[BRIEF NOTE] On regionalism vs separatism
Aug. 12th, 2010 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldArticles like Morgan Meis' "Death to Belgium!" (found via 3 Quarks Daily) reminds me why facile analyses of transnationalism--here, examining the consequences of Belgium's implosion on European identities--annoy me. Forgive me the extended quote; it's important.
I agree with Meis that the European Union is facilitating the ongoing political shenanigans in Belgium, by providing a safety net via the functions of the national government safely removed to the European level--the currency crisis that certainly would have hit the Belgian franc by now hasn't hit a Belgium with a GDP that constitutes a low single-digit percentage of the Eurozone total.
I disagree with Meis in seeing this to be that notable a phenomenon. You're not seeing a very big push towards the regionalization of national powers, and the disappearance of the central state, in regions of European Union member-states like Yorkshire, or Aragon, or Lower Saxony, or Silesia. You're seeing this push in regions of European Union member-states like Scotland, and Catalonia, and Flanders, i.e. in places where large majorities of the population think that they live in non-sovereign (though autonomous) nations and large minorities think that their nations should become sovereign nation-states ... sovereign within the European Union.
Why is this distinction important? Nation-minded regions of existing member-states of the European Union may hollow out some of the functions of some of said member-states' governments, and non-nation-minded regions may well do the same--the competitive federalization of Spain comes to mind as an example of this--but the difference is that, for the non-nation-minded regions, the idea of independence is a complete non-starter. Is there any sizable constituency in Yorkshire that yearns for independence? Do Lower Saxons want to constitute a state independent from Germany?
If Scotland and Catalonia and Flanders and the other nation-minded regions of Europe all became independent from their parent states and members in good standing in the European Union, all that would do would be to create new nation-states as relatively homogeneous as the old: in Flanders, there might be a resurgence of the Ghent versus Antwerp rivalries that Meis starts his article with. The idea that Flemish independence could augur an era where Europeans would identify with Europe and their region of residence more than with their nation-state strikes me as so false. There wouldn't be a decomposition of Europe's nation-states, but rather a recomposition. The distinction matters.
Louis was smoking a cigar the size of a small tree trunk and holding a glass of tequila. He has spent a lifetime traveling the world, thinking about how it is that human beings govern themselves and one another. He peered at me across the table. "Why," he asked, "why do you need Belgium anymore?" The question took me off guard. I hadn't thought about it exactly that way before. Louis was right that the complexity of Belgium’s government is overwhelming. There are so many layers of governing you don't know where to start: local, city, regional, national, federal. Adding the EU to the already complicated mix seems cruel. The question is whether the entity we call “Belgium” is really contributing anything to the equation anymore.
In more radical terms, this would mean that the nation state in general, in Europe, could become superfluous. A shocking thought, no doubt. But with the EU providing a federal role, and local and regional governments doing the rest, what good is the nation? The nation state can simply be replaced by direct regional relationships with the transnational body called the EU. If Catalonia is part of the EU, what need for Spain? If Sardinia is an EU member, why the extra baggage of Italy? This isn't to say that all national entities must be dissolved, simply that many of them have outlived their usefulness.
That is exactly what Bart De Wever is calling for. Hardly parochial, he and his party are firm supporters of the EU. What his party supports is not the mass extermination of the Walloons, but the "evaporation" of Belgium and the direct absorption of two new states — Flanders and Wallonia — into the EU. There is no need for that extra entity, Belgium, at all. In a sense, De Wever wants Belgium to get smaller so that it can get bigger. This is not your father's separatism, not the retreat into prejudice and closed-mindedness that the word so often invokes.
This new separatism makes for another interesting chapter in the unfolding story that is the EU experiment. The chapter has far-reaching implications for what national identity is in a global age. The withering away of the nation state means, potentially, that individuals in the EU can simultaneously identify with their local region and with the continent as a whole. When it comes to day-to-day affairs, a Flemish person can concentrate fully on being Flemish — the specific traditions, foods, language, history, stories, and anything else that makes a woman feel Flemish. But a Flem still has that EU passport. The EU passport means she is also European, and this transnational kinship allows her to go all over the continent with the freedom and confidence that such a trans-national identity provides. It also means that she agrees, in principle, to protect the greater project of the EU as the umbrella under which all the little regions of Europe get to be who they want to be.
I agree with Meis that the European Union is facilitating the ongoing political shenanigans in Belgium, by providing a safety net via the functions of the national government safely removed to the European level--the currency crisis that certainly would have hit the Belgian franc by now hasn't hit a Belgium with a GDP that constitutes a low single-digit percentage of the Eurozone total.
I disagree with Meis in seeing this to be that notable a phenomenon. You're not seeing a very big push towards the regionalization of national powers, and the disappearance of the central state, in regions of European Union member-states like Yorkshire, or Aragon, or Lower Saxony, or Silesia. You're seeing this push in regions of European Union member-states like Scotland, and Catalonia, and Flanders, i.e. in places where large majorities of the population think that they live in non-sovereign (though autonomous) nations and large minorities think that their nations should become sovereign nation-states ... sovereign within the European Union.
Why is this distinction important? Nation-minded regions of existing member-states of the European Union may hollow out some of the functions of some of said member-states' governments, and non-nation-minded regions may well do the same--the competitive federalization of Spain comes to mind as an example of this--but the difference is that, for the non-nation-minded regions, the idea of independence is a complete non-starter. Is there any sizable constituency in Yorkshire that yearns for independence? Do Lower Saxons want to constitute a state independent from Germany?
If Scotland and Catalonia and Flanders and the other nation-minded regions of Europe all became independent from their parent states and members in good standing in the European Union, all that would do would be to create new nation-states as relatively homogeneous as the old: in Flanders, there might be a resurgence of the Ghent versus Antwerp rivalries that Meis starts his article with. The idea that Flemish independence could augur an era where Europeans would identify with Europe and their region of residence more than with their nation-state strikes me as so false. There wouldn't be a decomposition of Europe's nation-states, but rather a recomposition. The distinction matters.
