Understanding the resurgence of regional nationalism in Europe: an exploration through poor regions
Overall ambition
Since the mid-2010s, the functioning of consolidated democracies has been disrupted in many countries, including those considered to be the most mature and stable. Populism has been the catch-all term used to describe this phenomenon, particularly since the 2010s, as governing parties and their traditional modes of expression have declined: Brexit in the United Kingdom, the Trump presidency in the United States, the rise of right-wing movements in continental Europe, both in the east (led by Hungary and Poland) and in the west, with France participating notably with the National Rally. The same term has also been used on the left, with the breakthrough of Podemos in Spain and, even more so, Syriza in Greece, or in relation to movements that are more difficult to identify, such as the Five Star Movement in Italy.
The internationally significant French-language literature that these phenomena have generated has largely focused on the relatively conventional study of national politics at the level of the states concerned. This research aims to investigate, in an original way, a neglected dimension of this recomposition by taking into account the territorial variation of this process of questioning the foundations of democratic political systems, as seen at the European level. Indeed, in several parts of the continent, we are witnessing a resurgence of a phenomenon that has been labeled in very different ways in the literature
, and which we refer to here as regional nationalism. This refers to the existence of movements which, originating in regions within a given nation state, challenge that state by making cultural, economic and political-administrative demands, which take the form of calls for greater autonomy or even
independence. These actors constitute a clearly distinct political family.
This phenomenon is not new in itself, having first appeared in Europe at the end of the 19th century. However, in terms of intensity, it has not been constant: prominent in the pre-war period, then experiencing widespread popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, it then tended to decline, surviving only in a limited number of regions where it was sometimes violent (particularly in the Basque Country and Northern Ireland), and more often expressed itself through minority or even marginal movements. However, a number of states are now facing a visible resurgence of this phenomenon, sometimes manifested in street protests and especially at the ballot box, which could go so far as to challenge long-standing national units (the United Kingdom through Scotland with the rise of the Scottish National Party, Spain through Catalonia with the radicalization of the moderate nationalist movement formerly represented by Convergencia i Unió). Although not reaching such intensity, France itself, not only in its overseas territories but also in mainland France, has not been spared, to the point that it has even been echoed recently in the national press.
We propose to conduct it, within the framework of the exploratory project presented here and for the fundamental reasons described in the second section, focusing on two main regional cases: Corsica and Sardinia. These two regional cases have the advantage of being familiar to us, since we studied them a long time ago in relation to the process of state-national establishment between the late 19th and early 20th centuries—in other words, the "Frenchification" of Corsica and the "Italianization" of Sardinia [Roux 2014]. However, the context that these islands represent today has since undergone a radical transformation: regional nationalism, which was then a minority or even marginal phenomenon [Roux 2006, 2011], has, contrary to expectations, become a majority force and a governing power. How can we understand such a reversal in these territories? What lessons can be learned, beyond these specific cases chosen for their significance, about the ongoing restructuring of democratic systems?
Topics and issues addressed
This project, which falls within the field of political science, lies at the intersection of several of its active, structuring, and complementary branches in the analysis of the functioning and changes of democracies: that of nationalism, but including a territorial component relating to decentralization processes; political parties and political mobilization and social movements, including issues of political violence; and finally, the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens, with a focus on elections. The project presented here claims to be original in two ways, allowing it to critically surpass the existing literature on several points of
.
Its primary ambition is to understand the resurgence of a phenomenon that appeared to have fallen into relative disuse. We hypothesize that this process can be understood in the context of the erosion of representative democracies, led by governing parties, in which it participates. In the cases that interest us
, two main reasons justify our selection of cases (limited to two in order to be manageable within the time frame of a relatively short project): although little studied in the literature, they nevertheless illustrate the resurgence of regional nationalism in Europe. Once continuously in regional opposition to regional executives
long controlled by the Republican right, Corsican nationalist parties have experienced an electoral rise in power, obtaining a strong relative majority and gaining control of the executive council in 2015, a resounding historic victory in 2017 and a refocused success for the autonomist party Femu a
Corsica in 2021. In Sardinia, the historic autonomist party (the Partito Sardo d'Azione), which was powerful on the eve of fascism, had become largely residual in the postwar period in a region long controlled by the former Christian Democrats and then, successively, from the 1990s onwards, by the large center-left and center-right groups led, respectively, by the Democratic Party and Forza Italia. However, this autonomist party was able to take the lead of a coalition that brought it to power in the regional government in 2019. To date, the two political leaders of these islands, the President of the Executive Council of Corsica, Gilles Simeoni, and the President of the Regional Council of Sardinia, Christian Solinas, belong to regional nationalist parties. This exploration will thus fill a structural empirical gap in the literature.
This initial contribution serves a second original feature, which draws on a specific approach to site selection. Within a generally limited body of international literature (and even scarcer in France), research has focused on a limited number of sustainable and salient cases that had in commo
ly originating in prosperous European regions [Paquin 2001, Keating 2001, Aguilera de Prat 2002, Duerr 2015, Caron 2016, Cetrà 2019]: typically, those in Scotland, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Belgian Flanders, and Northern Italy, tired of contributing to national solidarity, attracted attention because they could claim
forms of autonomy or independence that appeared economically viable and fueled a "nationalism of the rich " [Dalle Mulle 2018]. With Corsica and Sardinia, our strategy here is the opposite: we are faced with two regions where protest is reemerging from poor regions that are largely dependent on public support from the state they are contesting and which might seem to have more to lose than to gain by distancing themselves from it. How can we understand this paradox? The astonishment is further reinforced by another surprise that further justifies the choice to focus on two island regions: Corsica, which has had special status since 1982, has seen its powers strengthened and consolidated within the Collectivité de Corse (Corsican Regional Authority), newly established in 2018. Sardinia, a region with special status since 1948, has also seen some of its prerogatives strengthened with the federal-inspired reform of 2001. How can we understand that autonomist or independence-
al protest is growing even as the mechanisms of decentralization, supposed to respond to historical regionalist demands, have increased? In other words, why are regions that are both more dependent and more decentralized than others becoming the site of such territorial contestation?
It is clear that our exploration is thus likely to make a substantial critical contribution to the literature.
In summary, the project therefore aims to understand surprising mobilizations reappearing in areas where they would be least expected, assess whether they bring about the change they claim to, and, in this way, understand how democracies also change through the territory and not only through the vicissitudes of national politics.
Methodology and approach
The approach is based on two pillars, each of which constitutes a deliverable setting a fundamental objective broken down into sub-objectives:
Deliverable 1: contexts. The unprecedented strength of regional nationalist mobilization in our field raises questions about its dynamics: a phenomenon with ancient roots but generally weak over the long term and vigorous in the recent period requires 1) (sub-deliverable 1.1) tracing the cyclical dynamics of the process over the long term in order to analyze the explanatory factors and situate (sub-deliverable 1.2) the context of institutional accommodation (historical process of decentralization). This point is important because it allows us to assess the degree of innovation or, conversely, the "recycling" of older demands. This work will be carried out on the basis of targeted documentary and archival research on site—since the dissemination of work relating to these regions is largely concentrated there—the reconstruction of the regulatory framework and its evolutions, and interviews with key actors embodying State-region relations in order to assess, beyond the legal framework, the problematic issues between these two levels.
Deliverable 2: Mobilization. In this dimension, the aim is to capture and characterize the ideological content (sub-deliverable 2.1) conveyed in the recent context around three structuring dimensions in the discourse of this political family (culture, economy, politics) through the collection of electoral manifestos, partisan press and web
, and interviews with activists from the organizations in question. It seems particularly important here to situate mobilization strategies in distinct arenas (partisan, movements, associations, unions, etc.). This mission includes a potential original feature: that of
assessing the extent to which, in a context of what is now a structural environmental crisis, the actors in question have been likely to develop an "eco-nationalist" " [Margules 2021] or "green" nationalism [Posocco & Watson 2022], combining regionalist discourse with environmental
causes, in order to understand how these actors are shaping the issues related to the current climate crisis and its consequences in their own way. From this perspective, island environments have specific ecosystems that require special protection but which, in the Mediterranean, are being damaged by over-tourism and the maintenance or establishment of military infrastructure: they are particularly relevant areas. Thanks to the territorial disconnect at work here, there is an opportunity to broaden our understanding of current environmental mobilization beyond established environmentalist groups. This could lay the groundwork for future exploration of public action in this area. At the same time, this deliverable will include a second section (sub-deliverable 2.2) on electoral performance and institutional integration in order to understand, on the one hand, the drivers of public support, based on available survey data, and, on the other hand, how these actors behave when they become elected officials pursuing a policy rather than opponents criticizing it. This will provide an opportunity for a preliminary exploration of the type of measures established as priorities: this exploration will make it possible to develop thinking on the relevance of a subsequent systematic exploration of territorial governance
patterns, reduced if necessary to certain specific sectors such as the environment.
The implementation schedule, spread over 18 months between mid-2024 and the end of 2025, will follow the order of deliverables, first organizing groundwork devoted to collecting various types of documentation (national archives relating to regional cases—hence the inclusion of missions to capitals, Paris and Rome – and regional documentation from university libraries and local institutions (Assembly of Corsica, Regional Council of Sardinia) – alongside the refinement of the literature review (in order to put regional cases into perspective with other European cases and identify their similarities or specificities). This first stage (months 1 to 7) will enable the precise identification of the questions that will inform the series of
s (spread over months 8 to 14) with the actors (leaders and activists of the organizations). The final part will conclude the exploratory project (months 15 to 18) with the drafting and dissemination of the initial results, in accordance with disciplinary practice, first in the form of presentations at international
and national conferences, then in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Fundamentally, we aim to break the academic silence at the national level and contribute to international research.
Potential impact and repercussions
The deliverables previously presented as part of the method and schedule outlined should enable two types of scientific results to take shape: a novel empirical contribution on largely neglected cases, an innovative interpretation of an all too often ignored "nationalism of the poor," and a stimulating exploration of the links between nationalism and environmentalism.
Given the originality of the cases and their potential critical significance, we are convinced that they are likely to provide the best possible conditions for preparing more ambitious research that could be funded as part of an ANR project and then as part of a Horizon
Europe project. The consolidation of the state of the art, in situ exploration of the field, and publication of a series of initial results will lend credibility to such a request, which will then require broadening the range of cases studied within a more structured organizational framework and enriching the collaborative network enabling such a project
. The latter, which is part of one of the laboratory's major areas of focus ("Political Territories") and likely to have strong links with the "Environment" area, is designed, through a return to former fields of study, as a prelude to a structural orientation of our research agenda for the coming years.
The ramp-up of the project will involve identifying a larger number of European cases with comparable characteristics (economic weakness, decentralization mechanisms) and will be covered by a research team that includes young local researchers and has an international focus.