we have to be realist[ic] … Let’s say that we try to be the small parcel of sand which can perhaps one day block the whole system.59

His colleague Gerolf Annemans concurred that even without formal political power, the Vlaams Blok benefited from its presence in the EP. He pointed out that the EP was a level of politics similar to the Belgian Parliament, or local or provincial councils, and that what mattered was that: Vlaams Blok is everywhere. So even in the European Parliament we [try] to make … Vlaams Blok ideas [enter into] the minds of our opponents. That’s what democracy is all about. So they are not influencing European policy directly, but they make a hearty sound in Strasbourg. That’s very important.60

Furthermore, as an ideologically marginalized party, the Blok could point to its MEPs as providing a powerful source of legitimacy for the party and its views, as “proof ” that it represented a real constituency. Vanhecke noted


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that the Blok presence in the EP was indicative of the fact that it had support for its political views, adding that “our status of members of Parliament does give a certain weight to what we say that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t in all those institutions.” Van Overmeire also emphasized the importance of a Vlaams Blok presence as a form of protest, noting that if the Blok did not seek seats in the EP, these would be taken by “pro-European” politicians. The EP was thus valuable as a platform for Blok ideas and as a signal to the political establishment: “The more votes we get, the more there is still a signal to the people in power that there is at least some protest from certain peoples or certain parties.”61 However, the symbolic importance of EP politics does not derive solely from the nationalists having a presence in the institutions. Nationalists also participate actively in areas of EP politics that could be described as symbolic. These areas include the tabling of motions for resolution (which, if passed, could only result in a nonbinding opinion being issued by the EP), interventions in discussion of motions for resolution, explanations of vote, and the oral questions and comments directed toward the European Commission and Council Presidency. Both parties’ MEPs were active in these areas; yet the likely outcome of their efforts would only be to “go on the record” regarding their positions on the issues being discussed or subject to vote. Motions for resolution are frequently (although not necessarily) tabled on matters of urgency or current political salience.62 SNP activity was dominated by concerns for urgent international situations and human rights crises. Ewing was by far the most active of the MEPs studied here in the tabling of motions for resolution for debate. Of her forty-one motions, eleven concerned international political situations (in particular Africa), seven dealt with human rights, four with fisheries, three with social policy, and the rest with issues such as energy, toxic waste, cases of abuses of civil liberties, and Scottish environmental emergencies. Macartney tabled nine motions: three concerned international political situations (Chechnya, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea), two dealt with human rights, and one was devoted to each social policy, agriculture, ship safety, and toxic waste.63 The interests of the Vlaams Blok differed from those of the SNP in this area of activity. Karel Dillen was the only one of the Blok MEPs who proposed motions for resolution. Of his twenty-one proposals, thirteen dealt with international political situations, and of these nine were concerned with South Africa. Four motions addressed human rights issues, three dealt with social issues such as abortion or violence against immigrants, and one dealt with the Schengen Agreement to make the EU a passport-free area. This outline of nationalist motions for resolution suggests why it is difficult to explain nationalist participation in the EP without reference to the symbolic

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value of this participation. Motions for resolution will not result in legislation, nor do they provide immediate tangible benefits to their sponsors. Indeed, what is notable about the content of these motions is the extent to which they diverge from domestic party agendas. In part, this is due to the topical nature of the motions: they tend to reflect urgent or current situations that parties may not have formal policies on. The foregrounding of international politics and human rights concerns is notable in SNP motions for resolution, yet these issues are far from the central concerns of Scottish nationalism. Other motions, such as those devoted to energy and fisheries, more closely reflect domestic priorities. Similarly, the Vlaams Blok (through Dillen) focuses overwhelmingly on international politics and specifically on South Africa. Again, although South Africa is an element of the Blok domestic campaign, it is a minor issue. One of Dillen’s motions addressed violence against immigrants, which the Blok condemns, but none of his other motions touched on core aspects of the Vlaams Blok agenda, such as language and culture. These results again suggest that nationalists—or at least, these parties—do not follow the broader trend of domestic parties functioning as the principals for their MEPs; they do suggest the autonomy of MEPs, particularly when these are influential party members, to set their own agendas for their everyday activities in the European Parliament. Hence, even as symbolic political expression, motions for resolution do not seem designed as part of an effort to argue the nationalist message to an international audience; there is little about most of these motions that is “nationalistic” or even related to party policies. So what is symbolic politics in the EP supposed to accomplish? Nationalists themselves argue that having a presence matters, but how does it matter, particularly if it does not explicitly seek to promote a nationalist agenda? The importance of having a presence seemed particularly odd to hear from Vlaams Blok members, who were equally quick to point out that nobody in the EP was listening to them. For its part, the SNP acknowledged the usefulness of having a platform and of being able to establish contacts, but its members said little about what this platform is for. However, several hints about the value of symbolic politics emerge from nationalists’ statements. Both the SNP and Vlaams Blok mentioned the importance of representing “the people” and of “serving” if elected. The SNP highlighted the value of the EP by referring to Winnie Ewing’s successful lobbying efforts. The Vlaams Blok mentioned its role in the EP as useful for communicating EU policy issues to the domestic party organization; Blok members also noted the importance of its presence in the EP for sending a message to “the opposition” about its policies and its levels of support. In other words, members of both parties suggested that the importance of their “presence” derived from its value for domestic politics and party competition, and for


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how the party was perceived by relevant domestic actors. The views of domestic constituencies mattered, whether these were voters, the party organization itself, or its competition. Viewing nationalist participation in the EP as directed toward domestic politics also provides an explanation for nationalists’ efforts to forge international connections and to undertake legislative activity, even where these are likely to produce no substantive results. Nationalists may not win recognition or resources from international allies, but the nationalist presence in international politics sends a message to domestic audiences that the rest of the world recognizes the importance of the nationalist project, thus offering legitimacy to nationalist politics. Similarly, legislative efforts, even if they fail, are purely symbolic or are unrelated to party business, are significant because they demonstrate to a domestic audience that nationalist MEPs are dedicated to their work and can fill the roles of professional politicians. Again, the implication is that nationalists are a legitimate and significant presence. In his study of the French National Front, Michael Minkenberg has observed that the Front has had a strong presence in parliamentary activity (i.e., it has participated to a high degree in the French National Assembly) despite the fact that it is marginalized by other parties and has had little successful legislative output. What Minkenberg describes as considerable, but ultimately useless, legislative efforts are actually intended to help the party “to acquire an image of a serious and hard-working force.”64 For a small or marginal party, activity in the EP, even if it is not directly related to party goals and is unlikely to produce results, can similarly contribute to the image of the party as an organization of capable, professional politicians whose arguments ought to be taken seriously. Capitalizing on the Value of a European “Presence” Nationalist activism in the EP confounds popular understandings of MEPs’ motives for participating in this institution, and challenges understandings of the value nationalists have historically derived from international organizations. Whereas the perquisites of office may be useful for nationalists and their parties, the level of activity they undertake and the variety of forms their participation takes suggest that a purely “material self-interest” explanation is insufficient to explain nationalists’ motives. Similarly, arguments that nationalists participate in the EP primarily to have an impact on policy ignore the fact that they are a fairly insignificant force in the EP and furthermore, that they recognize that the EP is not a forum in which they will have much power. The factors that have motivated nationalists to participate in other international organizations, such as the League of Nations and the UN, also seem

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poorly suited to explain their reasons for participating in the EP. Although the SNP and Vlaams Blok recognize the value of making connections with sympathetic international actors, neither party expressed confidence that the international community itself was going to promote the nationalist cause in any meaningful way. Yet the value of the EP as a platform for the nationalists emerges clearly from observation of their behavior and from their own reflections on the EP. The record of the SNP and the Vlaams Blok demonstrates that establishing themselves as a presence in the EP, being active in its work—even where this work results only in symbolic output—and stating their case in the parliament are crucial factors that drive their efforts in the EP. Having a presence “in Europe” appears to be valuable for establishing these parties as legitimate political players and for demonstrating to domestic audiences that their message is valid and worthy of attention. This analysis does not intend to suggest that MEPs believe that having an impact on the substantive policy output of the EP is not worthwhile or desirable. I argue that all of the activity of the nationalists in the EP—legislative work, symbolic politics, and international communication—is ultimately targeted at influencing a domestic audience. Successful legislation may be useful for winning domestic support, as I will argue in the next chapter that nationalists believe, but the act of participating in EP politics is equally seen as relevant for communicating that nationalists are a legitimate force with a valid message. However, if MEPs are primarily concerned with the response of domestic actors, simply establishing a presence in the European Parliament is not enough. Given that a great deal of MEP activity is relatively hidden from public view, how are parties able to use these activities for any purpose related to their domestic agenda? For European politics to be valuable as a domestic resource, nationalists must find a way to communicate the importance of their work in the EP, and in the EU more generally, to a domestic constituency, explicitly linking it to the constitutional project of self-government.

CHAPTER 8

Lobbying for the “National Interest”

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ationalists face the task of communicating the importance of their work and of converting their European activities into political capital that will be valuable in their domestic political struggles. They need to link the presence that they have established in Europe, and the purported significance of this to the nationalist struggle, to an audience. However, much of their work in the EP is to a large extent hidden from public view or is not clearly related to domestic party agendas: how can nationalists make linkages between this work and a domestic audience? This chapter explores how nationalists in Vlaams Belang and the SNP have attempted to incorporate their European activities into their domestic campaigns and have sought to manage the images that domestic audiences receive about these activities. Nationalists have moved beyond the formal institutions of the EU, such as the EP, to use more informal means of promoting their interests in the EU that may be better suited to helping them construct linkages with domestic audiences. In particular, they have used informal lobbying tactics, as well as the formal powers of the EP, to pressure European institutions such as the Commission to support policies that will benefit their constituents, tactics that are designed to demonstrate nationalists’ willingness to fight for “national” interests and the inability of the state in its current form to protect national interests. Given its ideological aversion to the EU itself and to participating in “regional” politics in Europe, Vlaams Belang opts out of informal lobbying, focusing on the EP; the SNP has actively attempted to lobby European institutions and to claim credit for policy successes. However, the practice of credit claiming by nationalists diverges from general understandings of the subject and is in fact a double-edged sword for these parties. They hope to portray themselves as successful champions of the nation, but simultaneously they must argue that the nation would be better off with independence. Therefore, nationalists must attempt to portray themselves as committed but constrained

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lobbyists. The “outsider” position adopted by Vlaams Belang may allow it to escape this conundrum and to retain its ideological purity; however, unlike the SNP, Vlaams Belang therefore loses a set of potential resources that could be deployed domestically to win support. After describing the lobbying practices that have arisen in the EU since the mid-1980s, I explore the Vlaams Belang and SNP views of lobbying and its potential value for their causes, noting that nationalist parties that choose to participate in lobbying face obstacles to making domestic constituents aware of this activity. I then turn to specific issue areas on which nationalists have concentrated their efforts: culture and immigration for the Vlaams Blok and regional development funding for the SNP. The rhetoric nationalists deploy when lobbying on these issues and their presentation of this material to a domestic audience highlight the extent to which they seek to claim credit for positive policy results and simultaneously to attack the state for its failures, but also illuminate the problems that each party faces if it seeks to deploy lobbying efforts in the European arena into a domestic constitutional struggle. Lobbying in the European Union Lobbying in the EU takes many forms, but here I understand it to be political pressure aimed at a clearly European target (e.g., one of the institutions of the EU) with the intention of securing information, a favorable European policy outcome, or European funding. Beginning in the mid-1980s, a new political environment began to evolve in the EU, in which regional actors played an increasingly active and visible role in EU policy decisions. The Single European Act created new opportunities as well as potential dangers for regional actors: the Act not only threatened regions with weaker or protected economies with peripheralization in a free trade area, but also offered the chance for regions to expand their markets.1 Reforms of regional development funding (designed to promote development in poor and declining areas of the Community) in 1988 reduced the role of member states in the funding process and enhanced the position of the European Commission and regional actors themselves. So-called Community Initiatives were introduced in 1989, European Community-wide programs that were designed to promote growth in underdeveloped areas. What differentiated Initiatives from other aspects of regional funding was the Commission’s sole authority to decide which programs should receive funding, although it did consult with member state governments in developing the Initiatives. Community Initiatives accounted for a total of 13.47 billion ECU for the funding period 1994–99, and were primarily directed to public sector authorities to promote employment, industrial conversion, the small business sector, and rural and urban development.2


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In the 1990s, the Maastricht Treaty enhanced the incentives for regional actors to involve themselves in European politics, by introducing the language of “subsidiarity” into the language of EU policy,3 and by creating a new consultative Committee of the Regions. Furthermore, during this period the Commission introduced the notion of partnership into regional development funding, under which it would interact directly with local and regional public and private actors in the planning and implementation of funding schemes. Partnership became a guiding principle of regional fund policy under the Commission of President Jacques Santer (1995–99) and has been taken to imply the participation of substate actors in the funding process. The Commissioner on Regional Affairs emphasized that subsidiarity implied participation. Commission President Santer expressed throughout his term in office the desire of the Commission “to place the citizen at the heart of the Union” and his belief that this must form the basis of a partnership with regional actors in regional development.4 Commission language began to suggest that the central state is neither the most effective actor to make policy decisions in Europe on behalf of regions, nor the most politically appropriate and legitimate one. Thus the decade following the Single European Act witnessed the construction of new opportunities for regional actors to participate in European policymaking, as well as the introduction of a new normative environment, in which participation by regional actors was perceived as beneficial and encouraged by the Commission. The input of local and regional actors was now seen as critical for the efficacy and legitimacy of some EU policy, with these actors seizing new opportunities to influence policy and funding decisions.5 Many of these substate public authorities established offices in Brussels to promote the interests of their constituencies to EU institutions, focusing on securing funds, influencing policy, brokering information between local and European political arenas, and monitoring policy developments, as well as establishing transnational ties with actors from regions with similar structural or social concerns, for example, maritime, peripheral, or industrial regions. The consequences of regional mobilization were significant, for individual politicians as well as for perceptions of the roles that subnational authorities could play in the EU. The regional dimension of EU politics now represents an area in which skillful political entrepreneurs may be able to connect their activities “in Europe” to the economic and political concerns of the public, thereby winning public support. Michael Keating noted that there is a “great deal of noise created by this regional lobbying and politicians seek to extract the maximum political capital out of a strategy which allows them to project themselves internationally and appear to circumvent the national state.”6 Furthermore, the European structural funds have become highly politicized and, therefore, more publicly salient: politicians need to be seen

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to be chasing funds for political reasons and the politics of “grantsmanship” has become common.7 Although earlier enthusiasm about an emergent “Europe of the Regions” has been tempered, regional voices in the EU have grown in volume and importance since the Single European Act. The mobilization of substate public authorities in EU politics has drawn nationalist and regionalist parties across the EU into this domain of activity. Nationalists may, like other regional politicians, feel pressure to chase regional funds; that is, it may be politically difficult for them not to pursue available funds. But regional funds may be a useful target for nationalists: funding is politically salient, is considered desirable, and can be argued to benefit constituents in general, creating few political opponents and being presented as a general “good” for the region. The normative arguments for regional participation in EU policymaking may appeal to nationalists: if “partnership” is intended to encourage substate actors to engage in EU politics, regional and nationalist parties can make a case that their voices should be included as well. Nationalists may appropriate the idea of regions as the most appropriate forums for developing or implementing policies, thereby legitimizing their participation as a contribution to democratizing the European polity. Furthermore, nationalists may be able to argue that subsidiarity is not being applied appropriately by member states in their respective regions, capturing the moral high ground in debates about policy formulation and implementation. Most importantly for nationalists, the phenomenon of regional mobilization has intensified debate about the legitimate leadership of regions both domestically and at the European level. The Commission has preferred not to define in any detail what constitutes a “region” in the EU in the context of subsidiarity, recognizing solely that local and regional authorities have a role to play in decision making.8 However, the growing political significance of regions in Europe invites political contestation, as actors have new incentives to assert their respective definitions of regional identity and territory. The legitimate representation of regions in the EU has been opened to new contestation, with central governments, regions, municipalities, and private actors all mobilizing in an effort to influence “regional” policy in Europe.9 Nationalist parties that can capture power and resources through successful lobbying may hope to convert their success into political capital by demonstrating that they are best able to deliver the benefits of the EU to their region. Nationalists and the Problem of “Regional” Lobbying Vlaams Belang and the SNP do not share opinions about the value of lobbying. Constitutional politics for each party, along with political leadership, have played a role in determining whether each party chooses to lobby European


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institutions and how it chooses to do so. Both parties recognize the importance of educating a domestic audience about nationalist politics in Europe, but Vlaams Belang has largely avoided lobbying outside the EP, whereas the SNP has actively used informal channels to pressure the Commission. The most immediate challenge for any small party considering lobbying in the EU and using these efforts as a domestic political resource emerges from informational problems surrounding EU politics. Nationalists have indicated that constituency awareness of their activity in Europe is extremely low, if not nonexistent. Vlaams Blok member Frank Vanhecke stated that in the period during which he had served as an MEP, not a single voter had asked him what he was doing in the EP. Although he received letters and visits concerning his position in the city council of Bruges, “for my European mandate, I don’t see anybody. So I don’t really think that people are interested in what’s happening in Europe.”10 Margaret Ewing of the SNP, commenting on her constituents’ interests or concerns about the EU, noted that voters expressed concern when Europe offered them something to complain about, particularly when issues such as fishing and farming were being discussed, but that a lot of what was being discussed was “trivial” to many people.11 Thus nationalists may have significant hurdles to overcome if they wish to communicate with voters at all, whether about their individual activities or more generally about their respective parties’ behavior in the EU. However, nationalist parties have other outlets, aside from the national media, through which to communicate with the electorate. In a survey of UK MEPs, David Morgan noted that some saw local and regional media coverage as more useful for coverage of the EP and of their own activities than were national media. Others have remarked that some MEPs have been particularly successful in using the local press in their constituencies to get their names and activities known.12 In addition, members of both the SNP and Vlaams Belang felt that it was part of their mission to challenge the “information deficit,” and in particular to take an active role in shaping the image of nationalists in EU institutions. In part, this involved using party organizations themselves to present information to the electorate, through press statements, manifestoes for domestic and European campaigns, and other party publications designed to highlight the activities of party MEPs and to communicate the importance of nationalist politics in Europe to the public. Vlaams Belang operates in a political context—Belgium—in which there has been little public debate about the EU and in which newspaper coverage of the EP has been described as exuding “mild disinterest rather than critical engagement.”13 Hence party members feel that they face a challenge simply getting “Europe” onto the public radar; however, they believe that Vlaams Belang has a responsibility to

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do so. Flemish Parliament member Karim Van Overmeire argued that Vlaams Belang attempted to explain to the public how important Europe had become and “what the dangers of Europe are.” His colleague in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies, Gerolf Annemans, agreed. When asked whether it was a goal of the party to educate the public about the EU, he responded: We try to, but it’s very difficult. You asked me, “do they understand, or do they already see this connection [between the European Union and their daily lives]” and my answer is no, not yet. And that’s why I say we have to do so. We will try to, in our leaflets, in our propaganda … the European elections [are] on the level of propaganda and the possibility to explain what we want, to explain our ideas during the weeks that this election goes on.14

Similar to Vlaams Belang, the SNP has found ways to bypass the general media to publicize its positions on the EU and its activities in EU institutions. The EU is a more salient topic of debate in the United Kingdom. However, SNP members still believe that the party has a role to play in educating the voters about European policies and European integration. Margaret Ewing regretted that the SNP had “not done enough reaching out to ordinary voters” and had failed politically to “get the thinkers in society to get the kind of Europe we wanted” sorted out.15 Her rhetoric indicated that nationalists view themselves as having an important role to play in shaping debate about the EU, and numerous SNP publications on the subject of Europe and Scotland’s role in the EU have highlighted the party efforts to contribute to this debate.16 These efforts on the part of nationalists to educate voters suggest the importance that nationalists attach to projecting an image of their parties in the context of the EU. Through their self-published media and their campaigns, nationalists select those aspects of their participation in EU politics that they wish to highlight to voters, to affirm the role that nationalists claim to play in promoting their respective nations’ interests in the EU. Yet despite its insistence that it seeks to educate the public about the EU, Vlaams Belang has chosen not to pursue a strategy of lobbying for regional benefits (policies or funds) for Flanders and does not highlight its members’ activities in its major publications. In part, this stems from the party’s absolute rejection of portraying Flanders in “regional” terms. I have noted the party preference for constructing a Europe of ethnic states and its insistence that Flanders be recognized as such a state. Conceptualizing the state as an ethnic national state not only frames the appropriate political order that Vlaams Belang sees for the EU but also shapes how the party chooses to participate in that order. Whereas numerous nationalist parties across the EU have members in the Committee of the Regions, the consultative body to the European Commission, Vlaams


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Belang has categorically refused to participate in this institution. The idea of a Committee of the “Regions” is repugnant to a party that views its constituents as forming a nation and an embryonic state: “We are not Barcelona, we not a ‘region’ … We are more than that! We are not London or something. We are, and we should be, a state.”17 Thus the party rejects outright one avenue for exerting pressure on, and for expressing its opinions to, the European Commission. Nor does the party look favorably on more informal cooperation between Flanders and other European regions for similar reasons, namely, that Flanders should be attempting to cooperate with states, and it rejects cooperation with other parties if this requires compromising its principles. Lobbying for regional funds or regional policies remains highly problematic. In no party literature, and in no interviews conducted for this study, did the party mention lobbying or participation in EU politics except in the EP, which, as discussed in the previous chapter, is itself disparaged by Vlaams Belang. The SNP also emphasizes that Scotland should be recognized as a state, not a region of the United Kingdom, in a confederal Europe. However, the SNP has proven willing to use regional channels in Europe to lobby for Scottish interests and has been active in lobbying in the EU outside the EP. In part, the SNP position has been the product of a pragmatic leadership that has been willing to risk, and has overcome, internal dissent in the party over whether it is appropriate for an “independence” party to participate in political arenas designed for “sub-state” or regional actors.18 Party debate over the Committee of the Regions illustrates the victory of the pragmatists on the issue of lobbying for Scottish interests. The division of the original twenty-four seats on the Committee allocated to the United Kingdom was subject to a (UK) parliamentary vote, on which the SNP voted with the Conservative government, breaking a longstanding party tradition not to cooperate with the Conservatives but ensuring it a seat on the Committee. One faction within the SNP accused the party leadership of sacrificing party integrity by voting with the government in a deal that would give it nothing more than a seat on a “regional” committee.19 However, this conflict had no lasting impact on the party and left it with representation on a body that its leader felt could only help the party lobby for its interests in the EU.20 The debate over the Committee of the Regions also suggests that the SNP would not be adverse to working in European arenas where it would be expected to negotiate or cooperate with other “regional” authorities or parties to press its case. Nationalist Lobbying: “Credit Claiming” and State Bashing For nationalists such as Vlaams Belang, “lobbying” may be restricted to their activities in the EP. For the SNP, however, lobbying is a more diffuse process,

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operating through the EP and regional lobbying offices, and through informal contacts with European officials. To understand how and why nationalists lobby, I turn to specific issues that are important areas of domestic party policy, issues on which the parties would likely try to make a connection between European level activity and domestic audiences. Vlaams Blok/Belang and Immigration Although Vlaams Belang uses only the EP to advance its policy interests in the EU, its members have used a variety of means within the Parliament to do so. The subject of immigration—specifically, of non-European immigration into the EU—is at the top of the party agenda in domestic politics and is the main issue that attracts support to the party. Thus immigration should be an important focal point of Vlaams Belang activism, an issue on which the party presents itself as the unique representative of Flemish interests, and with which it attempts to argue its case that the Belgian state is illegitimate. The two initial Vlaams Blok members of the EP, Frank Vanhecke and Karel Dillen, used all available parliamentary means to bring the issue of immigration to the attention of the plenary, to voice the party perspective on the subject, and to denounce EU policy. In doing so, the party sought to project an image of itself as uniquely qualified to act to protect “Flemish,” and more generally, “European” interests, arguing that both the EU and the Belgian state within the EU were incapable of protecting these interests. Dillen and Vanhecke tabled motions for resolution on issues related to immigration (such as the Schengen Accord to create a passport-free area within the EU, and the 1992 violence in Rostock, Germany, targeted at Turkish immigrants) and intervened in plenary debates on other members’ motions for resolution on Turkey (a source of immigration to Belgium over which the party expresses concern, and a target of party criticism for its treatment of the Kurdish minority) and on Schengen.21 In addition, the two MEPs participated in EP discussions of numerous reports on legislative proposals related to immigration: on the subject of immigration and asylum; on the education of immigrant children; on the free movement of persons within the Community (part of the effort to complete the Single Market); on EU relations with Turkey; on European citizenship (a provision of the Maastricht Treaty); on passport checks by airlines; and on the right of EU nationals to stand and vote as candidates for the EP and to vote in local elections wherever they reside in the EU (another provision of the Maastricht Treaty). Vanhecke and Dillen also interacted directly with the Commission and Council Presidency on topics related to immigration. The Blok MEPs posed oral questions to officials from these institutions on


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the subjects of refugees from Algeria and on the free movement of persons, and they intervened on a joint statement by the Council and Commission on EC-Turkey relations and on Commission statements on the free movement of persons and immigration, provoking an incident in which Vanhecke got into an argument with Commission President Jacques Delors on the issue of immigration and women’s employment. Party MEPs concentrated on three themes related to immigration: that immigration endangers the ethnic identities of all peoples, host nations as well as immigrants themselves, poses security problems in the form of crime, and contributes to high rates of unemployment in the EU. All of these themes are derived from the key role that ethnic identity plays at the heart of Blok ideology about society and the state. Party MEPs argued that cultural identities were endangered by European policies that either promoted immigration or that did not serve the goal of repatriating non-European foreigners. Yet the party explicitly stated that this danger existed for immigrants as well as natives in a society: EU policies that promoted cultural mixing ultimately degraded the cultures of all peoples concerned. Vlaams Blok MEPs viewed the idea of European citizenship as set out in Maastricht as a clear danger to identity and to the ability of states to regulate politics in the interests of their native ethnic populations. In a debate on a report on European citizenship, Karel Dillen spoke to the plenary of a “good and healthy state,” an ethnic state in Blok ideology, but also one that could control its borders and protect the interests, including the culture and language, of its citizens. European citizenship was thus an “artificial laboratory fertilization” that would produce “a political, intellectual, cultural and national freak” and lead to a “final extinction, the destruction of all national identity, of all national characteristics. Anyone who loves and serves his people and fatherland rejects out of hand the idea of a European citizenship.”22 Hence, party members argued that they had a duty to stop immigration and to repatriate immigrants, for the benefit of both natives and immigrants. Dillen stated in debate, “It is my right and it remains my duty to defend the cultural, moral and religious identity of my people in Europe, because our children and grandchildren … must remain Flemings and Europeans.”23 European policies such as the Schengen Accord and the provision for local voting rights for EU nationals thus contradicted a core element of Vlaams Blok philosophy, by removing control from states of policy areas closely linked to culture and identity. Schengen would allow non-European nationals to cross borders freely, contributing to uncontrolled population mixing, and local voting rights would open political participation and offices to “non-nationals,” undermining the ethnic character of communities and the ability of ethnic groups to govern themselves.

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Furthermore, European policies promoting the free movement of peoples across borders were argued to contribute to crime and security problems, which the party linked to an assault on the ethnic identity of populations. Immigration was argued to produce crime due to social and cultural “dislocation”; hence the party urged the EP to consider repatriation policies as socially and culturally beneficial for immigrants. Dillen argued to the plenary session that Schengen would not only enable criminals to cross borders more easily but lead to new “floods” of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants: these supposed threats to security included threats to culture and identity. Dillen asserted that the free movement of peoples should be understood as a “new affront to the essential character of the European peoples and of Europe as a whole.” In an oral question with debate to the Commission, he claimed that it placed the identity of our peoples under increased threat of extinction. We are against this freedom of movement because we are for the fight against crime … because we are for the security of Europeans … because we are for the preservation of the identity of Europe’s peoples.24

Finally, party MEPs urged their EP colleagues to consider the impact of immigration upon unemployment. Frank Vanhecke confronted Delors on a statement on employment, noting that Delors neglected to mention three factors that had contributed to the rise of unemployment in the EU, the first of which was immigration. Vanhecke reiterated this point in debate on social policy: pointing to the “direct and causal links” between immigration from outside Europe and unemployment in Europe, Vanhecke asked the EP to reject the report being considered as ignoring the “real issues” contributing to problems in the EU labor market.25 Thus Vlaams Blok and Belang MEPs actively lobby within the EP on immigration policies and believe themselves to have a duty to do so. Party members believe that their commitment to the cultural integrity of ethnic nations compels them to fight for certain types of immigration policies. The main thrust of their lobbying in the EP is to attack the EU as a promoter of wrong-headed and dangerous immigration policies, and to present an alternative: an image of what the EU “ought” to look like and formulations of immigration policies that will allow Europe to achieve this end. Their activism in the EP seeks to establish that EU policies on immigration and free movement of peoples promote insecurity and will contribute to the destruction of European cultures and values. Only the Vlaams Belang approach to immigration will address these concerns and ultimately “save” Europeans. The party strategy on immigration policy has proven a valuable means for establishing its position to myriad actors in the European policy arena.


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However, as a lobbying technique that could be directed toward a domestic audience to bolster support for Flemish political nationalism, it is problematic. There is no discussion of the Belgian state in party rhetoric about thirdcountry (extra-EU) immigration; that is, the constitutional agenda of the party is completely absent from its interventions about immigration, which focus entirely on the problem of EU policy and not on problems of immigration with respect to Belgium.26 Vlaams Belang is “nationalistic” in its defense of European cultures and nations, but constitutional questions only figure in to its criticisms of the EU, which is argued to be taking over powers that legitimately belong under state control. If the EU were organized along the ethnic lines desired by the party, the Belgian “problem” would itself be solved, that is, a Europe of ethnic states would free Flanders. Yet no discussion of the Belgian state occurs in the context of immigration. In fact, Vlaams Belang curiously offers a form of backhanded support for Belgium with its insistence that the EU relinquish its interests over citizenship and borders to states. In addition, although Vlaams Belang lobbying on immigration politics in the EU is consistent with overall party interests and the party program on the “foreigner problem,” the party does not appear to try to communicate to a domestic audience about what its MEPs are doing. Party literature does emphasize that the EU is a concern with respect to immigration; furthermore, party members do claim some small success in influencing the direction of Belgian policy on immigration and citizenship. The Vlaams Belang leader in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies, Gerolf Annemans, stated that local voting rights for European nonnationals had been successfully deferred because of pressure from the then Vlaams Blok on the Belgian prime minister, along with Flemish cultural tendencies within his own party. Annemans noted that Belgium had received an exception in extending voting rights to all EU citizens until after 2000 because of this pressure.27 However, although the party may have successfully lobbied or pressured the Belgian government in this case, Vlaams Belang does not draw on the records of party members’ activities in Europe to make its arguments. General election campaign literature develops the party’s criticisms of the EU but generally portrays the EU as an enemy that must be fought, not an arena to be engaged. Few, if any, references are made to individual party members’ activities in European policymaking processes. This suggests the difficulties that a highly ideological party like Vlaams Belang has in the European arena. As a party with an ideology that disposes it to criticize, if not despise, many aspects of the EU, the party cannot simply turn to a domestic audience and extol the benefits to Flanders of participation in EU politics. Although Vlaams Belang is an ideological outsider in European policy arenas (in terms of being marginalized on the extreme right), its ideology may also require it to play

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the role of an outsider, to retain an ideological purity, and to demonstrate to domestic constituents not that it knows how to use “Europe” on their behalf, but that it continues to lead the fight against Europe on their behalf. The SNP: Regional Development Funds and Fisheries In its European lobbying, the SNP has focused on securing EU regional development for Scotland and on promoting the interests of Scottish, as well as European, fishermen and fishing communities. These issues are important in the domestic political campaigns of the party and represent key areas in which it has tried to link its presence in European policymaking to arguments for independence. The party relied heavily on Winnie Ewing’s presence in the EP to lobby, but it also employed other channels. Similar to Vlaams Belang, the SNP used all methods available to it in the EP to lobby. However, unlike the Flemish nationalists, the SNP also sought to establish other contacts with European policymakers and to use these contacts to push for policies that were favorable to Scotland, secure funding, and gather information. Allan Macartney, MEP noted the importance of being able to make direct contacts with the Commission, indicating that it was frequently more useful to deal with officials in the European Commission for information than with domestic civil servants. He stated that the Commission would “tell you how they think things are, instead of taking the party line on things. They are more helpful, forthcoming.” Instead of relying solely on the ‘formal’ power accorded to him to act within the EP, Macartney attempted to parlay this position into developing closer contacts with the Commission, suggesting that the Commission had even been useful in helping him to resolve the problems of individual constituents.28 Unlike Vlaams Belang, the SNP also indicated that the Committee of the Regions was important for communicating its views, although party members recognized the weakness of the Committee as a legislative body. In addition, one party member made reference to a “Brussels branch” of the party and noted that the “clear Scottish identity” in Brussels was helpful in allowing the SNP to make a case for Scottish interests in Europe.29 Scottish interests in Europe are also represented through a variety of lobbyists working on behalf of local authorities, lobbyists to whom the SNP has had some access and has been willing to use. The formerly SNP-controlled local authority Tayside Regional Council (which was reconfigured under local government reorganization in 1996) opted to join three other regional councils to form a lobbying consortium based in Brussels. According to one of its lobbyists, the East of Scotland European Consortium (ESEC) emerged out of a recognition that the individual regional councils were each alone


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too small to compete with other “regional” entities in Europe, had overlapping sets of concerns and interests for which the councils wished to have informal representation at the European level, and hoped to reduce potentially wasteful competition in terms of administration and other resources. Along with the role of “information broker,” ESEC sought to draw funding down from the Commission and to build transnational ties.30 Yet although SNP leader Alex Salmond saw lobbying offices as potentially useful, he was unconvinced that “regional” lobbying was the best means by which Scotland should be trying to protect itself in the European arena. He described the lobbying arena as overcrowded, arguing that Scotland deserved better than to be lumped together with hundreds of local government and business associations lobbying in Brussels.31 Thus although the SNP may claim that it wishes to use every available opportunity to speak for Scotland in Europe, there is clearly a tension between the desire to procure benefits for constituents or for the nation, and a recognition that lobbying is an insufficient means to secure Scottish interests. In its lobbying for regional development funding, the party emphasized the fragility of the Scottish economy, its remoteness, and the need for EU policies to help peripheral communities. The securing of Objective 1 status32 for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland loomed large for over a decade as a symbol of the SNP struggle to secure maximum European benefits for Scotland. As long ago as 1987, before the restructuring of the European structural funds into the present system of objectives, Winnie Ewing, MEP, made the winning and maintaining of European funding for her constituency a very public battle for the SNP. She asked numerous questions during EP plenaries on regional development funding and intervened in nearly a dozen reports on the subject. Her initial concern was to ensure that the UK government was itself lobbying to support the proposed assistance programs in her constituency. In particular, she sought to lobby the Commission to pressure the British government to participate in discussions on funding. When the Commissioner answering questions in the EP plenary session insisted that this was an internal matter for the United Kingdom, Winnie Ewing responded that she had a letter from a Scottish Office cabinet minister stating that he (in her words) could “not be bothered to participate” in the Commission directive, asking: Could you (the Commission), perhaps, use your good offices to say: ‘It is very odd that one cabinet minister should block the availability of this excellent directive to the whole of the five million people of Scotland who have a colder climate, worse housing and more unemployment than any other part of Great Britain [sic.] than Northern Ireland’ … there were twenty-five proposals from

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Scotland [for funding]. They were blocked by the British Government and so did not reach you.33

Ewing’s argument in this case had significant support from the EP; numerous MEPs of transnational groupings as ideologically diverse as the Socialists and the Conservatives supported her by asking additional questions. Ultimately, Scotland was included in the funding directive. When the Commission threatened to cut regional funds to Ewing’s constituency, the Highlands and Islands, on the grounds that it was (according to their calculations) one of the most prosperous regions in the EC, Ewing also took up the cause to get funding reinstated.34 Her concern with regional development funding was a constant of her term in office and was taken up by Macartney as well when he joined the EP in 1994. The review of spending priorities always elicits the interest of the EP, with the responsible Commissioner usually appearing to take oral questions. In the review of the funding initiative that was to begin in 1999, Commissioner for the Regions Monika Wulf-Mathies appeared in the EP to answer questions and was greeted with a similar argument from the SNP, that the UK government was frustrating the efforts of Scottish actors interested in securing funds. Mathies was perceived by the SNP as far more sympathetic to Scottish interests than some previous Commissioners, in part because of her willingness to travel in peripheral areas of the EU and to visit areas in need of assistance. In debate, MEP Macartney drew on the support of the SNP’s transnational grouping to attempt to sway opinion in the EP in favor of the nationalists’ position on regional development funding. He indicated that a problem was that “certain Members States—and the UK is probably the worst offender—frustrate these initiatives by refusing matching funding,” which was necessary for projects to get EU monies. Macartney and the ARE grouping sought to compel all Member States to match funds and not to “frustrate the European initiatives which we all support.”35 The SNP was similarly active in its efforts to promote its interests in fisheries, which comprised a significant amount of its MEPs’ activity. Ewing and Macartney were not only interested in lobbying specifically for the interests of Scottish fishermen (e.g., on ship-crew safety, efforts to control access to the so-called Irish box fishing grounds, total allowable catch (TAC) levels and problems of “quota-hopping,” by which a country’s nationals could sell their TACs to foreign fishermen), but on the need for the EU to intervene to protect stocks, monitor fishing vessels, and assure a level playing field. The need for the EU to enforce the regulations of the Common Fisheries Policy was raised by Ewing beginning the early 1980s, in particular with the accession to the EC of Spain and Portugal with their large fishing fleets.


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However, both SNP MEPs were critical of EU efforts in monitoring, as well as of certain member states’ lack of compliance in areas of fisheries policy. Ewing criticized the minutiae of fishing regulations that she believed would endanger fisherman’s lives and hinder conservation efforts. Yet at the same time she recognized that the absence of decommissioning schemes (to reduce the fishing fleet) in Scotland was due to UK government failures, and she asked the Commission, “[C]ould they not use their influence with the British Government and help us a bit here, because we really are being penalized and we are not competing on equal terms.” Macartney also noted that the Commission needed to ensure that member states followed the rules were not “let off the hook, if you’ll pardon the expression … It is absolutely essential that recalcitrant governments, of which the British Government is perhaps the leading culprit, should be forced into compliance.”36 The SNP has sought to use both its MEPs’ activism, their successes in the EP, and other instances of successful SNP lobbying to make the case for independence. Although the party does not lobby specifically on constitutional issues, it has sought to place its lobbying in the context of the constitutional question. The European dimensions of fishing and funding do figure into party programs, and these issues have been important for how the party promotes “independence in Europe.” The SNP has emphasized European activism in its campaign materials, in publications sent to party members, in informational brochures, and in press statements. The party noted the regional importance of the Common Fisheries Policy as early as its 1987 general election campaign manifesto, and has referred to the importance of the party’s fight to secure European assistance for Scotland’s underdeveloped areas and for Scottish fisheries in its campaigns since. For this study, all party members interviewed sought to communicate the importance of party lobbying in the EU to the overall nationalist agenda. The party in particular highlighted Winnie Ewing, using her photo in much of their EU-related publications in the 1980s and 1990s (in particular a photo that shows her with an EU flag); referring to the nickname, “Madame Ecosse,” that they argue reflects her clout in European policy circles; and citing her role as crucial for promoting Scotland’s interests in the EU. A party newspaper circulated before the 1994 European elections had the headline “Winnie Delivers” and stated: “To European politicians, Winnie Ewing … IS the voice of Scotland. And it’s vital she’s there.”37 The SNP thereby attempts to claim credit for itself for policy successes, while presenting its domestic political competition as unwilling or unable to act in the interests of Scotland. The party emphasizes that a lack of coordinated, effective lobbying for regional interests is causing their constituents to lose potential funds and opportunities, as well as to suffer the negative effects of policies inappropriately designed or implemented by central government

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authorities. The SNP has publicized itself as the sole party acting to secure regional funds for certain areas of Scotland, attempting to create a public image of the SNP as solely responsible for the arrival of Objective 1 funding and, when funding seemed threatened in 1997, the SNP continued to confront central government as being unwilling to discuss the issue with the Commission.38 In addition, the SNP points to examples where the interests of their constituents have suffered from the apparent refusal of central government ministers to make policy that respected specific regional interests. Fishing and related industries are a significant sector of the Scottish economy, and SNP politicians argue that Scotland has suffered disproportionately from the UK government’s agreeing to European fisheries policies that ignore the regional dimension of the issue. Party leader Alex Salmond emphasized the failure of the Scottish Secretary in the 1990s to lobby for the interests of Scotland even when the Secretary was involved in the Council of Ministers. Fisheries policy, and more recently the problems for the beef exporters resulting from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), are examples that the SNP employed to demonstrate that European policy has a “regional” impact on Scotland that differs from its impact on the rest of the United Kingdom. According to the party, there is insufficient interest by the government to protect Scottish interests, and within the United Kingdom, it is impossible for Scotland to have a sufficiently powerful voice in the EU to fight for its own interests. Thus the party scorns the idea that a “regional” lobby is sufficient for Scotland, arguing that only independence will guarantee the fair representation of Scotland in the EU. The SNP draws directly on the record of its members’ work in Europe in election campaigns and internal party documents. Europe is described as an arena that offers many potential benefits to Scotland, and in which Scotland has interests that differ from the rest of the United Kingdom, but in which there is inadequate representation for Scotland under current constitutional arrangements. However, the EU is not always presented in a positive light. Instead, the SNP portrays its members as ready to fight for Scottish interests when UK parties will not, and when Europe itself seems ready to ignore Scotland. Instead of presenting the image of an “outsider” as Vlaams Belang does, the SNP hopes to show that it is engaging the EU in a constructive manner, the sole party able to exert pressure on European institutions to produce outcomes that are favorable to Scotland. Can “Regional” Mobilization Backfire for Nationalists? For nationalists who seek to deploy EU lobbying as domestic political capital, the strategy has two dimensions. Nationalists try to claim credit for


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successfully winning a beneficial policy position, and they seek to discredit the ability of the status quo parties or the state itself to represent regional interests adequately. They thus engage in the type of credit claiming defined by Mayhew (1974) as follows: “[A]cting so as to generate a belief in a relevant political actors (or actors) that one is personally responsible for causing the government [or the EU], or some unit thereof, to do something that the actor (or actors) considers desirable.”39 In Mayhew’s study of U.S. Congressional representatives, the logic behind this strategy is that the “relevant actor” will thereby want to keep the elected official in office. In the case of the nationalist parties, the logic is to convince citizens that nationalists are more attentive and effective representatives of their interests in Europe than are the major UK parties (and, in addition, to keep the nationalists in office). However, nationalist parties face a unique problem if they try to engage in credit claiming. They may wish to claim credit in order to legitimize themselves and to win support for constitutional change, by showing what they have accomplished for their respective regions in Europe. Yet the point of nationalism is to demonstrate that the system is failing. Nationalists who convince a domestic audience that they have done well for their regions by lobbying in Brussels are, to an extent, demonstrating that the system works: it allows those actors with the most persuasive political arguments about regional politics to make their cases and successfully pressure European institutions. Arguments that discredit the state and established parties may ring hollow if nationalists present themselves as having been highly successful under the current rules of the game. Hence, each party attempts to portray itself as “doing the best it can” for the region given the circumstances in which its members find themselves. Furthermore, the SNP insists that, even where they have done well, they could do better with self-government. Nationalists thus attempt to strike a balance between claiming credit to raise their profile and win support from a domestic audience, and disparaging a state that they argue constrains them from achieving maximum benefits for their regions. Nationalists who seek to take credit alone, as parties or as individual officials within parties, for influencing European institutions or for promoting certain interests in the EU may also be misleading their constituents. Literature on EU lobbying suggests that precisely the opposite form of behavior is the key to success: lobbyists speaking on behalf of a number of interests are appreciated; many programs require interregional cooperation; and the Commission seeks to fund programs with coordinated support by local, national, and private actors: individual actors are relatively powerless in decision-making processes.40 The SNP has sought to portray its elected officials as the primary actors pushing for funding for Scotland, with other actors depicted as obstructionist or unwilling to work for the regions. The SNP has claimed that only

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with its efforts did the Highlands and Islands secure regional development funding in 1987. However, even party leader Salmond acknowledges that it was only the combined efforts of Winnie Ewing and government actors that funding was won.41 In fact the image that emerges from lobbyists representing local authorities controlled by the SNP is one of a high degree of cooperation in numerous areas among the nationalists and their supposed “enemies.” Scottish lobbyists emphasized that political disagreements might emerge among political authorities controlled by different parties at the initial phase of a policy process, when questions of allocation are at stake, but that in the long run all parties wanted to secure as much funding for Scotland as possible. In addition, all parties recognized the need to build coalitions for many Commission-sponsored funding programs.42 Finally, hanging one’s fortunes on any particular EU policy might prove, in the long run, to come back to haunt a nationalist party. By the mid-1990s, party leaders were privately admitting that regional development funding was likely to be taken away from their regions as Eastern and Central European states joined the EU. Although the SNP supported enlargement, party leader Salmond argued that issues like agriculture and regional development funding were going to have to be “carefully managed.” He added, “If one were writing an ‘ideal future’ of Europe, [the EU would have to] get out of resource policy” all together: the resources were simply not going to exist to expand the CAP and regional funding to the new member states.43 The SNP would thus be in a difficult position: having predicated much of its success in Europe on the procuring of regional funds, it would then be in the uncomfortable position of having to defend how it lost funds for Scotland and why economically deprived areas would lose funds to the new states.44 Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Lobbying The ability of nationalists to deploy EU lobbying for domestic political purposes depends as much on their willingness to do so as on any actual success they may have to show for their efforts in European policymaking. The Vlaams Belang desire to retain its ideology purity on the question of Flemish independence leads party members to downplay, if not completely ignore, the efforts of individual politicians in European arenas. Despite the considerable activism of Karel Dillen and Frank Vanhecke in the EP, the party belief that the EU is an “enemy,” and its desire to position itself as an “outsider” fighting for systemic change, implies that little is made of these efforts in domestic campaigns. Although the party ties the issue of immigration to its constitutional program at the level of domestic politics, it does not


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appear to link its European policy activism on immigration to the nationalist struggle at home. The SNP has been more successful in lobbying in the European arena as well as in drawing on lobbying efforts in its domestic campaigning. Yet SNP activism in EU regional policy was not predetermined. A leadership that hoped to use any available means to lobby for Scottish interests had to overcome resistance within the party from those who believed that an independence movement should not participate in “regional” politics. Nonetheless, a pragmatic leadership prevailed and continues to use SNP activism in the EU to demonstrate the failure of the United Kingdom to represent Scottish interests and to make the argument for independence to a domestic audience. Thus credit claiming, when practiced by nationalist parties, seems to offer potential rewards for being active in Europe and for publicizing this activism to domestic audiences. Yet, as used by the SNP, this strategy has potential pitfalls: if nationalists are too successful in claiming credit, they may undermine their own arguments by effectively proving that it is possible to use the system as currently configured to secure appropriate policy outcomes. Nationalists who claim credit (or cast blame) based on their supposedly singular efforts in the European arena may be playing good politics, but it is not necessarily an accurate depiction of the EU policy arena, as many actors who operate in that arena know. And depending on one area of lobbying, such as regional policy, to make the nationalists’ case about Europe may prove counterproductive if EU policies shift beyond nationalists’ control and deliver them an apparent policy failure that then must be explained to their constituents. The political power of nationalists in the EU is highly circumscribed. The Vlaams Belang and SNP can do little to change the general parameters of EU policymaking and European institutions, and they must respond to “Europe” on terms set by more powerful actors. Yet even as weak or marginalized actors in the European arena, these parties have access to resources that may be useful for their agendas. Policy decisions in areas such as immigration, fisheries, or regional development may not be the stuff of high politics, but these policies are crucial for the domestic audiences that nationalists are hoping to reach. For ideological reasons, nationalists may place limits on themselves regarding how they choose to be active in European institutions and use the results of their activism. However, the fact that they may build networks to lobby for policy outcomes, participate in decision-making on European legislation, and interact directly with EU officials at the highest levels provides opportunities that few nationalists are willing to ignore completely. The resources of the EU, while small-scale, have proven valuable to nationalists who have seized the chance to use them to articulate their cases and to try to win new domestic converts to the cause of self-government.


CHAPTER 9

Conclusion: New Nationalisms in a New Europe?

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uropean integration has transformed the economic and political decision-making landscape of the twenty-seven member states of the EU, with central state actors now sharing power with supranational institutions and with other member states over an expanding range of policy areas, including those once considered linchpins of sovereignty, such as monetary policy. Integration has also brought into the European political arena actors never before empowered to participate in the decisions of international—or supranational—organizations, actors such as regional and local authorities and opposition political parties. The Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty recast political opportunities for actors at all levels of the European polity, and raised new questions about the ability of state governments to regulate political, economic, and social relations within their borders. But contrary to some expectations, and in contrast to what many observers have argued, integration does not appear to be undermining separatist nationalism in the EU. The nationalist parties that have been the subject of this study argue that integration has not erased the value of state borders and has not deprived states of so much authority that statehood has ceased to have meaning. On the contrary, the SNP and Vlaams Belang propose that statehood still matters, because even in an increasingly supranational EU, states remain dominant actors: they retain significant policy functions, remain the key contributors to debates about the future course of integration, and are still recognized as the primary constitutive elements of legitimate political order in the EU and in the world system more generally. Regardless of the impact of European integration and globalization on unbundling the components of sovereignty—internal hierarchy and territorial authority— states retain their normative priority in the organization and governance of European political space.

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I have argued that nationalists use the EU as both a context that can provide new justifications for a separatist agenda and as a set of resources to promote struggles for self-government in the domestic political arena. Nationalists incorporate the shifting political and economic landscape of Europe into their domestic political campaigns, and they participate in the European arena of politics to capture policy-making power as well as symbolic clout. Scottish and Flemish nationalism existed as salient political phenomena before the impact of European integration on state, sub-state (regional), and supranational relations began to be the subject of significant public debate. However, increasing integration, and particularly the relaunch of the Community in the 1980s through the Single European Market, raised questions about state sovereignty and the power of regions to have an impact on European policy-making that struck at the heart of the nationalist agenda and that nationalists could not avoid engaging. Party responses to integration were initially rooted in existing nationalist philosophies about sovereignty and self-government. I have suggested that political leaders were not free to choose any possible response to European integration but were constrained by, and had to embed their responses in, existing understandings of sovereignty and identity. The transformation of Europe intersected with established party ideologies, organizational structures, and internal debates about the nature of self-government, definitions of the nation, and understandings about political party competition. Yet the EU developed into more than merely a new dimension of party competition; it became the overarching framework in which nationalists came to situate their struggles for self-government. The SNP and Vlaams Belang followed different paths to Europeanizing their agendas. SNP party leaders initially believed that the European dimension of politics offered opportunities to reinvigorate a party organization suffering from factionalization and electoral marginalization. In Vlaams Belang, the leaders of a coherent, ideologically driven party viewed many aspects of European integration as potentially dangerous. Yet the impact of European integration on Flanders was seen as inevitable, and the EU offered potential support for key aspects of the party platform if Flanders could participate as an independent state in EU policymaking. The victory of pragmatic approaches to European integration in both parties indicates a recognition that only in the EU would the self-governing polity survive. In addition, for both parties Europe offered a framework to support the ideological interests of the nationalists and a new context for national identity. In the context of the EU, Flemish and Scots were argued to have the potential for liberation from the domestic institutions that were preventing the full expression of their interests.

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What is striking about these parties is the extent to which they, although emerging from states with markedly different constitutional arrangements, articulated a similar complaint about the status of their respective regions in an integrating Europe. In Belgium, Vlaams Belang argued that the power of regional actors domestically was irrelevant in an EU that privileged states in its decision-making processes. The weakness of the Belgian federal government did not alter the fact that Belgium was a juridical equal with other member states of the EU, while the regions were only afforded a weak participatory role in European institutions. Although constitutionally weak, the Belgian central state blocked the regions from being able to protect or articulate their interests in Europe. In the United Kingdom, where decision-making power was concentrated at Westminster until 1999, the regions per se had no ability to participate in European-level politics, excepting the representations of Cabinet ministers to EU institutions. Similar to Vlaams Belang, the SNP argued that the state was an obstacle to regional participation in the EU and that only with statehood could “regions” exercise effective voice at the European level. Is this not, however, what one might expect nationalists to argue? In the cases of the SNP and Vlaams Belang, with their long-standing commitments to independent statehood, it is in the interests of the parties to argue that real power in the EU lies with states, and that only with statehood can their constituents’ interests be served. Political commentators noted in 1999 that regardless of the new Scottish Parliament’s ability to participate in European institutions to the same degree as did other democratic regional governments in the EU, the business of the SNP would still be to “destabilize” constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom.1 Yet for both parties, the Maastricht Treaty was a watershed event in European integration and its implications suggest the complexity of separatists’ responses to European integration. Whether the regions in their respective states were weak or strong, with minimal or considerable power to act in the new regional institutions of the EU, party leaders argued that efforts to empower regions were insufficient given the increasing supranationalism of the EU and the lack of state willingness or ability to advocate on behalf of regional interests in Europe. Maastricht convinced the leaderships of the SNP and the then Vlaams Blok that states, even if weakened, would remain the dominant actors in the EU for the foreseeable future. Having any influence on the direction of integration or policymaking required self-government in the EU. Yet the Europeanization of nationalism does not imply that these parties responded similarly to all aspects of European integration or that they were equally enthusiastic about it. Significant differences exist between the SNP and Vlaams Belang in their interpretations of the impact of European integration on, and the desirability of it for, their respective regions. The SNP prefers

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a confederal model of European politics with decision-making power remaining with member state governments in the Council of Ministers. However, the party believes that the EU should play an active role in numerous policy areas that it argues are best dealt with by a supranational authority and presents itself as being generally in favor of further integration, with final decisions over integration being left to member states. Vlaams Belang envisions the EU as a confederal polity with minimal supranational authority; furthermore, the party argues that the independent states that compose the EU should be reformed along ethnic lines. Among the limited jurisdictions of European institutions should be those policy areas that contribute to the fulfillment of the party agenda, including military and policing powers and immigration policy. Whereas the party opposes those aspects of European integration that it believes infringe upon the cultural sovereignty of the Flemish people, Vlaams Belang believes that the EU, albeit in a highly modified form, can ensure the protection of all European cultures. The differences between the parties suggest that it is not solely the fact that they are nationalists seeking to create new polities that explains their attitudes toward European integration and the tactics that have emerged from these attitudes. Nationalist approaches to European integration appear to be the product of the interplay of several factors: the party concept of the nation (inclusive, with characteristics of civic nationhood, or exclusive, with characteristics of ethnic nationhood); party attitudes toward the value of the state and the role of the state in civic life; and ideology (whether the party could be characterized as left or right wing). Decisions concerning how and when the EU is deployed for the nationalist cause—tactics—may be influenced by the additional factors of the availability of political entrepreneurs who recognize and can act on “Europe” as a set of opportunities, and the structure of domestic party competition. With an emphasis on an inclusive national identity, the SNP shows little interest in the impact of European integration on Scottish culture; however, the party quest for Scottish statehood raises questions within the SNP about the impact of future integration on the ability of Scotland to protect its interests. Party support for the EU is strong but qualified with respect to potential infringements upon Scottish sovereignty. In addition, under Conservative British governments, the SNP saw the EU as a sympathetic framework for its leftist policy orientation. Vlaams Belang presents a less ambivalent stance on EU institutions and European integration. With its commitment to an EU composed of ethnic states, the party is critical of trends in integration that appear to compromise the ability of any ethnic group to govern itself. The Maastricht Treaty and the increasing supranationalism of the EU have thus provided grounds for the party to be suspicious of the path of integration. Furthermore, with

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a highly exclusive notion of national identity connected to its concept of state sovereignty, Vlaams Belang is also opposed to developments in the EU that might damage the integrity of Flemish culture along with the ability of Flemings to govern themselves. Unlike the SNP, the social agenda of which is perceived as compatible with European social policy trends, Vlaams Belang does not see its policy interests reflected in the contemporary European policy environment. Although the party has constructed an ideal EU of ethnic states that will support its right-wing agenda, the EU as currently configured is problematic for the party for cultural, constitutional, and ideological reasons. Nationalists themselves have played no role in shaping the institutional development of the EU. As opposition parties (at least, until the 2007 Scottish elections for the SNP), they largely have been presented with a fait accompli, a project initiated by the other key players in the history of integration. Yet despite the differences in how these parties approach European integration, they have both sought to use the European policy arena to promote a nationalist agenda and have attempted to exploit the present weaknesses of their respective regions in policy processes to illustrate the continuing importance of statehood. The same constellation of factors that shapes nationalist approaches to the EU shapes how nationalists choose, or choose not, to participate in EUlevel politics. In the formal institutions of the EU, such as the EP, and informally through lobbying and through the networks available to regional actors in Europe, nationalists have opportunities to play a role in shaping the output of EU institutions. The SNP and Vlaams Belang recognize that European intervention in certain policy areas is desirable and have used European institutions to urge that the EU be active in areas where state management no longer seems adequate. For example, the SNP has worked for effective Europe-wide fisheries management and regional development policy, and Vlaams Belang seeks EU-level intervention in immigration policy. However, the “nationalist” party label again does not explain how or why parties differ substantially in their decisions about activism in EU institutions. Differences in ideology, conceptions of sovereignty, and ideas of national identity contribute to explaining a variety of nationalist strategies in European arenas. The SNP has actively engaged European institutions wherever possible, including choosing to participate in the consultative Committee of the Regions, and the party has sought to exploit opportunities presented by informal regional mobilization in the EU to influence European policy outcomes. SNP leaders seek to present the party to a domestic audience as positively engaged with Europe, and willing and able to pursue regional interests in European institutions to an extent that representatives of the British state are not. Their relatively inclusive ideas of national identity also place few constraints

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on their ability to present themselves as working with Europe to win support for Scotland. The SNP emphasis on independent statehood led to some friction within the party about its decisions to use “regional” political avenues to promote Scottish interests, but this friction was minimal; the party has built a strong commitment among its members to pursue all means available in the EU to secure what it believes are the best interests of Scotland. Vlaams Belang has adopted a far different approach to participation in EU institutions and policy-making. The exclusive ethnic identity promoted by the party and its emphasis on Flanders as a future ethnic state with a high level of sovereignty make it difficult for Vlaams Belang to engage in the same type of regional lobbying embraced by the SNP. Vlaams Belang focuses its efforts on the EP, rejecting the Committee of the Regions and regional mobilization overall as inappropriate for Flanders. Yet even the Parliament itself is portrayed as an ultimately useless institution for advancing policy interests, despite the fact that Vlaams Belang members are active in EP politics. The negative portrayal of the EU that is the consequence of party ideology and ethnic politics suggests that any compromise or move to embrace “regional” politics would be difficult for the party to sustain, either internally among its activists or publicly. Furthermore, Vlaams Belang leaders are not alone in arguing that their participation in European institutions will ultimately do little, as far as policy outcomes are concerned. Both parties are confronted with the fact of their own marginalization in European institutions, whether this is due primarily to their ideology (as is likely the case with Vlaams Belang) or simply to their lack of presence in central state institutions. Yet the activism of nationalist parties in EU institutions should not therefore be dismissed as irrelevant or nonrational behavior. On the contrary, the SNP and Vlaams Belang emphasize that having a presence in the EU is itself a valuable asset for the nationalist struggle. In whatever capacity they have been active in the EU, nationalists have attempted to create political capital for their domestic constitutional agendas. Even though this activity seems unlikely to have a significant impact on Europe itself, behavior such as position-taking, diplomacy, and constituency-related work is designed to establish the legitimacy of the nationalist movement and to convince a domestic audience that the party’s vision of statehood, not the status quo, is the only means of protecting national interests in an integrating Europe. The record of nationalists’ responses to European integration indicates that it is difficult to speak of “nationalist” preferences about the EU in general, or even over time. Nationalists—as do other political parties—engage in a dynamic process of (re)evaluating how Europe fits into their philosophies and serves, or does not serve, their interests. Nationalist parties may differ in their

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approaches to the EU along the dimensions sketched above as well as over time: as changes in the EU occur, and in particular as nationalists themselves have minimal if any impact on these changes, parties may recalibrate their positions. However, unlike most political parties, nationalists are particularly sensitive to questions of sovereignty. Whereas this may be an aspect of the philosophy of other party organizations, sovereignty is the basis of the separatist argument. Furthermore, both parties accept that they cannot change the EU or reconstruct it along lines that better suit their tastes unless they first achieve selfgovernment. It is the fact that Europe continues to integrate, and not necessarily on terms that they like or that they believe are favorable to their constituents, that ultimately underpins nationalist arguments for immediate self-government. The Single European Act and Maastricht Treaty may have served to weaken state sovereignty, but these developments, according to nationalists, also underlined the extent to which regional populations are vulnerable to decisions over which they have no control. Nationalists argue that the longer their populations wait to demand self-government, the less political authority they will have left to exercise. States may be growing increasingly weak as integration progresses, but statehood remains the sole means of assuring that a nation or region can make any contribution to influencing the future distribution of sovereignty in the EU. The options are therefore to remain weak regions within states and to have no input into shaping European integration, or to trade this marginalization for less than perfectly sovereign statehood, with the ability to act in the EU and to benefit from membership. This search for sovereign equality resonates with nationalist struggles of previous eras, although in contemporary Europe, this equality implies relaxing the assumption that independent statehood implies territorial sovereignty as in the past. The SNP and Vlaams Belang do insist on statehood as the formal strategy that will enable them to achieve their goals of equality and dignity in the international community, but regardless of their use of the language of “independence,” they accept that outmoded understandings of sovereignty are no longer achievable. Yet what have nationalists ultimately gained from the “independence in Europe” project? Has the European dimension of their projects fundamentally reshaped debate about constitutional options in their respective regions, or won them significant new followings? Initially, these parties presented novel arguments about their respective territories’ relationships with Europe. Yet since the late 1980s, the major political parties in Scotland and Flanders have all come to incorporate a European dimension into their political agendas, albeit without the radical constitutional changes demanded by the nationalists. I have noted how the leaders of the CVP in Flanders began by the 1990s to

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promote the image of a strengthened region “in Europe.” The Vlaanderen— Europa 2002 document represented an effort to recast Flemish autonomy in a supportive European context, as the federalization of Belgium continued to divest the federal government of policy-making capacity. The main British political parties also introduced a European dimension into their regional politics. The SNP took the lead in altering the political playing field in Scotland: in the wake of the SEA, the SNP took the initiative to make Europe a core part of its agenda, when the Conservatives were growing increasingly divided on the issue and before Labour recognized the value of a positive agenda on Europe. Peter Lynch points out that, in the wake of the SEA and the SNP’s move toward the “Independence in Europe” strategy, the opponents of the nationalists moved to Europeanize their positions on Scotland. The Conservative Party began to play up the role of the Scottish Office in lobbying European institutions, and Labour suggested that a devolved parliament would have some European responsibilities.2 Thus by the time the Maastricht Treaty was becoming an issue in British politics, the uniqueness and novelty of the SNP position were no longer as clear as they had been in 1988. One might conclude from the responses of the major parties in the United Kingdom and Belgium that the nationalists have been successful, by forcing the European dimension of regional politics onto the agenda. But for the nationalist parties themselves, it becomes increasingly difficult to make the case that the interests of the region in the EU are being ignored by the established political system. Lobbying for regional interests, particularly with the overall trend toward regional mobilization since the 1980s, cannot be claimed to be the domain solely of regional nationalist parties. The formal creation of the Committee of the Regions, the devolution of additional powers from the Belgian federal state to the regions, and the establishment of regional elected assemblies in the United Kingdom in 1999 have created incentives for many domestic political actors to situate their battles in a European framework. Nationalists are no longer unique in this respect. Furthermore, it is difficult to find evidence that recasting battles for selfgovernment in the framework of the EU is having an impact on domestic support for nationalists. Lynch also points out that, although “independence in Europe” may have helped sustain public support for independence, it did not make this option any more popular in Scotland. In addition, even though the SNP may have helped to force competing parties to Europeanize their approach to Scottish issues, Europe itself has not become an issue of primary concern to the public.3 The European dimension of radical Flemish nationalism does not seem to register among voters at all. Support for Vlaams Belang has continued to grow, but the most significant motives for voting for the

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party are its position on immigration, with the nationalist question itself being far less important to voters.4 Thus the pay-offs of the strategy of self-government in the EU appear to be minimal, if the goal of the nationalists is to capture votes or to make Europe a salient dimension of voting behavior. Furthermore, the strategy has arguably introduced tensions into nationalist party politics and has compelled the parties to complicate their arguments about self-government. European integration has recast the meaning of sovereignty and territorial authority for all political players, but with their focus on radical constitutional transformation, nationalists are particularly vulnerable to charges that their strategies would imply, in the words of critics of Scottish nationalism, merely “exchanging London for Brussels.” And nationalists still have little control over the institutional reforms that continue to challenge any particular depiction of relations between the EU, its member states and regions that they offer to the public. The reconvening of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 raised new questions about regional representation in the EU and about whether, and how, Scottish first ministers should play a role in Council of Ministers decisionmaking. By adopting the euro, the Belgian state effectively stripped itself of one of its last major policy jurisdictions; along with the crisis of governance following the Belgian elections of 2007, many have wondered whether even without a successful separatist party Flanders may become a state by default. Despite the ambiguous record of the “independence in Europe” strategy, where nationalists have succeeded has been in recognizing the complications of sovereignty that European integration—and globalization more generally— have raised. With their stated goals of empowering weak regional constituencies, nationalists cannot avoid confronting problems of sovereignty and authority in the EU. However, nationalist movements have not collapsed and nationalists have not surrendered their debates about sovereignty in an integrating Europe. Instead, nationalists are adapting to a world in which the functions of the state are being modified by supranational and global forces. These parties argue that although state sovereignty has been modified, the legitimate form of political power that forms the basis of the international order, and the EU specifically, remains the state. Studies of some small radical parties that have chosen to participate in European elections and institutions and to resituate their struggles in a European framework suggest that the Europeanization has contributed to “mellowing” these parties’ core principles or to “professionalizing” their behavior by requiring them to compromise and to act pragmatically to achieve policy goals.5 Explorations of the far right in Europe have emphasized the tensions introduced into illiberal political agendas by the norms and practices of the EU (and vice versa); the overt nationalism of the far right appears to undermine

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the potential for cooperation among these parties, potentially weakening them in arenas such as the EP at the same time that these parties seek to use the EP to contribute to domestic political goals.6 It is thus tempting to suggest that the EU has served to tame or moderate nationalist politics by compelling nationalists to “play by the rules” in order to deploy the European context to serve their broader strategic goals. Yet the willingness of the SNP and Vlaams Belang to play by the rules in order to participate in European politics does not necessarily imply that they are pursuing their agendas any less aggressively. Despite the changing understandings of sovereignty in these parties, they have not abandoned their demands for independence and have modified few, if any, of their substantive policy goals. The finding that nationalists use political capital generated by European integration to promote separatism suggests that Europeanization has largely affected party tactics, has somewhat affected party strategy—that is, the ongoing quest for separate statehood with modified understandings of the meanings of territorial sovereignty—and has not affected ultimate party goals: recognition as sovereign equals in the international community. The inability of European integration to remove or reduce incentives for nationalists to pursue these ultimate goals has implications for the future of nationalism in the EU, as well as for the futures of member states that contend with separatist movements. As the map of the EU extends further, to the Western Balkans and possibly to Turkey, it will incorporate new democracies with recent histories, or ongoing manifestations, of nationalist conflict. Instead of finding that an increasingly borderless Europe reduces incentives for nationalists to seek self-government, these states may find that nationalist movements take advantage of the weakened role of states as “gatekeepers” to Europe to forge new tools for political mobilization. Nationalists in new member states will have opportunities to participate in institutions that allow them to give voice to their constitutional aspirations and policy agendas (such as the EP and the Committee of the Regions); engage directly with European actors, including the Commission, to lobby for favorable policy outcomes and for regional development funding; and draw on EU norms of democracy and liberalism to articulate claims for equality and self-determination. Furthermore, EU requirements that candidate states prioritize human and cultural rights, the protection of minorities, and freedom of expression confer normative justification on regionalist, ethnic, and nationalist parties seeking to press claims for sovereign equality and hoping to use the European arena to do so.7 The recent enlargement of the EU also suggests that nationalists are quick to recognize opportunities presented by the new context of Europe, to learn from the experiences of nationalist parties that have already adjusted to the

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European environment, and to flex their political muscles in European institutions. For example, the EP remains a tactical focus for nationalist and extremist party members. Extreme right-wing politicians from the newest EU member states, Romania and Bulgaria, immediately seized upon the example set by their ideological partners in the rest of the EU to use European institutions to pursue their agendas. Within two weeks of these countries’ accession to the EU in 2007, MEPs from Bulgaria’s National Union Attack and Romania’s Greater Romania Party joined other far-right MEPs to form a new EP grouping, Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty. Although the grouping was short-lived, collapsing later in 2007, its creation points to the ongoing importance of European institutions in the tactical considerations of marginal or radical parties. The creation of a new grouping indicated a desire among all of the far right MEPs who joined it to use the EP to the greatest extent possible to secure resources, influence, and opportunities to make a case for their respective programs. Integration is complicating the idea of territorial sovereignty. The SNP and Vlaams Belang concede that sovereignty along the lines once associated with the Weberian or “modern” state can never be recaptured, if indeed it ever existed. However, weakened sovereignty, with self-government in the context of an integrating Europe and the concomitant recognition of equality that it entails, represents the best means for small or weak political entities to ensure that they will have some voice in a future EU. Scottish nationalist writer Tom Nairn has responded to those who argue that, with the growing salience of regional mobilization in the EU, “sovereignty” is no longer necessary for regional actors to preserve their identities or to promote their interests: Well, that may be so, and be absolutely splendid, for those with the stuff to give away. For those without it, who possess nothing resembling sovereign power to “pool”, “merge” or gallantly sacrifice, the prospect is necessarily a bit different. Sovereignty-rich metropolitans may enjoy such snakes-andladders; sovereignty-deprived satellites wouldn’t mind just getting in on the game … Until merger is achieved and “sovereignty” decently buried … could the peripherals please just have some ordinary, boring, narrow, dangerous, potentially atavistic (etc.) sovereignty?8

The project of creating a “borderless Europe” continues. On March 30, 2008, the EU officially dismantled air border controls among twenty-four member states, completing a process that had begun with the removal of land and sea borders. Yet nationalists in the EU still struggle to create selfgoverning polities that will accord them sovereign equality, while simultaneously embracing Europe for the symbolic and tangible benefits they believe

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it offers for their constituents and their domestic struggles. Their project does, therefore, appear paradoxical in terms of the classic literature on nationalism that suggests that nationalism is the struggle to make the national unit congruent with the modern state. However, contemporary nationalists argue that they must countenance some erosion of sovereignty to protect their respective nations in the face of integration. What matters is not an idealized model of sovereignty drawn from a previous historical era, but capturing whichever form of polity will secure for the nation the right to negotiate the transformation of Europe and to be accepted within it as an equal.

Notes

Chapter 1 1. Key texts on EU enlargement, the conditionality of membership for candidate states, and ethnic and minority rights include Milada Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Judith Kelley, Ethnic Politics in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 2. A National Public Radio report on the future of Kosovo noted, “While reaching a solution that satisfies all sides may be difficult, experts say national boundaries will become less important as the whole Balkan region integrates into Europe. A bigger risk, they warn, is leaving Kosovo in its geopolitical no man’s land.” Eleanor Beardsley, National Public Radio, Morning Edition, May 18, 2005. 3. Nationalists whose goal is independence for their nation, ethnic group, or territorially delimited people decry the use of the word “regional” to describe their ambitions, claiming to represent not regions but historic nations or states. I acknowledge this concern, but for lack of a more appropriate term, I will use the term “region” to refer to generally accepted territorial entities within states (e.g., Flanders as a region of Belgium; Scotland as a region of the United Kingdom). 4. Article 3 of the consolidated version of the Treaty Establishing the European Community, Official Journal of the European Communities, C 325, December 24, 2002. The original text of the Single European Act published in 1987 spoke of a common market “without internal frontiers.” 5. Formerly known as the Vlaams Blok, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) emerged in 2004 after the Blok was officially banned in Belgium. 6. See Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1997). 7. These might include statehood, autonomous regional representative institutions, educational, social, or other institutions to promote linguistic or cultural interests, or jurisdiction over policy issues of concern to nationalists, such as civil rights or environmental policy. 8. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1–5. Gellner built on Max Weber’s definition of the state (“that agency within society which possesses the monopoly of legitimate violence”), adding that “the state is the specialization and concentration of order maintenance.”

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9. For example, John Breuilly argues that nationalist mobilization must be understood with respect to the struggle for a specific form of political organization—the state—noting, “The central task [in the study of nationalism] is to relate nationalism to the objectives of obtaining and using state power.” Breuilly does modify Gellner’s definition slightly by stating that the “nation must be as independent as possible,” but points out that if nationalists seek less than full independence, it is likely because of the military weakness of a potential new state in dangerous geopolitical circumstances. See John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 1–2. Ashutosh Varshney (1993) relies on Gellner’s understanding of nationalism and the state in his discussion of separatism in Kashmir and the Punjab; Charles Tilly (1996) also describes nationalism in terms similar to those of Gellner. See Ashutosh Varshney, “Contested Meanings: India’s National Identity, Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Anxiety,” Dædalus 122, no. 3 (1993): 227–61 and Charles Tilly, “The State of Nationalism. Nationalism and the State by John Breuilly,” Critical Review 10, no. 20 (1996): 299. 10. He noted, “If there is no state, one obviously cannot ask whether or not its boundaries are congruent with the limits of nations.” Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 4. 11. See Barry Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power,” International Security 18, no. 2 (1993): 80–124 and Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 12. For an influential treatment of nationalism in this vein, see Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 13. Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 34. 14. Michael Keating, “Stateless Nation Building: Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland in the Changing State System,” Nations and Nationalism 3, no. 4 (1997): 689–717. 15. On the larger party families, for example, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and Liberals, see Robert Ladrech, “Social Democratic Parties and EC Integration,” European Journal of Political Research 24, no. 2 (1993): 195–210; Simon Hix, “Parties at the European Level and the Legitimacy of EU Socio-Economic Policy,” Journal of Common Market Studies 33 (1995): 527–53; and Robert Ladrech, “Partisanship and Party Formation in European Union Politics,” Comparative Politics 29 (1997): 167–86. On the Greens and the extreme right, see John Gaffney, ed., Political Parties and the European Union (New York: Routledge, 1996) and Gary Marks and Carole J. Wilson, “The Past in the Present: A Cleavage Theory of Party Response to European Integration,” British Journal of Political Science 30 (2000): 433–59. 16. On regionalist party orientation, see Marks and Wilson, “The Past in the Present”; on the extreme right, see for example Catherine Fieschi, James Shields, and Roger Woods, “Extreme Right-Wing Parties and the European Union: France, Germany and Italy,” in Political Parties and the European Union, ed. John Gaffney (New York: Routledge, 1996), 235–53.

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17. See Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Doubleday, 2003) and Matthew Horsman and Andrew Marshall, After the Nation-State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder (London: HarperCollins, 1994). The expression “new world disorder” turns up in the titles of dozens of publications in the past fifteen years. It is instructive to note how many titles take this condition as a given context, in which other political and economic phenomena become the variables of interest. 18. On the former, see Peter Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996) and John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning, Ethnopolitics in the New Europe (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1998); on the latter, see Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 19. See James Mitchell and Michael Cavanagh, “Context and Contingency: Constitutional Nationalists and Europe,” in Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order, ed. Michael Keating and John McGarry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 246–64 and James Goodman, Single Europe, Single Ireland? Uneven Development in Process (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000). 20. Michael Keating, Plurinational Democracy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), ix–x. 21. See Sidney Tarrow, “Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System,” Comparative Politics 1 (1969): 161–83; Giuseppe DiPalma, “Disaffection and Participation in Western Democracies: The Role of Political Oppositions,” in Mass Politics in Industrial Societies, ed. Giuseppe DiPalma (Chicago: Markham, 1972), 139–57; Frank L. Wilson, “Sources of Party Transformation: The Case of France,” in Western European Party Systems: Trends and Prospects, ed. Peter H. Merkl (New York: Free Press, 1980), 526–51; and Angelo Panebianco, “The Italian Radicals: New Wine in an Old Bottle,” in When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 110–36. 22. See Richard Rose and Thomas T. Mackie, “Do Parties Persist or Fail? The Big Trade-Off Facing Organizations,” in When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 533–58. Wilson (1980) identified several factors necessary for party “transformation,” in which he included new styles, organization, tactics, and interparty relations. He argued that party leaders must perceive changes in the party competitive environment that they believe are relevant to future party success or failure; even when leaders recognize a need or a desire for change, they must be able to overcome internal resistance or potential revolt in their parties. 23. I am grateful to Breena Holland for her helpful comments on the role of theory in this project. 24. The EU officially came into existence in November 1993. I will use the terms “European Union” or “EU” except when specifically referring to events, activities, or policies that date from before this time. In the latter event, I will refer to the “European Community,” or “EC.”

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25. Alexander J. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 26. That is, through referendums, elections to representative bodies, constitutionally allowable protest, and other legal forms of political participation. I exclude those parties associated with violent or extraconstitutional tactics based on methodological, not normative, considerations; access, and questions of comparable materials, records, and archives, raised research difficulties with respect to movements that are associated with guerrilla or terrorist means. 27. Redistricting after the 2001 general elections left fifty-nine seats in Scotland for the 2005 elections compared to seventy-two in 2001. For general election results, see news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/vote2005/html/region_7.stm. Scottish election results from 2007 were accessed at www.electoralcommission.gov.uk. 28. All parties in Belgium organize only on a regional basis, and seats in the Belgian (federal) institutions—the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate—are divided proportionally among the French, Dutch, and German language communities (the linguistic composition of the Chamber and Senate are periodically reassessed). Until 1995, members of the Flemish Parliament were chosen from members sitting in the federal chambers; separate elections were not held. For electoral statistics, see William Fraeys, “Les élections législatives du 24 novembre 1991,” Res Publica 34, no. 2 (1992): 131–53. 29. See polling2004.Belgium.be/en/vla/seat_etop.html (accessed November 28, 2004). 30. Some interview subjects asked to remain anonymous or requested that I not quote directly from their statements. All interview material presented in this book was collected by me, unless otherwise noted.

Chapter 2 1. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 4. 2. By “supranational,” I mean cooperation in which “a new level of authority is created that is autonomous, above the state, and has powers of coercion that are independent of the state”; supranational institutions are those with interests that “stand above individual state interests, and [make] decisions on the basis of the interests of the whole.” See John McCormick, Understanding the European Union (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5. Most understandings of supranationalism also make reference to the loss of sovereignty by states to EU institutions, or “the way in which the member states have voluntarily surrendered some of their national sovereignty and independence to collective institutions.” See Neill Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 478. 3. The quotation is found in Kal Raustiala, “The Evolution of Territoriality: International Relations and American Law,” in Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, ed. Miles Kahler and Barbara F. Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 219. The policies of the Single European Market were

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5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

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intended to promote the “four freedoms” across the members of the EC: the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. Philip H. Gordon, “Europe’s Cautious Globalization,” in European Responses to Globalization: Resistance, Adaptation and Alternatives, ed. Janet Laible and Henri J. Barkey (Oxford: Elsevier JAI Press, Contemporary Studies in Economic and Financial Analysis 88, 2006), 1–18. Some states, including Belgium, deferred granting local voting rights to EU citizens out of concern for locally delicate linguistic political questions. Saskia Sassen has noted that even with regard to the purportedly sovereign modern state, citizenship has not always been understood in exclusively territorial terms. Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Some states have long made claims on their respective citizens regardless of where they live, for example, exercising extraterritorial demands regarding taxation or military service. Ibid., 69. Nugent, Government and Politics , 466. The draft European Constitutional Treaty delineated areas where the member states and the EU had “joint competence,” areas where the member states had sole competence, and areas where the EU possessed sole competence. Simon Hix, The Political System of the European Union (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 124–26. The foundations of the multi-level governance approach to European integration are elaborated in Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, and Kermit Blank, “European Integration From the 1980s: State-Centric versus Multi-level Governance,” Journal of Common Market Studies 34, no. 3 (1996): 341–78. See also Michael Keating and Liesbet Hooghe, “By-Passing the Nation State? Regions and the EU Policy Process,” in European Union: Power and Policymaking, ed. Jeremy J. Richardson (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); and Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, “Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Union,” West European Politics 19, no. 2 (1996): 249–78. For an overview of lobbying processes in the EU, see Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, eds., Lobbying in the European Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). An analysis of which subnational governments are represented in Brussels and why is provided in Gary Marks et al., “Competencies, Cracks and Conflicts: Regional Mobilization in the European Union,” Comparative Political Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 164–92. For a history of the evolution of regional policy and an argument that changes empowered the Commission at the expense of states, see Harvey Armstrong, “The Role and Evolution of European Community Regional Policy,” in The European Union and the Regions, ed. Barry Jones and Michael Keating (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 23–62; see also Gary Marks, “Structural Policy in the European Community,” in Europolitics: Institutions and Policymaking in the ‘New’ European Community, ed. Alberta Sbragia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 191–224. Discussions of the politicization of regional policy across

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12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

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EU member states may be found in Liesbet Hooghe, ed., Cohesion Policy and European Integration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Nugent, Government and Politics, 466, 478; Hix, Political System, 5. Sassen, Losing Control?, 28–30. Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 190–91. Simon Hix notes, “[A]s at least one member state will feel that they [sic] benefit from Commission discretion,” the unanimity required for treaty ratification to reduce such discretion is unlikely to be reached. See Hix, Political System, 34–35. Geoffrey Garrett, “International Cooperation and Institutional Choice: the European Community’s Internal Market,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 533. For other elaborations of intergovernmental approaches, see Robert O. Keohane and Stanley Hoffman, ed., The New European Community: Decisionmaking and Institutional Change (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991); and Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Routledge, 1992). Derek Urwin, The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration Since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1991), 246. Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, “Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Union,” West European Politics 19, no. 2 (1996): 266. Emphasis added. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 185. Eric Hobsbawm, “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today,” in Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (London: Verso, 1996), 257. He offers as an example that the only difference between regional political mobilization based in Cornwall and that based in Merseyside is that Cornish politics can draw on a deep well of symbols frequently associated with nationalism (language, a long-past history of “independence”, cultural identity), whereas regionalism centered in Liverpool is more limited in the iconography it can deploy. Hence, we tend to believe that the former is nationalism and the latter only “regionalism”; yet the economic and social forces contributing to political mobilization in both areas are the same. See Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 178. Michael Keating, Plurinational Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ix, 15. On legal pluralism, Keating cites Neil MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State and Nation in the European Commonwealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Claims to popular sovereignty in Scotland—in contrast to, and at times in conflict with claims to parliamentary sovereignty for England (or for the UK)—represent one possibility of sovereignty adhering to entities other than the modern state, that is, in this case the Scottish nation. Keating, Plurinational Democracy, ix. John McGarry, Michael Keating, and Margaret Moore, “Introduction: European Integration and the Nationalities Question,” in European Integration and the

Notes

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26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

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Nationalities Question, ed. John McGarry and Michael Keating (London: Routledge, 2006), 1–20. For a discussion of the various perspectives on Irish politics that support this and similar propositions, see John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 279–82. See James Mitchell and Michael Cavanagh, “Context and Contingency: Constitutional Nationalists and Europe,” in Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order, ed. Michael Keating and John McGarry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 246–63. James Goodman, Single Europe, Single Ireland? Uneven Development in Process (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000), 116, 117. Keating, Plurinational Democracy, 3–4. He describes these as nationalisms that “seek to resist the hegemony and power of the dominant group.” Ashutosh Varshney, “Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Rationality,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (2003): 85–99. Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Old Societies and New States, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963), 108–9. Here Varshney refers to Charles Taylor’s 1994 work, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, on the social context of dignity and identity, in agreement with Taylor’s claim that: “Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and a reduced mode of being.” Varshney, “Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Rationality,” 92. Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1997), 215–16. While the current literature in this category is too large to be examined systematically here, its premises are exemplified by the work of, among others, James Caporaso, who argues that many different state structures have existed historically, and that “at best, we can speak of different state forms, thought of as clusters of institutions embedded in specific social formations that are in turn embedded within distinctive historical periods. These state structures should not be reified and thought of as eternal fixtures of politics.” James A. Caporaso, “The European Union and Forms of State: Westphalian, Regulatory or Post-Modern?” Journal of Common Market Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 31. See also John Gerard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47, no. 1 (1993): 139–74. Miles Kahler, “Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization,” in Kahler and Walter, Territoriality and Conflict, 5, 15. The question of whether sovereignty can be located only in the modern state is far from settled. Some perceive the world of medieval Europe as one of fragmented, dispersed, or divided sovereignty, with the concentration of sovereignty in the modern state occurring only in recent centuries; others question whether it is even possible to imagine a sovereign in the medieval context, as no single political form could claim final authority. On the former, see Elizabeth Crighton, “Shared Sovereignty as an Instrument for Peacemaking in Northern Ireland,” in Reconfigured

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37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47.

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Sovereignty: Multi-layered Governance in the Global Age, ed. Thomas L. Ilgen (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 51–69; Thomas L. Ilgen, “Reconfigured Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization,” in Ilgen, Reconfigured Sovereignty, 6–35; and Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). On the latter, Hendrik Spruyt notes that even though the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor claimed final jurisdiction with regard to each other, neither possessed sovereignty in a territorial sense; in fact, he argues, “the logic of feudal organization lacked a sovereign.” Spruyt, Sovereign State, 38. See Janice E. Thomson, “State Sovereignty in International Relations: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Empirical Research,” International Studies Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1995): 213–33; see also Stephen Krasner, “Compromising Westphalia,” International Security 20, no. 3 (1995): 115–51. Krasner, Sovereignty, 6. See Friedrich Kratochwil, “Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Enquiry into the Formation of the State System,” World Politics 39, no. 1 (1986): 27–52. See Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Describing England as a prototype nation-state by the fourteenth century, Hastings argues that England’s neighbors were forced to develop state structures to protect their nations from conquest. The Scots leadership succeeded, constructing both nation and state and embarking on a nationalist campaign that led to independence from Plantagenet overlordship; Wales and Ireland failed to develop states. See in particular pages 66–71. Anthony Marx, Faith in Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 74. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 96. Alexander J. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 82. Ibid., 105. See also Kratochwil, “Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality,” and Spruyt, Sovereign State. See Sassen, Losing Control? Will Kymlicka addresses a broad range of arguments claiming that a post-sovereign (in his reading, a “post-national”) world order is challenging the model of the sovereign state and fostering the rise of a “cosmopolitan rendering of political space.” Of phenomena including transnational, substate, and international institutions and forms of mobilization Kymlicka argues, they “presuppose the ongoing existence and vitality of territorially bounded national units, and that indeed none of them offers any alternative model of how to organize self-governing political communities or to allocate democratic political authority.” Will Kymlicka, “Conclusion: The Futures of Nationalism,” in Nationalism and Its Futures, ed. Umut Özkırımlı (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 148. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires, 105. The reference to Spruyt is also found in Motyl. Spruyt, Sovereign State, 192. See Andrew Moravcsik, “Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the European Community,” International

Notes

48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

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Organization 45, no. 1 (1991): 19–56. See also Garrett, “International Cooperation and Institutional Choice,” and David R. Cameron, “The 1992 Initiative: Causes and Consequences,” in Sbragia, Europolitics, 23–74. Marks, Hooghe and Blank, “European Integration From the 1980s,” 346; emphasis in original. See Tanja A. Börzel, States and Regions in the European Union: Institutional Adaptation in Germany and Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Janet Laible, “Nationalism and a Critique of European Integration: Questions from the Flemish Parties,” in Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order, ed. Keating and McGarry (2001), 223–45; Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, “‘Europe with the Regions’: Channels of Regional Representation in the European Union,” Publius 26, no. 1 (1996): 73–91; Liesbet Hooghe and Michael Keating, “The Politics of European Union Regional Policy,” Journal of European Public Policy 1, no. 3 (1994): 53–79; and Jeffrey J. Anderson, “Skeptical Reflections on a Europe of Regions: Britain, Germany and the ERDF,” Journal of Public Policy 10, no. 4 (1990): 445. See John Hutchinson, “Nationalism, Globalism and the Conflict of Civilizations,” in Özkırımlı, Nationalism and Its Futures, 71–92. Milada Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration After Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 66–67. See Spruyt, Sovereign State, 190 and Nugent, Government and Politics, 466. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires, 111. It is impossible to reject that party leaders are somehow masking their “true” interests or that they are deluded about the consequences of their strategies. An examination of party discussions about statehood can only reveal whether party leaderships present coherent arguments about the instrumental value of weak statehood in nationalist politics. While the strategy of pursuing statehood per se remains the same as it was in the years before the SNP and Vlaams Belang engaged European integration, and demonstrates continuity with nationalisms of the previous centuries that also articulated demands for statehood, the qualities of stateness—and hence the implications of this strategy for nationalist party politics and for the meanings of nationalism more generally—are new, reflecting the novel circumstances of the contemporary EU.

Chapter 3 1. See Saul Newman, “Nationalism in Postindustrial Societies: Why States Still Matter,” Comparative Politics 33, no. 1 (2000): 21–41. 2. See Michael Keating, “In Search of Semi-Sovereignty. Stateless Nations in the Emerging World Order: Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland” (paper presented at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, March 28, 1996). 3. Piero Ignazi, “Les Extrêmes Droites en Europe,” in Le Vote des Douze: les élections européennes de juin 1994, ed. Pascal Perrineau and Colette Ysmal (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1995), 123–52.

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4. The political relationship of contemporary Scotland with the rest of Britain is based on the Treaty of Union, which prorogued the Scottish and English parliaments and established a new British Parliament in 1707. Although the crowns of Scotland and England had been united for a century, until 1707 Scotland possessed the attributes of a European state: Scotland and England had separate parliaments, laws, taxes, and churches, but shared a head of state. 5. Paterson goes so far as to state that “the Scottish middle class—especially the professionals—could feel that, in social policy at least, they had created their own state.” See Lindsay Paterson, The Autonomy of Modern Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 53. 6. For an elaboration of the politics of the boards and local councils and a discussion of the British state in Scotland, see Alice Brown, David McCrone, and Lindsay Paterson, Politics and Society in Scotland (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 50–51 and Paterson, Autonomy of Modern Scotland, 51–55. 7. This belief in partnership was, in addition, ideological: during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Scots saw themselves as partners in liberalism and became “partners” in the project of imperialism. Paterson, Autonomy of Modern Scotland, 33, 40–41. 8. See James Kellas, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 29–31. 9. For a discussion of the Scottish Office, its responsibilities, and the conventions under which it operates, see Arthur Midwinter, Michael Keating, and James Mitchell, Politics and Public Policy in Scotland (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1991), 51–62. 10. Brown, McCrone, and Paterson note that widespread support for separatism did not emerge in Scotland in the nineteenth century because “no faction in the country’s politics ever felt sufficiently disenfranchised from the political system to want to change it,” Politics and Society, 52. Explanations for this state of affairs focus on the incentives available to regional elites in the United Kingdom to abandon nationalist aspirations in favor of statewide political and economic projects such as liberalism and imperialism. See for example Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1975), and Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 11. See Keith Webb, The Growth of Nationalism in Scotland (Glasgow: Molendinar, 1977), 39, 43. 12. For a discussion of Scottish nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, see Andrew Marr, The Battle for Scotland (London: Penguin, 1992), 50–91. 13. This was in part a question of electoral strategy. A party emphasizing Gaelic or Scots culture might lose votes among English speakers, who dominate in the densely populated urban areas. Other small nationalist movements have emerged that emphasize particular cultures within Scotland, but the SNP itself has long viewed independence as the means by which the Scottish people themselves will be able to address cultural and linguistic issues. Other movements that emerged later in the twentieth century include Settler Watch, which

Notes

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15.

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17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

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sought to drive English speakers out of the Highlands, and Siol nan Gaidheal (Seed of the Gael), the members of which also promoted a form of radical cultural nationalism. Marr describes the party as being “seen as both extreme and eccentric,” populated by political outsiders, aristocrats, and intellectuals. See Marr, Battle for Scotland, 74, 87. Observers of the SNP have noted that the most important cleavage within the SNP historically has been not along a left-right dimension, but over constitutional preferences. See the discussion of internal party cleavages in James Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996). The SNP 1949 constitution is quoted in Ian McAllister, “United Kingdom Nationalist Parties: One Nationalism or Three?” in The Territorial Dimension of United Kingdom Politics, ed. Peter Madgwick and Richard Rose (London: MacMillan, 1982), 205. David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation (London: Routledge, 1992), 163. Some have noted that there is “irony in the fact that the Scottish Office has given political meaning to Scotland. If it had not existed then it would have been much harder to address Scotland as a meaningful political unit.” See Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 37. Marr, Battle for Scotland, 118. McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 164. On “bread and butter” issues, not only did the party leadership frequently have difficulty agreeing to positions, but MPs not infrequently voted against one another. Saul Newman, “The Rise and Decline of the Scottish National Party: Ethnic Politics in a Post-Industrial Environment,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15, no. 1 (1992): 17. Midwinter, Keating, and Mitchell, Politics and Public Policy, 34. See ibid., 34, and Lynn Bennie, Jack Brand, and James Mitchell, How Scotland Votes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 78. See Michael Keating, “Scotland in the UK: A Dissolving Union?” (1996), manuscript. For a general discussion of the principles guiding Conservative policymaking from 1979 to 1997, see Denis Kavanaugh, The Reordering of British Politics: Politics after Thatcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 25–26. Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 63. A comprehensive discussion of Thatcher’s politics on local authorities is found in Hugh Butcher et al., Local Government and Thatcherism (New York: Routledge, 1990). For Thatcher’s perspective, see Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 644. See Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 105; and Keating, “Scotland in the UK.” Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 44. Thatcher’s appointee to this position in 1987 was Michael Forsyth, who would later become Scottish Secretary; she described him as the “real powerhouse for Thatcherism at the Scottish Office.” See Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 620.

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27. Midwinter, Keating, and Mitchell, Politics and Public Policy, 96. 28. Scottish voters were more likely than the English to favor the public sector and support redistributive welfare policies, and the distribution of party support confirmed this with the decline of the Conservative Party in Scotland. See Paterson, Autonomy of Modern Scotland and Keating “Scotland in the UK.” For an argument about the dependence of the Scottish middle classes on the state for their survival and the social trauma that was caused by the disruption of these arrangements by Conservative governments, see Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1997), 192. 29. Paterson, Autonomy of Modern Scotland, 169. 30. For a discussion of SNP internal politics regarding the Convention, see Marr, Battle for Scotland, 202–5. 31. Ibid., 221. 32. Douglas Fraser, “SNP Won Poll Because It Persuaded Voters of Ability to Govern,” Herald (Glasgow), September 21, 2007. 33. See David Brown, “Are There Good and Bad Nationalisms?” Nations and Nationalism 5, no. 2 (1999): 281–302. 34. Raymond Breton, “From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism: English Canada and Quebec,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, no. 1 (1988): 86–87. 35. Scottish National Party, Yes We Can Win the Best for Scotland: The SNP General Election Manifesto 1997 (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1997), 4, 7. 36. Bennie, Brand, and Mitchell, How Scotland Votes, 82. 37. Party publications do, however, tend to confuse the words “nation” and “state,” for example in manifesto declarations that Scotland should take its place among the “independent nations” of Europe. 38. Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 149. 39. The political editor of BBC Scotland recalled that some SNP activists in the past had “regarded partisan political comment as virtually a betrayal of the movement, as calculated to alienate one section of the population or another from the true quest of independence.” Brian Taylor, The Scottish Parliament (Edinburgh: Polygon at Edinburgh, 1999), 164. 40. Scottish National Party, SNP General Election Manifesto 1997, 7. 41. See the most recent party general election manifesto: Scottish National Party, If Scotland Matters to You, Make it Matter in May: Manifesto 2005 (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 2005). 42. Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 127. For a history of Labour and the devolution question, see James Mitchell, “The Evolution of Devolution: Labour’s Home Rule Strategy in Opposition,” Government and Opposition 33, no. 4 (1998): 478–95. 43. Brown, McCrone, and Paterson, Politics and Society, 62. 44. Midwinter, Keating, and Mitchell, Politics and Public Policy, 37. 45. See Scottish Liberal Party, Scottish Self-Government: A Fresh Start with Federation (London: Scottish Liberal Party and John Calder, 1976), 9. 46. Numerous typologies of extremist right-wing parties have emerged; see for example Elisabeth Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure?

Notes

47.

48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

57. 58. 59.

60.

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(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005) and Ignazi, “Extrêmes Droites en Europe.” I use the term “extreme right” or “far right” to describe the politics of the Vlaams Blok/Belang, respecting that others may prefer to deploy more subtle frameworks to capture distinctions among parties. Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay, “The Development of Radical Right Parties in Western Europe,” in Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe, ed. Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 8. Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, “The Populist Centre-Authorian Challenge: A Revised Account of the Radical Right’s Success in Western Europe”(Nuffield Working Paper 2002-W25, Nuffield College, Oxford, 2002). See also Terri E. Givens, Voting Radical Right in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On the causes of the Belgian revolt of 1830, see Xavier Mabille, Histoire politique de la Belgique: facteurs et acteurs de changement (Bruxelles: Centre de recherche et d’information socio-politiques, 1997). See John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism (London: Hurst and Company, 1996), 22. Many contemporary Flemish nationalists prefer the word “Dutch” (Nederlands) to describe their language. Numerous dialects of Dutch are spread across the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France, and nationalists seek to stress that theirs is not a minority “Flemish” dialect but a widely spoken language grouping. Recognizing the debates over the term, I refer to the language spoken by Flemish people as Dutch. John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning, Ethnopolitics in the New Europe (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 111. See Fitzmaurice, Politics of Belgium, 31. Ibid., 34. On interwar developments in Flemish nationalism, see Kris Deschouwer, “Small Parties in a Small Country: The Belgian Case,” in Small Parties in Western Europe: Comparative and National Perspectives, ed. Ferdinand Müller-Rommel and Geoffrey Pridham (London: Sage, 1991), 136–38. Collaboration was not confined to the Flemish community. The French-speaking “Rex” movement (from Christus Rex) led by Léon Degrelle was also collaborationist. See Maurits Vanhaegendoren, “The North-South Connection” (1961), in The Flemish Movement: A Documentary History, 1780-1990, ed. Theo Hermans, Louis Vos, and Lode Wils (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1992), 344. For a discussion of the early Volksunie agenda, see Ishiyama and Breuning, Ethnopolitics in the New Europe, 113–14. See Fitzmaurice, Politics of Belgium, 204. For details on the 1932 laws and the demographic changes along the border of the linguistic frontier, see Margot Lyon, Belgium (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), 66, 128–29. The Front Démocratique des Francophones (FDF) scored significant victories in Brussels elections in reaction to the linguistic laws. Ibid.

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61. A summary of the main factors contributing to the regionalization of the state is given by Stefan De Rynck and Rudolf Maes, “Belgium: Regions, Communities and Subregional Authorities in the European Integration Process,” in Regions in Europe, vol. 1, ed. Joachim Jens Hesse (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesselschaft, 1995/1996), 103–4. 62. There are no longer any “Belgian” parties. On the fragmentation of the Belgian party system, see Deschouwer, “Small Parties in a Small Country,” who also notes that in Brussels, some of the traditional parties split three ways, with Dutch, French, and bilingual slates presented. 63. See Jan Velaers, “La Réforme de l’Etat,” in Un parti dans l’histoire, 1945–1995: 50 ans d’action du Parti Social Chrétien, ed. Charles-Ferdinand Northomb and Frank Swaelen, (Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot, 1996), 504. 64. Regions are geographical (i.e., Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels); communities are cultural or linguistic (i.e., Dutch, French, and German). In 1983 a special law gave the German community (about 65,000 people in Liège, within the Walloon region) equal status with other two communities, that is, its own parliament. Liesbet Hooghe describes the dynamics underlying these and the following round of reforms in 1988. See Liesbet Hooghe, A Leap in the Dark: Nationalist Conflict and Federal Reform in Belgium (Occasional Paper 27, Cornell University Western Societies Program, Ithaca, NY, 1991). 65. “Industrial policy” includes industrial subsidies, a policy jurisdiction demanded by Flemish politicians who believed that their region was subsidizing declining industrial Wallonia. For a discussion of the 1988 constitutional reforms, see Rolf Falter, “Belgium’s Peculiar Way to Federalism,” in Nationalism in Belgium: Shifting Identities, 1780–1995, ed. Kas Deprez and Louis Vos (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 177–97. 66. Before this, only the councils of the German community and Brussels region were directly elected. Members of the other substate bodies were drawn from the appropriate population in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies; for example, members of the Walloon regional council were drawn from Walloon members. 67. The regions have made inroads even in policy areas traditionally reserved for central governments of states: the constitution grants them the capacity to make treaties with foreign countries, provided the substance of the treaties falls under those powers belonging to the regions. With control over monetary policy transferred to the European level in 1999, social security remains the most significant policy area remaining under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Particulars concerning the regions, communities, and “linguistic zones” of Belgium are found in the 1994 Constitution, Title III, Chapter IV; Constitution de la Belgique (Brussels: Bruylant, 1994). 68. Sherrill Stroschein also points out that in the 2001 constitutional reforms, as a concession to Francophones living in the Flemish region, Belgium signed the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Minorities. See Sherrill Stroschein, “What Belgium Can Teach Bosnia: The Uses of Autonomy in

Notes

69.

70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

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‘Divided House’ States,” Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 3 (2003). See online at http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/. See Serge Govaert, La Volksunie, Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP, no. 1416–1417 (Brussels: Centre de Recherche et d’Information Socio-politiques, 1993), 18. See Serge Govaert, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism: How and Why the Vlaams Blok Ascended,” New Community 21, no. 4 (1995): 538. See Cas Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 88. See Hugo Gijsels and Jos Vander Velpen, Le Chagrin des Flamands: Le Vlaams Blok de 1938 à nos jours (Brussels: Editions EPO, 1992), 113; Marc Swyngedouw, “The Extreme Right in Belgium: Of a Non-Existent Front National and an Omnipresent Vlaams Blok,” in The New Politics of the Right: Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, ed. Hans-Georg Betz and Stefan Immerfall (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 67. See Fitzmaurice, Politics of Belgium, 212. See Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 20–21. Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 98. For a discussion of the role of immigration policies in the electoral success of the far right, see Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, “What Unites Right-Wing Populists in Western Europe? Re-examining Grievance Mobilization Models in Seven Successful Cases,” Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 1 (2008): 3–23. See Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 69. Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 89. See Betz, Radical Right-wing Populism, 139. For these comments and discussion of the impact of the 1991 elections, see respectively: Kas Deprez and Louis Vos, “Introduction,” in Nationalism in Belgium: Shifting Identities, 1780–1995, ed. Deprez and Vos (1998), 212; Govaert, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism,” 539; and Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 59. At the national level, the elections were described by Vice Prime Minister Willy Claes as “a black night, which can be compared to the elections of 1936,” when Flanders moved toward support for fascism. See also Boris Johnson, “Race Hate Party’s Gains Stun Voters,” Daily Telegraph, November 26, 1991. Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 70. See Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 90–91. Ibid., 92. See William Fraeys, “Les élections régionales et europeénnes du 13 juin 2004: Analyse et résultats,” Res Publica 46, nos. 2 and 3 (2004): 357–76. See Deschouwer, “Small Parties in a Small Country.” See “Belgium: The Next Identity Crisis,” Economist, February 22, 1997; Hooghe, Leap in the Dark; the expression “politics of exclusion” comes from Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium.” Ishiyama and Breuning, Ethnopolitics in the New Europe, 129.

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88. Ch. H. Kesteloot and P. De Decker, quoted in Govaert, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism,” 543. 89. See Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 72; Marc Swyngedouw, “The Subjective Cognitive and Affective Map of Extreme Right Voters: Using OpenEnded Questions in Exit Polls,” Electoral Studies 20, no. 2 (2001): 217–41. 90. Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 96. 91. Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 63. 92. Vlaams Blok 7/83, quoted in Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 99. 93. Vlaams Blok, Nu afrekenen! Verkiezingsprogramma 1995 (Brussels: Vlaams Blok, 1995), 69. Translation by the author. 94. Vlaams Blok, The Vlaams Blok: Facts and Objectives (Brussels: Vlaams Blok, 1995), 16. 95. Vlaams Blok (1995), Nu afrekenen!, 9. 96. Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 97. 97. Vlaams Blok, Facts and Objectives. 98. Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 64–65. For his discussion of solidarism, Swyngedouw relies mainly on the Vlaams Blok’s Grondbeginselen (Principles), published first in 1980. On Vlaams Blok solidarism and economic policy, see also Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right. 99. The plan includes the establishment of a separate social security system for foreigners that would contribute to a fund to subsidize their repatriation; expulsion after three months of employment; a special tax on employers hiring non-Europeans; the creation of special police to track foreigners, and the restriction of ownership rights of non-Europeans. See Govaerts, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism,” 541–42. 100. This slogan featured in the Vlaams Blok 1994 EP election campaign. The party claimed to voice “the wish of the voter to make a clean sweep for one time, but also charges that these old, decayed political structures have to be replaced by new fresh ideas.” Quoted in Mudde, Ideology of the Extreme Right, 94. 101. Ibid., 110–11. For a complete statement of the party response to “political banditry” by the major parties, see Vlaams Blok (1995), Nu Afrekenen! 103–4. 102. See “Could Flanders Be Reinvented?” Economist, September 20, 1997. It has been suggested that Van den Brande’s seeking greater autonomy and a broader international role for Flanders is a reaction to separatist pressures, but the notion of “subsidiarity” has long been a principle of European Christian democracy. 103. See “Belgium’s Melting Fudge,” Economist, March 16, 1996; and “Belgium: The Next Identity Crisis,” Economist, February 22, 1997. 104. See Govaert, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism,” 543. 105. Swyngedouw, “Extreme Right in Belgium,” 67–68. 106. See Ishiyama and Breuning, Ethnopolitics in the New Europe, 127. 107. This characterization of the party was put forth by former Volksunie president Vic Anciaux in 1992; see the discussion of his position in Govaert, “Flanders’ Radical Nationalism,” 61.

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Chapter 4 1. In the case of Vlaams Belang, I focus on its “prehistory” as the Volksunie and its initial years as the Vlaams Blok, the name by which I will refer to the party in this chapter. 2. Robert Ladrech, “Europeanisation of Domestic Politics and Institutions: The Case of France,” Journal of Common Market Studies 32, no. 1 (1994): 69. I encountered Ladrech’s definition in Elizabeth Bomberg, “The Europeanisation of Green Parties: Exploring the EU’s Impact,” West European Politics 25, no. 3 (2002): 31. Bomberg offers a comprehensive discussion of the difficulties with deploying Europeanization as an explanatory variable; I use the term solely as a descriptor of the transformation of party ideology and activities in the context of European integration. 3. Bomberg, “Europeanisation of Green Parties,” 32. 4. See Peter Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), 25–26. 5. Ibid., 27. 6. Minutes of the National Conference of the Scottish National Party, 1948; cited in ibid., 28. 7. See Andrew Marr, The Battle for Scotland (Penguin: London, 1992), 95. 8. James Mitchell quotes SNP member George Dott, who argued in the 1950s: “We are a European people … Let us stand by the folk with whom we have a genuine common interest—let us create a European authority.” See James Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996), 194. 9. Figures in James Kellas, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 105–6. 10. See James Mitchell, “Member State or Euro-Region? The SNP, Plaid Cymru and Europe,” (manuscript, 1997). 11. Lynch, Minority Nationalism, 116. 12. Ibid., 120. 13. Ibid. 14. The dictionary definition of the word “diets” is “medieval Dutch,” and I would translate “Dietsland” as “that territory where Dutch was spoken.” This refers to a territory including the Netherlands and Flanders (including Brussels, a historically Flemish city with a French-speaking majority at the present time); in addition, since the 1930s some right-wing Flemish nationalists have interpreted the idea of a Greater Netherlands to include the French-speaking areas of the Low Countries during the reign of Hapsburg emperor Charles V. See note 1 in “The Ten Commandments of the Flemish Nationalist [1922],” in The Flemish Movement: A Documentary History, 1780–1990, ed. Theo Hermans, Louis Vos, and Lode Wils (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1992), 263. 15. Hugo Gijsels and Jos Vander Velpen, Le Chagrin des Flamands: Le Vlaams Blok de 1938 à nos jours (Brussels: Editions EPO, 1992), 31. This section draws extensively on Le Chagrin des Flamands. 16. Ibid., 43.

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17. For a discussion of the radical right-wing clerics with whom some Flemish nationalists felt sympathy, and the anticommunist (as well as antidemocratic) teachings of some of these clerics, see ibid., 53–55. 18. Ibid., 42, 47–48. 19. Kellas, Scottish Political System, 106. 20. Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government, 194. 21. Lynch, Minority Nationalism, 30. See also Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government, 60. 22. Describing this “gloriously pompous” declaration as echoing The Mouse That Roared, Andrew Marr points out that the SNP sent its statement to twenty-seven states, including the USSR and Albania. See Marr, Battle for Scotland, 132–33. 23. Scottish National Party, It’s Time … Supplement to the Election Manifesto of the Scottish National Party—September 1974 (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1974), 1, 7. 24. Interview with Margaret Ewing, SNP MP for Moray and Nairn, London, March 28, 1996. 25. See Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government, 140. Mitchell points out that Wilson’s “renegotiations” actually produced very little, but they did afford him the useful tool of the referendum for promoting party unity. 26. See David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (London: Macmillan, 1976), 150–52. 27. Stewart noted that nearly half the fish landed in Britain came into Scottish ports. See Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 889 (1974–75), col. 884 on the CAP; col. 885 on fisheries. 28. Ibid., col. 1113. 29. Quoted in Marr, Battle for Scotland, 133. 30. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 889, col. 885. 31. Ibid., cols. 1108, 1115. 32. Ibid., col, 885. 33. Party divisions were apparent at a special conference in April 1975, when a statement by the National Executive Committee calling for Labour to campaign for withdrawal from the EC was passed by a nearly two to one majority. See Labour Party, “Labour and the Common Market: Report of a Special Conference of the Labour Party, Islington, London, 26 April 1975,” in Labour Party Pamphlets 1973–75 (London: Labour Party, 1975), 1–43. 34. Lynch, Minority Nationalism, 33. 35. Ibid., 34–35 contains a discussion of the differences between more fundamentalist anti-EC party members and those Scottish nationalists hoping that Scotland would be able to enter the EC on its own terms. 36. Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707–1994 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 190. Also noted in the interview with Ewing, 1996. 37. Lynch, Minority Nationalism, 35. 38. See Christopher Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland Since 1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 162.

Notes 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

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See Mitchell, Strategies for Self-Government, 213–14 on these failures of the SNP. Interview with Ewing, 1996. Marr, Battle for Scotland, 133. In the late 1940s, steel accounted for one-fifth of the exports of Belgium, and the country’s leaders did not want to sacrifice their domestic market, but despite these misgivings, the dependence of Belgium on ECSC markets meant that the country was in a very weak negotiating position. For an account of the Belgian position on the creation of the ECSC and its predecessor, the International Authority for the Ruhr, see Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 154, 409, 415–16. See Jonathan E. Helmreich, Belgium and Europe: A Study in Small Power Diplomacy (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 389–90. Quoted in ibid., 389. Ibid., 390. For more on the tension between older and younger nationalists in the Vlaams Blok, see Gijsels and Velpen, Le Chagrin des Flamands, 140–42, 156–59. Ibid., 116–17. Ibid., 158–59. Manu Ruys, “The Birth of the Flemish Nation [1985],” in Herman, Vos, and Wils, Flemish Movement, 436. See the statement of the Aktiekomitee Vlaanderen (Action Committee of Flanders), “More Autonomy, a Better Democracy [1990],” in ibid., 459.

Chapter 5 1. See David R. Cameron, “The 1992 Initiative: Causes and Consequences,” in Europolitics: Institutions and Policymaking in the “New” European Community, ed. Alberta M. Sbragia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 34. 2. Derek W. Urwin, The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration Since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1991), 168. 3. Ibid., 186–89. 4. For Ireland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, the greatest increases in the degree of their trade concentration within the EC occurred between 1972 and 1985, after their accession. The percentage of all UK exports that were exports to EC member states stood at 15.2 percent in 1960 (trade with the original six EC states); 22.5 percent in 1972 (trade with the EC six), and 46.1 percent in 1985 (trade with the enlarged EC of ten states). See Cameron, “1992 Initiative,” 37–38. 5. Urwin, Community of Europe, 215. 6. See Philip Daniels, “From Hostility to ‘Constructive Engagement’: The Europeanisation of the Labour Party,” West European Politics 21, no. 2 (1998): 72–96. 7. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 553.

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8. Dennis Kavanagh, Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 268. 9. See Hugh Berrington, “Britain in the Nineties: The Politics of Paradox,” West European Politics 21, no. 2 (1998): 1–27. 10. An analysis of Labour’s changing stances on Europe in the past two decades is provided by Daniels, “From Hostility to ‘Constructive Engagement’.” 11. Ibid., 77. 12. The failure of François Mitterand’s attempts to reflate the French economy between 1981 and 1983 demonstrated to many in Labour the futility of believing that they could make a similar policy work in Britain, as called for in the AES. Ibid., 83. 13. For a detailed discussion of the Liberal approach to European integration, see Scott Clarke and John Curtice, “Why Have the Liberals Been So Keen on Europe? An Analysis of the Attitudes Held by the British Liberals Towards European Integration, 1945–1996,” paper presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 28–31, 1997. 14. See Andrew Marr, The Battle for Scotland (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 185. 15. Ibid., 190. 16. Quoted in the Scottish National Party, SNP— Scotland’s Voice in Europe. Manifesto of the Scottish National Party for the 1984 Elections to the European Parliament (Edinburgh: SNP, 1984), 1. 17. See Peter Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), 38. 18. Scottish National Party, Scotland’s Voice in Europe, 1. 19. Ibid., introduction. 20. See Jim Sillars, Scotland: The Case for Optimism (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1986), 184–86. 21. Ibid., 183. Emphasis added. 22. Ibid., 188. 23. Ibid., 190. 24. Ibid., 191. 25. The first comment is from Marr, Battle for Scotland, 201; the second was an observation made to the author by a former Labour Party member who joined the SNP because of its policies on Europe. 26. Interview with Margaret Ewing, SNP MP for Moray and Nairn, London, UK, March 28, 1996. 27. See Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration, 40. 28. Ibid., 41. 29. Some Liberals went so far as to support Scottish independence in Europe, although this was not foremost in the Liberal agenda. 30. The largest Scottish local authority, the former Strathclyde Regional Council, was active in Brussels as early as 1985; a Labour-controlled authority, its activism provided some of the impetus for Labour to reevaluate its European policies. 31. James Mitchell, in his Strategies for Self-Government, points out that no other slogan emerged to catch the public imagination about Europe as did the nationalists’.

Notes

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

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Labour MEP David Martin floated the idea of a “Europe of the Regions” in his party, but this failed to spark much excitement in Scotland. Scottish National Party, “The Maastricht Treaty: The SNP’s View” (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1992), pamphlet. Interview with Alex Salmond, SNP MP for Banff and Buchan, London, March 28, 1996. See also the Scottish National Party, Yes We Can Win the Best for Scotland (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1997), 27. Scottish National Party, We Can Win the Best, 27. Interview with Salmond, 1996. Scottish National Party, We Can Win the Best, 27. Interview with Salmond, 1996. Interview with Ewing, 1996. Interview with Salmond, 1996. The SNP frequently refers to the “Auld Alliance” of Scotland and France to illustrate the ties that an independent Scotland once had with European powers (to parry English designs, in this case). See, for example, the Scottish National Party, Scotland, a European Nation: The case for Independent Scottish Membership of the European Community (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1992). Scottish National Party, We Can Win the Best, 3; and Scottish National Party, Scotland, A European Nation, 4. Scottish National Party, Scotland, A European Nation, 4. Scottish National Party, We Can Win the Best, 3. Ibid., 4. More recent legal research has questioned whether Scotland would automatically accede to the EU, raising new criticisms from SNP opponents that the party has misrepresented the issue. Of course this also suggests that the SNP must downplay or ignore its own past with respect to Europe and the Scottish nation. The nickname that the party earned in the 1970s, the “Tartan Tories,” is highly incongruous in terms of the contemporary SNP agenda, as are the decades of anti-Europe sentiment in the party.

Chapter 6 1. For a summary of regional and federal powers in Europe and a discussion of regional and federal actors in four sectors of European policymaking, see Linda Wouters and Stefaan De Rynck, “Subnational Autonomy in the European Integration Process: The Belgian Case,” in Regions in Europe, vol. 2, ed. Joachim Jens Hesse (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996), 111–50. 2. Ibid., 145. 3. See Liesbet Hooghe, “Belgian Federalism and the European Community,” in The European Union and the Regions, ed. Barry Jones and Michael Keating (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 154. 4. Janet Laible, “Nationalism and a Critique of European Integration: Questions from the Flemish Parties,” in Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order, ed. Michael Keating and John McGarry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 229.

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5. This was also encouraged with special tax treatment available on profits created by foreign subsidiaries (a rule designed for Belgians but exploited by foreign companies). See Paulette Kurzer, “Decline or Preservation of Executive Capacity? Political and Economic Integration Revisited,” Journal of Common Market Studies 35, no. 1 (1997): 38. 6. See Neil Buckley, “Tensions Are Still Close to the Surface,” Financial Times, November 8, 1999 (survey of Belgium). 7. Kurzer, “Decline or Preservation of Executive Capacity?” 41. She points out that in comparison, at the same time in the Netherlands and France only about 25 percent of the hundred largest firms were foreign owned. 8. Ibid. 9. However, nonparticipation in the EMS also might have led to higher interest rates because of the poor state of the Belgian economy in the early 1990s and the weakness of the franc. Ibid., 46. 10. See Leo Tindemans, European Union: Report to the European Council (Brussels: no publisher, 1975), 20. 11. See Neil Buckley, “Belgian Budget May Miss Deficit Target,” Financial Times, March 21, 1996. 12. See Stephen Bates, “Belgian PM Acquires ‘Absolutist’ Powers,” Guardian, August 5, 1996. 13. George Brock, “EU Mechanics Must Try to Fix Rattle in the Monetary Engine,” Times (London), August 19, 1996. 14. Kurzer has suggested that the reliance of Dehaene on “accounting tricks” to lower the budget deficit, in the face of outcry from economists and opposition politicians, may have been part of a “prudent balance between social security retrenchment and higher taxes” by a government that did “not want to widen the gap between the two regional communities and spur another round of communal conflict.” Kurzer, “Decline or Preservation of Executive Capacity?”, 48. 15. See Sarah Helm, “Tourists Become Pawns in Belgium’s Separatist War,” Independent, August 4, 1996. 16. Kurzer, “Decline or Preservation of Executive Capacity?” 43. 17. See Andrew Hill, “Survey of Flanders,” Financial Times, May 4, 1993. 18. Ibid. The year 2002 was chosen for two reasons: the year marked the tenth anniversary of Maastricht. Perhaps more significantly, it was the seven-hundredth anniversary of the so-called Battle of the Golden Spurs: in 1302, a Flemish army from Bruges, with English help, met an army of the French king Philip the Fair who claimed to have annexed the land. The French were defeated, and when the battle ended, a mound of golden spurs taken from dead French knights became the symbol of Flemish victory. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. For example, see Neil Buckley, “Belgians Protest at Job Losses,” Financial Times, February 3, 1997. 22. See “Fiscalité européenne: Juncker sceptique,” L’Echo, September 17, 1999.

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23. See Alistair Bruton, “Who Needs a Europe of the Regions?” Guardian, January 7, 1994. 24. Interview with Gilbert Lambert, Brussels, May 29, 1996. 25. Kurzer, “Decline or Preservation of Executive Capacity?” 44. 26. Marc Swyngedouw, “The Extreme Right in Belgium: of a Non-existent Front National and an Omnipresent Vlaams Blok,” in The New Politics of the Right, ed. Hans-Georg Betz and Stefan Immerfall (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 61. 27. Ibid. 28. Vlaams Blok, The Vlaams Blok: Facts and Objectives (Brussels: Vlaams Blok, 1992), 3. 29. Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen! Verkiezingsprogramma 1995 (Brussels: Vlaams Blok, 1995), 9. 30. Ibid., 55. 31. Interview with Gerolf Annemans, Vlaams Blok Member of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies, Brussels, February 7, 1996. 32. Interview with Karim Van Overmeire, Vlaams Blok Member of the Flemish Parliament, Brussels, February 7, 1996. 33. Annemans admitted that this was a problem for the Vlaams Blok vision of a Europe of ethnic states. Interview with Annemans, 1996. 34. Interview with Van Overmeire, 1996. 35. Ibid. 36. Interview with Frank Vanhecke, Vlaams Blok Member of the European Parliament, Brussels, February 7, 1996. 37. Ibid. 38. Annex: Official Journal of the European Communities, Debates of the European Parliament (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Community, 1990), 3–390: 66 (hereafter noted as “Annex: OJ”). 39. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. 40. Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen! 53. 41. Ibid., 55. 42. Interview with Annemans, 1996. 43. Annex: OJ (1992), 3–421: 66. 44. Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen!, 53. 45. See Annex: OJ (1991), 3–406: 274 and 3–409: 285; see also Annex: OJ (1993), 3–439:10. 46. Annex: OJ (1993), 3–439: 10. 47. See Annex: OJ (1991), 3–409: 285. 48. Interview with Van Overmeire, 1996. 49. Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen!, 53. 50. The Principles are quoted in Hugo Gijsels and Jos Vander Velpen, Le Chagrin des Flamands: Le Vlaams Blok de 1938 à Nos Jours (Brussels: Editions EPO, 1992), 152. 51. Annex: OJ (1991), 3–405: 151.

240 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

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Interview with Van Overmeire, 1996. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. Interview with Van Overmeire, 1996. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. Interview with Annemans, 1996. The Vlaams Blok were not unique in these sentiments. Members of the British Conservative Party expressed similar hopes that enlargement would weaken the institutions of the EU by making decision making more difficult and by extending the number of potential veto players in the Council of Ministers. Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen!, 29. Interview with Van Overmeire, 1996. Vlaams Blok, Vlaams Blok, 4. Interview with Annemans, 1996. Ibid. Annex: OJ (1993), 3–437: 161. Dillen used similar language to describe the situation in Flemish Brabant in his speech condemning the Belgian Presidency of the European Council three months earlier. See Annex: OJ, 3–433: 127. Interview with Annemans, 1996. Annex: OJ (1993), 3–433: 126. See Vlaams Blok, Nu Afrekenen!, 55. Interview with Annemans, 1996. Annex: OJ (1993), 3–433: 126–27.

Chapter 7 1. I am not focusing on the Committee of the Regions in this study because records of its plenary sessions are not available for much of the period studied here. Furthermore, only the SNP has acknowledged an interest in the committee, a point to which I return in the following chapter. 2. Simon Hix, “Parliamentary Behavior with Two Principals: Preferences, Parties and Voting in the European Parliament,” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (2002): 694; see also Simon Hix, Abdul Noury, and Gérard Roland, “Dimensions of Politics in the European Parliament,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 2 (2006): 494–511. 3. Tapio Raunio, “Relations Between MEPs and Domestic Parties: A Comparative Analysis of Regionalist Parties,” paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Edinburgh, March 28–April 2, 2003. 4. Before 1999, Northern Ireland was already using PR based on the single transferable vote. 5. The term was coined in a study of the first direct elections to the European Parliament. See K. Reif and H. Schmitt, “Nine second-order national elections,” European Journal of Political Research 8, no. 3 (1980): 145–62, cited in Anthony Heath, Iain McLean, and Bridget Taylor, “How much is at stake? Electoral behavior in second-order elections,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of

Notes

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA, August 29– September 1, 1996. See also G. Irwin, “Second-order or third-rate? Issues in the campaign for the elections for the European Parliament 1994,” Electoral Studies 14, no. 2 (1995): 183–99. See C. van der Eijck, M. Franklin, and M. Marsh, “What voters teach us about Europe-wide elections: what Europe-wide elections teach us about voters,” Electoral Studies 15, no. 2 (1996): 149–66; see also Heath, McLean, and Taylor, “How much is at stake?” K. Reif, “National electoral cycles and European elections 1979 and 1984,” Electoral Studies 3 (1984): 244–55, cited in Heath, McLean, and Taylor, “How much is at stake?” See Simon Hix and Michael Marsh, “Punishment or Protest? Understanding European Parliament Elections,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 2 (2007): 495–510. The EP also possesses budgetary powers and the ability to supervise the Commission and Council, including the right of MEPs to submit oral and written questions for response by representatives of these institutions. For an overview of the budgetary and scrutiny functions of the EP, see Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union: An Introduction to European Integration (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 2005), 275–76, 279. The assent procedure is reserved for legislation in limited areas, such as some international agreements, EU enlargements, and aspects of the structural funds. The Amsterdam Treaty (1997) expanded the procedure slightly, to cover sanctions against member states that were in violation of fundamental rights. See Neill Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 353. See Hix, Noury, and Roland, “Dimensions of Politics.” See, for example, Richard Corbett, “Representing the People,” in Maastricht and Beyond: Building the European Union, ed. Andrew Duff, John Pinder, and Roy Pryce (London: Routledge, 1994), 213. The Amsterdam Treaty (1997) extended the scope of the codecision procedure and reduced the application of cooperation to several aspects of Economic and Monetary Union. Helen Wallace and William Wallace, Policy-Making in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21. See Nugent, Government and Politics of the European Union, 216–17. For example, see ibid. and Dinan, Ever Closer Union. The wide-ranging remit of the procedure would allow nationalists to propose motions on almost any topical subject of concern. Martin Westlake has noted the importance of written questions for EP “backbenchers” (i.e., MEPs who are not committee chairs or group leaders), stating that the procedure is “a backbencher’s tool par excellence, making it possible to raise issues and glean inadvertent indiscretions which can then be pursued in other ways.” See Martin Westlake, The Origin and Development of the QuestionTime Procedure in the European Parliament, EUI Working Paper EPU No. 90/4 (Florence: European University Institute, 1990), 6.

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18. See Clifford J. Carrubba et al., “Off the record: unrecorded legislative votes, selection bias and roll-call vote analysis,” British Journal of Political Science 36, no. 4 (2006): 691–704; and George Tsebelis and Amie Kreppel (1996), “Coalition Formation in the European Parliament,” paper prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, August 1996. 19. Raunio, “Comparative Analysis of Regionalist Parties.” 20. Some literature suggests that even small parties like the Greens and the far right seek to influence legislative outputs in the EP. See Catherine Fieschi, “European Institutions: The Far-Right and Illiberal Politics in a Liberal Context,” Parliamentary Affairs 53 (2000): 517–31; and Elizabeth Bomberg, “The Europeanisation of Green Parties: Exploring the EU’s Impact,” West European Politics 25, no. 3 (2002): 29–50. 21. See Milton J. Esman, “A Survey of Interventions,” in International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Shibley Telhami and Milton J. Esman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 21–47. 22. For example, see Alison Brysk, “Acting Globally: Indian Rights and International Politics in Latin America,” in Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Donna Lee Van Cott (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 1994): 29–54; and Telhami and Esman, International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict. 23. See Fieschi, “European Institutions” and Raunio, “Comparative Analysis of Regionalist Parties.” 24. For the period 1985–96 there is no written index to MEP participation available, and I had to compile my own index. For the years 1996 to 1999, records are available on the websites of the EU. However, the current format of these sites does not entirely reproduce the information available in the previous written records (the Debates are no longer available in hard copy). I therefore assume that my data do not perfectly capture all indicators of nationalist participation in the EP. 25. I exclude roll-call votes from this analysis because they represent only a small percent of all votes taken by the EP. 26. See Keesing’s Record of World Events (London: Longman Group, 1984), 30: 33236–7. 27. Although comparison with all other MEPs is not possible, Ewing was known for her verbosity in parliamentary sessions, both in Europe and during her time as an MP at Westminster. During the 1968–69 UK parliamentary session, she asked 516 questions (for oral and written answers), the second highest amount of any MP. See James Kellas, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 276n. 28. The EP normally meets in plenary eleven times a year for five days each sitting (additional “mini-sessions” may be added); that is fifty-five days of meetings in plenary for a full year’s work. 29. These explanations are usually written statements included in the official record of the plenary session. 30. See Keesing’s Record of World Events (London: Longman, 1989), 35: 36818.

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31. See House of Commons, House of Commons Research Paper 99/57: The 1994 Parliament (London: House of Commons, 1999), 16–17. 32. Ibid. Other nonattached members sharing these resources with the Vlaams Blok included MEPs from the Lega Nord of Italian right-winger Gianfranco Fini; the Austrian FPÖ; the Belgian and French National Fronts; and Ian Paisley, MEP of Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). 33. David Morgan, The European Parliament, Mass Media, and the Search for Power and Influence (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1999), 46. 34. See Daniela Spinant, “Members of the European Parliament Defend Their Money,” EUobserver.com; accessed at www.euobserver.com on March 4, 2002. 35. Interview with Frank Vanhecke, February 7, 1996, Brussels. 36. James Mitchell offered this hypothesis. Personal communication with the author. Elizabeth Bomberg has also made a similar observation regarding the importance of MEPs for European Green parties. See Bomberg, “Europeanisation of Green Parties.” 37. Frank Vanhecke noted that the members of the Vlaams Blok all paid a percent of their income to the party; in his case he stated that this was four-fifths of his income, although I was unable to confirm this. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. 38. Vanhecke stated: “I’m sorry to say that we have very bad relations with the members of parliament of the Scottish National Party, who [are] rather left-wing, and I’m afraid to say that we are rather right wing, I would say, not really very moderate!” Ibid. 39. Interview with Gerolf Annemans, February 7, 1996, Brussels. 40. Tsebelis and Kreppel, “Coalition Formation in the European Parliament.” 41. Interviews with Vanhecke, Annemans, and Karim Van Overmeire, 1996. 42. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. 43. See Annex to the Official Journal of the European Communities (Debates of the European Parliament), (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Community, 1993), No. 3–432/47. 44. See Scottish National Party, “Winnie Delivers,” Scotland First (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1993), Autumn/Winter, 1. The same example was given to me by party leader Alex Salmond in an interview. 45. Interview with Alex Salmond, March 28, 1996, London. 46. For example, the SNP 1984 European manifesto emphasized the need for the party to fight for increased power for the EP because at this time, the EP had not yet even secured the ability to consider legislation under the cooperation procedure. Yet later publications do not speak about the legislative role of the EP; instead, they frequently emphasize only that with independence, Scotland could increase its representation in the EP. See for example Scottish National Party, “Winnie Delivers,” 1993; and Scottish National Party, Scotland: A European Nation (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1993). 47. This confirms the results of Raunio’s survey research, which indicate that the SNP and Vlaams Belang accorded a low ranking to the importance of the EP. For the SNP, EP elections ranked third in importance, behind Scottish regional

244

48.

49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

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Notes

elections and Westminster (general) elections; for Vlaams Belang, the EP ranked fourth, behind regional, Belgian, and local elections. None of the other regionalist parties surveyed place the EP first in importance. See Raunio, “Comparative Analysis of Regionalist Parties.” For a full description of Ewing’s and Dillen’s interactions with their respective presidencies, see Janet Laible, “Subversive Diplomacy in the European Parliament? The Legitimation Strategies of Independence Parties,” paper presented at the Biannual Meeting of the European Community Studies Association, Seattle, WA, May 29–June 1, 1997. Ibid. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. Fieschi, “European Institutions” noted this tendency even among the far right members of the EP, arguing that the quest for “respectability” by some of these parties, including the Austrian Freedom Party and the Italian National Alliance, led to their refusal to be associated in a party grouping with the Vlaams Blok and National Front. Scottish National Party, SNP: Scotland’s Voice in Europe. Manifesto of the Scottish National Party for the 1984 Elections to the European Parliament (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1984). Interview with Allan Macartney, May 30, 1996, Brussels. Ibid. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. Scottish National Party, SNP: Scotland’s Voice in Europe, 1. Interview with Margaret Ewing, March 28, 1996, London. Interviews with Ewing and Salmond, 1996. Interview with Vanhecke, 1996. Interview with Annemans, 1996. Interviews with Vanhecke and Van Overmeire, 1996. The descriptions of motions for resolution are all drawn from the 1985–99 publications of the Annex to the Official Journal. Again, I underline that not all motions for resolution reach the plenary session; therefore this record may be incomplete. Macartney and Ewing tabled a couple of their motions jointly; many of the motions for resolution tabled by both the SNP and Vlaams Blok MEPs were sponsored by multiple MEPs, for the most part from within the transnational party groupings to which the nationalists belonged. Michael Minkenberg, “The Radical Right in Public Office: Agenda-Setting and Policy Effects,” West European Politics 24, no. 4 (2001): 11.

Chapter 8 1. See Michael Keating, “Europeanism and Regionalism,” in The European Union and the Regions, ed. Barry Jones and Michael Keating (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 1–22.

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2. A full description of Community Initiatives during the 1994–99 period may be found in European Commission Representation in Scotland, A Guide to the Funding Process (Edinburgh: European Commission Representation in Scotland, 1995). 3. Subsidiarity indicates that increased European integration will occur in an arena “in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen.” Title I, Article A, Treaty on European Union. 4. Commissioner of Regional Affairs Monika Wulf-Mathies emphasized the need to protect and promote regional and local participation in her statements to the Committee of the Regions. See European Report, October 19, 1996. For the position of the Commission under President Jacques Santer (1995–99), see Santer’s address to the Committee of the Regions plenary session of September 21, 1995, where he discusses the role of the Committee in bringing Brussels “closer to the Union’s citizens.” Commission of the European Communities, RAPID (press service), September 21, 1995, DCP95-65. 5. See Keating, “Europeanism and Regionalism,” 7. 6. Ibid., 14. 7. The term was popularized by Brigid Laffan; see Laffan, “‘While You’re Over There in Brussels, Get us a Grant’. The Management of the Structural Funds in Ireland,” Irish Political Studies 4 (1989): 43–57. See also Elizabeth Bomberg, “European Union Decision-Making: The Role of Sub-National Authorities,” paper presented at the Political Studies Association, Glasgow, April 10–12, 1996. 8. See, for example, Santer in Commission of the European Communities, 1995. 9. For example, Sonia Mazey and James Mitchell noted the emergence of these questions in the case of Scotland, in relations among central government ministers, regional economic development boards, and local authority representations lobbying in Brussels. See Sonia Mazey and James Mitchell, “Europe of the Regions? Territorial Interests and European Integration: The Scottish Experience,” in Lobbying in the European Union, ed. Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 95–121. 10. Interview with Frank Vanhecke, February 7, 1996, Brussels. His sentiments were echoed by Karim Van Overmeire, Vlaams Blok member of the Flemish Parliament and Vice-President of the Flemish Commission on Foreign Relations. 11. Interview with Margaret Ewing, March 28, 1996, London. 12. David Morgan, The European Parliament, Mass Media and the Search for Power and Influence (Brookfield, VT; Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999). James Mitchell has commented that Winnie Ewing seems to have been quite successful in getting her name and activities publicized in the local press within her constituency, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Personal communication, May 1997. 13. Morgan, European Parliament, 72. 14. Interview with Gerolf Annemans, February 7, 1996, Brussels. 15. Interview with Ewing, 1996. 16. See, for example, Scottish National Party, Independence in Europe: The Case for national Status for Scotland as an Independent Member of the European Community

246

17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

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(Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1993); and Scottish National Party, Scotland: A European Nation (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1993). Interview with Annemans, 1996. See Janet Laible, “Confronting Dilemmas and Claiming Credit: Independence Parties Respond to Regional Mobilization in the European Union,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 28–31, 1997. The leader of this faction, Jim Sillars, challenged Salmond’s leadership of the party in 1993 over this issue. Sillars lambasted the Committee of the Regions as a “unionist invention to be used against independence.” See Joanne Robertson, “Sillars mauls SNP leaders for ‘tragedy’ of Tory vote,” Scotsman, March 16, 1993. Interview with Salmond, March 28, 1996, London. Salmond has repeatedly emphasized that party participation in European regional politics is simply a matter of the SNP doing what is best for Scotland. References to European Parliamentary activity are drawn from the Annex to the Official Journal of the European Communities: Debates of the European Parliament, Luxembourg: Office of Official Publications of the European Community (hereafter Annex: OJ). Annex: OJ (1991), 3-411/97. Annex: OJ (1995), 4-467/99. Annex: OJ (1993), 3-431/12. Annex: OJ (1994), 4-450/32; Annex: OJ (1995), 4-456/150. In Chapter 7, I noted that when Karel Dillen interacted with the Belgian representatives of the Council Presidency, he did discuss Belgium and did raise Flemish constitutional issues. Furthermore, Dillen has discussed Belgium in the context of cultural and linguist policies, as noted in Chapter 7. However, with respect to the issue that has attracted the most public support for Vlaams Belang—immigration— the constitutional dimension of Flemish nationalism disappears. Interview with Annemans, 1996. Interview with Allan Macartney, May 30, 1996, Brussels. This remark was made by Margaret Ewing; it was not clear to me what she meant by a Brussels “branch,” unless she was referring to expatriate Scots living in Brussels who constituted an overseas branch of the SNP. Interview with a lobbyist for the East of Scotland European Consortium, March 29, 1996, Glenrothes, Scotland. Interview with Salmond, 1996. One of the “objectives,” or categories, of EU structural funding; this category of European Regional Development Funding is devoted to developing regions whose GDP per capita is below 75 percent of the EU average. Annex: OJ (1985), 2-332/194-5. The flaw in the Commission’s calculations was that the extremely low population density of the Highlands and Islands skewed the index to make it appear wealthier than prosperous but densely populated areas (under this formula, the Commission had also determined that Kent, a wealthy area in the south of

Notes

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

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England, was one of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom). For Ewing’s battle, see Andrew Garfield, “Highlands disqualified on wealth grounds,” Scotsman, September 16, 1987. Annex: OJ (1996), 4-475/47. For Ewing, see Annex: OJ (1991), 3-401/88-9; for Macartney see Annex: OJ (1995), 4-467/199. See Scotland First, Autumn/Winter 1993; this paper also features the photograph of Ewing with the EU flag. See also Scottish National Party, Scotland: A European Nation (Edinburgh: Scottish National Party, 1993). See Murray Ritchie, “Eastern Europe ‘set to get Highland cash aid,’” Herald (Glasgow), February 27, 1997. David R. Mayhew, Congress. The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 52–53. See for example Robert Hull, “Lobbying Brussels: A View From Within,” in Lobbying in the European Union, ed. Mazey and Richardson. Interview with Salmond, 1996. This is backed by the statement of an anonymous Scottish lobbyist who noted that Ewing, officials in Whitehall, the Scottish Office, and Commissioner Bruce Millan (a Scot who had the European portfolio for Regions) all contributed to the outcome. Quoted in John Peterson and Elizabeth Bomberg, Decision-Making in the European Union (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 1999), 165. Interview with a lobbyist for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, February 16, 1996, Brussels. Interview with Salmond, 1996. This did, in fact, happen: the Highlands and Islands were offered a “transitional” period beginning in 1999 to take advantage of a reduced, and final, round of funding.

Chapter 9 1. See Tom Brady, “The UK Comes First in Brussels,” Scotsman, June 22, 1999. 2. Peter Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 1996), 44, 48–49. 3. Ibid., 43. See also Michael Keating, Nations Against the State. The New Politics of Minority Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996). 4. See for example Marc Swyngedouw, “Scientific Electoral Studies: A Democratic Asset. Announcing and Documenting Political Changes in Belgium,” paper presented at the Maison Française, Oxford University, 1996. 5. For example, see Elizabeth Bomberg, “The Europeanisation of Green Parties: Exploring the EU’s Impact,” West European Politics 25, no. 3 (2002): 29–50. 6. See Catherine Fieschi, “European Institutions: The Far-Right and Illiberal Politics in a Liberal Context,” Parliamentary Affairs 53 (2000): 517–31.

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7. See for example the priorities outlined in the EU Accession Partnership with Turkey, which refers specifically to “enhancing economic, social and cultural opportunities for all Turkish citizens, including those of Kurdish origin.” European Council, “Decision of 23 January 2006 on the Principles, Priorities and Conditions Contained in the Accession Partnership with Turkey,” Official Journal, L22/49, January 26, 2006. 8. Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1997), 222.

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Index

Italicized page numbers refer to tables. The letter n following a page number denotes a note. A abortion 60, 181 acquis communautaire 25 Afrikaans 176 agriculture 85, 99, 102, 202 Agalev (Green!) (Belgium) 61–2, 156 Annemans, Gerolf 131, 133, 137, 142, 146, 171–72, 180, 190, 195 Antwerp 64 “Arc-en-Ciel” (ARC) 164–65 armed forces, Europe 122, 139–41, 148 “Auld Alliance” 237n40 Austria 101 Austrian Freedom Party 244n51 B Battle of the Golden Spurs 238n18 beef 173, 200 Belgium artificiality of 67 Catholicism 57 central government 69, 123–24, 126, 148, 207 Chamber of Deputies 16, 58–60, 61, 63–5, 69, 88–9 Constitutional reforms 59–60, 93, 124, 128 demographics 58–60 economy 124–27, 235n42

in European Union 88–9, 124–27, 129, 174–75 federalism in 59–60, 123, 220n28, 230n67 francophones in 81 history 56–60, 88–9 immigration policy 70 language policy 56–8 (see also Dutch language; French language) middle classes 66 pillarization of 65–6, 69, 80 political parties 69–71 (see also under individual parties) Senate 59, 63, 88 working classes 70 See also Flanders, Wallonia Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU) 88 Blair, Tony 49, 104 Brabant 145 Breton, Raymond 51–2, 66 Breuilly, John 218n9 Brown, David 51 Brussels 58–60, 66, 68, 88, 126, 129, 133 Bulgaria 215 C Caporaso, James 223n33 Catholicism 56–7, 65, 68–9, 80, 94

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Index

Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V) 61–2, 71, 156 Christian Democrats (Flanders), see Christelijke Volkspartij and Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP) (Flanders) 61–2, 70, 128–30, 156 citizenship in Belgium 57 in European Union 23–4, 145, 193 in Scotland 52 Claes, Lode 81 Claes, Willy 231n80 collaborators (with Nazis) 57, 60, 80–1, 90 Common Fisheries Policy 115, 198–200 communism 49 opposition to 80–1, 138, 140, 148 community charge 48 Community Initiatives, see under European Union Conservative Party (UK) 9, 45, 47–9, 50, 54–5, 84–6, 102–4, 155, 174–76, 212 Conservative and Unionist Party, see Conservative Party Cornwall 222n21 corporatism 64, 68 Council of the European Union Belgium in 89 and European Parliament 109, 155, 157, 168 and Maastricht Treaty 123, 126 powers of 155, 157, 168 Presidency of 158, 174 qualified majority voting 102 regional ministers in 25, 29 Scotland in 115–16, 173, 200, 213 credit claiming 185–86, 199–202 crime 67–8, 139–40, 193–94 Crusades 144

D Dehaene, Jean-Luc 126 Delors, Jacques 97, 99, 112, 193–94 democracy 77, 83, 85–6, 92, 94, 99, 109, 111, 127, 134 Democratic Unionist Party (Northern Ireland) 243n32 devolution 47, 59, 52–5, 60, 69, 87, 105–7, 114 Dewinter, Filip 63–4, 90–2, 131–32 diets, Dietsland, see Dutch language; Flanders Dietsland-Europa (Belgium) 79–81 Dillen, Karel anticommunism of 81 anti-immigration 63–4, 139, 145, 192 criticism of EU bureaucracy 136 in elections 60, 81, 92 in European Parliament 164–82 Flemish nationalism of 79–80, 133, 193 idea of Europe 80–1, 133, 138 and Le Pen, Jean Marie 90–1 quits Volksunie 60 right wing views of 79–80, 92–3, 175 support for European armed forces 141 as Vlaams Blok leader 60, 63–4, 131–33 direct effect, principle of 24 Dutch language 56–9, 68–9, 78, 94, 129, 144–46, 156, 229n50, 233n14 Dutroux affair 65 E East of Scotland European Consortium (ESEC) 196–97 Eastern Europe 37, 141–42, 202, see also individual countries Egmont Pact 60

Index England 32, 34, 42–3, 48, 78, 84, 87, 94, 110, 116–17, see also United Kingdom euro 15, 213 eurocrats 135–36 Europe as “Fortress Europe,” 138 idea of 81, 90–1, 93–4, 138–39, 143–44 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 58, 77, 88–9, 104 European Commission absence of nationalists in 153–54, 191 lack of accountability 135–36, 144–45 lobbying of 179, 185, 189, 196–99, 214 powers of 155, 157, 168 procedures 158, 163, 164–66, 167, 173, 181 and regional actors 25, 113, 123, 186–88, 201 selection criteria to 154 and SNP 165–67, 177–79, 189, 196, 198–99 and Vlaams Belang/Blok 135–36, 144–45, 167, 176, 189, 191–94 European Community, see European Union European Convention on Human Rights 52 European Council of Ministers, see Council of the European Union European Court of Justice (ECJ) 24–5 Costa v. ENEL 24–5 Van Gend en Loos 24 European Free Alliance 130 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) 101 European Monetary System, see European Monetary Union European Monetary Union (EMU) 88, 119, 125–27, 136

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265

European Parliament Annex to the Official Journal of the European Communities (Debates of the European Parliament) 163 elections to 154–56 as forum 158, 161, 173–79 as international organization 161 legislation 153, 170–72 lobbying, see under Vlaams Belang and Scottish National Party Members of, see MEPs nationalist activity in 153–59, see also under SNP and Vlaams Belang official groupings in 91–2 political parties, see under individual parties powers of 154–56 procedures 156–59, 161–64, 168, 171, 173 assent procedure 156 codecision procedure 156, 162 cooperation procedure 156, 162, 171 explanation of votes 167–68 motions for resolution 181–82 oral questions 158, 163 points of order 164–65 points of procedure 164, 167 roll call votes 158, 171 technical groupings in 92, 165 as talking shop 153, 155, 169, 180 transnational party groupings 152, 156–58 European People’s Party 171 European Radical Alliance 165–66 Group of the European Right (DR) 91–2, 164–65, 168, 171, 173 Socialist Group 171 European Union bureaucratization of 108, 134–36, 142, 145, 172

266

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Index

European Union (Contd.) centralization of 119, 134 Committee of the Regions creation of 25, 115 powerlessness of 179–80, 196 purpose 123 and SNP 114, 179–80, 191, 196, 209 and VB 190–91, 210 Community Initiatives 186 debordering within 17 enlargement 37, 100, 141–42, 202 and eurosclerosis 99 immigration policy 24 institutions, see Council of the European Union; European Commission; European Court of Justice; European Parliament law 24–5 monetary policy 98, 124–26 nationalists in, see under Scottish National Party and European Union and Vlaams Belang and European Union regional representation 123, 186, 191, 196–99 Single Market 23–4, 99, 102, 125, 142 sovereignty of 23–8 and the state 10–11, 23, 25, 27, 35–9, 154, 211, 214–16 supranationalism of 2, 5, 98, 132, 205–208 see also Maastricht Treaty Ewing, Margaret 87, 112, 115–16, 189–90 Ewing, Winnie criticism of UK government 85–6, 117, 174 in elections 87, 113 in European Parliament 163–82, 196–97, 199, 202 support for Europeanization of SNP 87, 107, 112, 117–18

extreme right and anti-immigration 63 in European Parliament 176, 91–2, 164–65, 168, 173, 175 in Flanders 79–80 international dimensions 91–2, 95 meaning of 55 in new EU member states 215 racism 81 “traditional” values of 42 See also European Parliament; French National Front; Le Pen, Jean-Marie; transnational party groupings; Group of the European Right F family 24, 60, 67–8 far right, see extreme right fascism 57 federalism in Belgium 58–60, 67–70, 79, 89, 93, 121–25, 128, 134, 146 in Europe 2, 7, 79, 104 in United Kingdom 77, 111, 114–15 Fianna Fáil 163 Fini, Gianfranco 243n32 Finland 101 First World War 57 fishing, see Common Fisheries Policy Flanders in Belgium 56–9 citizenship 57 culture 57 economy 57, 124–25, 127 Flemish identity, nationalist view of 67, 71, 95, 132, 144, 146–47, 210, 233n14 history 56–8, 238n18 language, see Dutch language Parliament 16, 61, 64–5, 69–70 political parties in 128–30, see also individual parties separatists in 57–8, see also Vlaams Belang/Blok, Volksunie

Index Flemish Bloc, see Vlaams Blok Flemish Interest (Flanders), see Vlaams Belang Flemish Liberals and Democrats, see Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten Flemish Socialist Party, see Socialistische Partij Flemish Union, see Vlaamsch Verbond Fontainebleau Summit 99, 102 Forsyth, Michael 178 France 56–7, 68 French language 56–60, 66–9, 71, 80, 89, 129, 145 French National Front 6–7, 60, 90, 164, 176, 183 Frontpartij (Belgium) 57 G Geertz, Clifford 31 Gellner, Ernest 4, 15, 28, 38 Gladstone, William 44 globalization 5, 9–10, 22–3, 26, 30–1, 37, 213 Gorbachev, Mikhail 140 Great Britain, see United Kingdom Greece 100 Green Party (Scotland) 50 H health care in Belgium 59, 126 in Scotland 44, 48–9, 53 Heath, Edward 84–6 Hobsbawm, Eric 27, 34 Home Rule Ireland 44 Scotland 44, 54–5, 77, 109 Hudghton, Ian 165–66 human rights 53, 139, 157, 161, 181–82, 214 Hume, John 30 I Iceland 101 ideal types 11, 32–5, 51–2, 55, 66

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267

identity, politics of 55, 66–7, 133–34, 137–38, 193–94 imagined community 56 immigration, see under Vlaams Belang: Program: anti-immigration intergovernmentalist theorists 26, 36 international organizations 161 interviews 16–17, 163, 199 Iraq War 49 Ireland (Republic of ) 44, 115 Islam 63, 131, 138 Italian National Alliance 244n51 J Jacobite threat 43 Jong Nederlandse Gemeenschap (Dutch Youth Association) 79 July Revolution (Belgium) 56 juridical equality 33, 207 K Keating, Michael 11 Kinnock, Neil 103 Kratochwil, Friedrich 33 Kurds 192 Kymlicka, Will 224n44 L Labour Party (UK) divisions in 86 in elections 45, 49, 50, 155 and EU 85–6, 102–4, 113–14 and Scotland 44, 46, 49, 54, 114, 212 Lambert, Gilbert 130 language policy in Belgium 56–8 in European Union 160, 175 Lawson, Nigel 103 League of Nations, see international organizations Lega Nord 243n32 legitimacy 3, 27, 36, 38, 162, 179–80 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 60, 63, 90–2

268

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Index

Liberal Democratic Party (UK) 16, 45, 49, 50, 104, 113–14, 155 liberalism 4, 27, 51, 60, 64–5, 70, 214 Liberal Party (UK) 44–5, 55, 104, 113, 155 Lijst Dedecker 61 logics of appropriateness 33 Lomé Convention 179 M Maastricht Treaty Conservative (UK) split over 103 and EU membership criteria 126–27 opposition to 68, 115, 121 provisions of 12, 25, 123, 145, 153, 156–57, 187, 192–93 and regions 25, 114, 123, 130, 153 SNP attitude toward 114–18, 207 Vlaams Blok/Belang attitude toward 121, 126, 130, 132, 145, 147–48, 207 Macartney, Allan 165–67, 169–71, 176–78, 181, 196, 198–99 Marxist theory 4–5 Maxwell, Stephen 107 Mayhew, David 201 McIntyre, Robert 77 MEPs and domestic audience 153, 179–83 and international audience 173–79 legislative activity 157–58, 162–68 nonattached members 158, 168 and party discipline 152, 158, 171 salaries of 169–70 self-interest of 152–53, 159–60, 169–70 in transnational party groupings 156–58, 168 middle classes 43, 48, 66 minorities 1, 214 modernist literature 5, 11, 27–8, 31, 34, 37–8

Motyl, Alex 34–5, 37 Mudde, Cas 66, 68 multiculturalism 52, 67 multilevel governance 25, 36 N Nairn, Tom 32, 215 nationalism in Belgium 57–8, 66–7, 71, 75, see also Vlaams Belang changing meaning of 22, 28–9, 31–9 civic 42, 51, 55 definitions of 4, 15, 21, 31–2, 51–2 ethnic 51, 66–7, 134, 137 premodern 34 of resistance 31 in Scotland 42–7, 55, 75, see also Scottish National Party and state 4–5, 9–10, 27, 29, 34–9 without the state 22, 27, 29, 30, 34 nationalists, see Scottish National Party and Vlaams Belang National Party of Scotland (NPS) 44–5 NATO 53, 88, 106, 141 neoliberalism 48, 68 Netherlands 56–8, 68, 70, 79 normative theorizing 11, 14–15 Northern Ireland 30, 155, 197 North Sea oil fields 47 Norway 84, 101, 142 nuclear weapons 53, 83, 117, 140 O Objective I 197, 200 oil 47, 84–5, 101, 107 “own initiative” reports 157 P Paisley, Ian 243n32 Papandreou, Andreas 100 Partij voor Vrijheid en Vooruitgang (PVV) (Flanders) 129

Index People’s Union (Belgium), see Volksunie pluralism 28, 71 political asylum 192, 194 political capital 3, 17, 187–88, 210, 214 political entrepreneurs 13, 98, 105, 187 political parties 12–13, 219n22 party families 6–8 transnational party groupings, see under European Parliament politics of exclusion 34, 51, 66 Portugal 100–101, 198 postmaterialism 42 Presbyterianism 43 pressure groups 126, 151 proportional representation 154 protest voting 154 Q qualified majority voting 102 quangos 42 (quasi-nongovernmental organizations) R racism 67, 81, 139 radical right, see extreme right Raes, Roland 90 Renaissance 144 Republikaner (political party, Germany) 164 Romania 215 Russia 140–42 Ruys, Manu 93 S Salmond, Alex 49–50, 52, 106, 114–16, 172–73, 180, 193, 200, 202 Santer, Jacques 187 Schengen Agreement 181, 192–94 Schuman Plan 88–9 Scotland and civic nationalism 42, 51, 55 Constitutional Convention 49, 54–5 devolution 52–4 economy 46, 54, 100, 200

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269

and Europe 116–17, 233n40 Highlands and Islands 87, 112–13, 117, 172, 197–98, 202 history 43–5 identity 52, 77, 116–17, 208, 210, 226–27n13 law 43, 116 middle classes in 43, 48 multiculturalism in 252 Parliament of 16, 32, 49–50, 53–5, 207, 213 political parties in 54–5, see also under individual party names religion, see Presbyterianism and United Kingdom 43–4, 44–6, 48–9, 54, 114, 174–75, 197, 212, 226n4 working class 48, 54 Scottish Labour Party 109, 112 Scottish National Party (SNP) “Albanians” in 112 alliances with other parties 55, 87, 171–73, 176, 191 as case study 16, 39, 72 credit claiming 199–203 criticism of UK 71–2, 78 contrast with Vlaams Belang 207–211 and devolution 52–3 divisions within 46–7, 106–7, 112, 191, 227n15 in elections to European Parliament 155 to Scottish Parliament 16, 49–50, 54 in UK general elections 16, 45–7, 54, 78, 83–4, 106, 113 and Europe European identity of Scotland 116–18 “Europeanization” of SNP 106–13 and European Parliament as boon to legitimacy 179 as forum 159, 166, 168, 179, 189–90

270

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Index

Scottish National Party (SNP) (Contd.) and European Parliament and legislation 173 lobbying in 172, 189, 191, 196–200 material benefits of participation in 169 representatives in 163–65 symbolism of participation 181–83 in transnational party groupings 164–65, 170–71 and European Union as counterweight to UK 94, 98–9 and domestic audience 161, 182–84 early opposition to 83–8 independence in 94, 96, 109–110, 112, 118–19, 173 initial disinterest in 8 and international audience 175–80 preferred model of 208–209 response to Maastricht 114–16 fundamentalists 106 history 16, 45–50 ideology 53, 116–18 intellectuals in 94–5 in international affairs 53, 175–79 leadership 49, 52, 77, 88, 93–5, 106–9, 112 lobbying 185, 196–200 pragmatists 106, 191 professionalization 82, 95, 183 and Scottish independence 2, 47, 49–50, 52–3, 112 ’79 Group 106–7 and Scottish Parliament 49–50, 53–4 structure 39, 47 as “Tartan Tories,” 237n45 use of media 189–91 Scottish Office 44, 46, 48, 197, 212 Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) 50

Second Treaty of Paris (1815) 56 Second World War 57 separatism continued appeal of 2, 7, 26 contradiction with supranationalism 3–6, 9 and “Independence in Europe,” 3, 8, 12 and sovereignty 9, 11 Settler Watch 226–7n13 Sillars, Jim 107, 109–13, 116, 118 Single European Act (SEA) (1987) and European Parliament 156, 162 and member states 5, 24–5, 130, 211 nationalist attitude toward 92, 106, 109, 112–13, 128, 147 and regional actors 25, 130, 186–88 Siol nan Gaidheal 227n13 Social Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland) 30 socialism 65–6, 102 Socialistische Partij (Flanders) 61–2, 70, 88, 128–30, 156 social security 59, 70, 123, 126–27 sovereignty changing nature of 21–8, 32–8 “compromised,” 26, 38, 215 definitions of 5, 10–11, 14, 28, 32 of European Union 26 post-sovereignty 11–12, 22–3, 28–34, 36, 38–9 premodern 35 as recognition of equality 22–3, 31–5 and state 2, 9–10, 21–8, 30, 32–8, 223n35 Soviet Union, see Russia Spaak, Paul-Henri 89 Spain 100, 198 state continued importance of 6, 10–11, 35–6, 38, 211, 214–16 definitions of 4–5, 10–11, 32–3

Index in European Union 23, 25, 27, 36–9 Marxist view of 45 and nation 4–5, 9–10, 27, 29, 34–5, 37–9, 214–26 premodern 34 and sovereignty, see under sovereignty territoriality of 2, 4–5, 8, 10, 25–37 weakness of 17, 24–6, 35 Weberian 4–5, 33, 35–6, 215 steel 85, 88, 107–8 Stewart, Donald 83, 85–6 subsidiarity, principle of 114, 187–88 supranationalism 2, 5, 98, 132, 205–8, 220n2 Sweden 101 T Taylor, Charles 223n31 Tayside Regional Council 196 Thatcher, Margaret 48–9, 54, 102–3, 109 Tobback, Louis 129 Tories, see Conservative Party (UK) Treaty Establishing the European Union (TEC) (1992) 23 Treaty of Rome (1957) 24, 58, 83, 124, 156 Turkey 192–93, 214 U UK Independence Party 9, 155 Union des francophones 62 United Kingdom Britain in Europe movement 104 consensus politics in 46 in European Union 82, 102, 174, 207 general elections in 16, 45–7, 54, 78, 83–4, 106, 113 monetary policy 102, 174–75 Scotland in, see Scotland and United Kindgom United Nations, see international organizations

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271

United States 110, 141, 148, 177 University of Leuven 59 V Vandemeulebroucke, Jaak 130 Van den Brande, Luc 70, 127–29 Vanhaegendoren, Maurits 79 Vanhecke, Frank attitude toward EU 135–36, 142 in elections 165 in European Parliament 165–72, 176–78, 180, 189, 192–94 in European right 91–2 in Vlaams Belang 91, 132, 165 Van Miert, Karel 144–45 Van Overmeire, Karim 133–35, 140–41, 143, 172, 181, 190 Varshney, Ashutosh 31–2 Verhofstadt, Guy 129 Vlaams Belang alliances with other parties 69, 90, 92, 171, 173, 176 attitude toward federalism 67–8 as case study 16, 39 Catholicism 65, 68, 80, 94 contrast with SNP 207–11 cordon sanitaire against 64 credit claiming 195–96, 200–3 criticism of Belgian central government 71–2, 144–46, 175 divisions within 63, 81 economic views 64, 68–9, 143 elections Belgian federal 60–2, 65 European Parliament 156 Flemish 16, 61–5, 69 and Europe 79–81, 90–7, 131, 133, 138–42 in European Parliament as forum 159, 166–67, 189–90 legislation 173 as path to legitimacy 180–81 lobbying 189–96

272

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Index

Vlaams Belang (Contd.) material benefits of participation 158, 169 symbolism of participation in 133, 181–83 and transnational party groupings 164–65, 168, 171, 173, 176 and European Union and domestic audience 161, 182–84 ideal EU vs. actual 122–23, 133, 208–9 initial disinterest in 78 and international audience 175–80 mistrust of 134–36, 145, 195, 210–11 necessity of participating in 93, 133, 147–48, 206 negative attitude toward Maastricht Treaty 120, 121–22, 132 as pragmatic tool 206 support for enlargement of 142 history 16, 60 ideology 6, 7–9, 60, 71, 133, 144, 146 intellectuals in 94–5 leadership 60, 63, 79, 93–4, 131–32 professionalization of 82, 95, 213 program anti-immigration 56, 60, 63–4, 69, 89–92, 131, 139, 192–95, 213 crime fighting 194 independent Flanders 60, 67, 122, 133, 146 racism 67, 80, 94, 139 as right-wing party 55–6, 58, 171, 195 structure 39, 131–32 use of media 79, 189–91 and working class 70 Vlaams Blok, see Vlaams Belang

Vlaamsch Verbond 57 Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD) (Flemish Liberals and Democrats) 61–2, 65, 70–1, 129–30, 156 Vlaamse-Nationaalparty (VNP), see Vlaams Belang Vlaams-Volkspartij (VVP), see Vlaams Belang Volksunie in Belgian coalition government 60, 129 centrism of 60, 71, 92, 129 in elections 16, 58, 61–2, 64, 70–1, 156 history 16, 56, 58, 60, 64–5, 70–1 response to European Union 78–9, 129–30 split of 60, 80–1 Vlaams Blok/Belang criticism of 69, 143, 146 W Wales 2, 54, 84 Wallonia in Belgium 59, 93, 137–38 economy 57, 70, 125, 127, 129–30 French language 56 history 56 welfare state 42, 44, 46, 68–9, 129 Welsh, Andrew 86 Western Balkans 1, 3, 214 whisky 179 Wilson, Gordon 106–8, 118, 178 Wilson, Harold 85–6 Wolfe, Billy 85 working class 48, 54, 70 World War I 57 World War II 57 Wulf-Mathies, Monika 198 Y Young, Douglas 77 Yugoslavia 141

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