Ethno-nationalist Preferences and Identities

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel advance our understanding of the politics of identity in ethnically and nationally heterogeneous states around the globe. The papers address a range of related questions, including how ethno-national identity manifests itself and how we can best conceptualize and measure it; how ethno-national identity shapes political institutions; and how civil society and private enterprise facilitate and limit self-determination struggles.

Berwick and Belanger’s paper proceeds from the premise that existing approaches to measuring identities at sub-state levels do not always capture what researchers wish to measure. To address this issue, the paper examines the difference between close-ended, quantitative measures of national identity and results emerging from open-ended questions in which respondents explain their national identity in their own words. The Quebec-based study promises to improve the validity of our measures of national identification.

The paper submitted by Carl Müller-Crepon examines the patterns of sub-state administrative boundary creation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The author argues that aligning administrative borders with ethnic geography increases short term governance efficiency. At the same time, since this ethnic principle tends to reinforce divisions, governments may try to sub-divide groups into multiple regions. The paper models administrative borders with a probabilistic spatial partition model, showing that the former pattern prevails – administrative boundaries tend to correspond with ethnic ones, though this is more typical of former British colonies and patterns of indirect rule than with countries that were French colonies.

The last two papers examine the role of actors not normally considered in secessionist mobilization: civil society organizations and private enterprise. Hierro’s paper examines the role of the large pro-independence civil society organization, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), on independentist mobilization in Catalonia. The author uses differences in the timing of the establishment of ANC branches to assess whether and how the branches influenced voting patterns during this period. The study finds that while branch establishment did not have an effect on voter turnout, it did stimulate vote for independence options in 2012 and 2015 regional elections.

Basta, by contrast, explores how the participation of private enterprise limits the growth in support for independence, juxtaposing the instances of independence referenda where private big business was a significant presence (Quebec, Catalonia, Scotland) to carefully selected instances where referenda were held without the presence of private big business (Slovenia, Western Australia). The project demonstrates that during secessionist crises, through public opposition to independence, and through the financing of counter-secessionist political and civil society options, business can inadvertently serve as connective tissue in divided states, overcoming the challenge of polarizing nationalisms.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Testing Multiple Identity Measures in Substate Nations: A Quebec-Based Experiment - Elissa Berwick, McGill University; Eric Belanger, McGill University

• Ethnicity and Administrative Geographies in Sub-Sahara Africa - Carl Müller-Crepon, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Nurturing Independentism: Movements and Parties in Secessionist Contexts - Maria Jose Hierro, Yale University

• Private Enterprise as Integrative Force in Secessionist Contests - Karlo Basta, University of Edinburgh

Chair

• Karlo Basta University of Edinburgh

Discussant

• Laia Balcells Georgetown University