Multiethnic Regionalisms in Southeastern Europe

Statehood Alternatives

Dejan Stjepanović

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781137585844
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137585851
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Introduces the notion of regionalism to the literature on nationalism in  Southeastern Europe

Compares regionalism within Dalmatia, Istria and Vojvodina

Offers a contextual analysis that demonstrates the interplay of structure and agency

© The Author(s) 2018

Dejan StjepanovićMultiethnic Regionalisms in Southeastern EuropeComparative Territorial Politicshttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58585-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Dejan Stjepanović¹

(1)

Politics & IR, School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

End Abstract

Accommodation of territorial diversity and the ‘nationalities questions’, the alignment of political community, territory, and the state, despite increasing permeability of borders and advancing supranational integration, are still highly salient issues in many parts of Europe. Violent territorial conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine or the break-up of Yugoslavia , are somewhat of an exception in the last two and a half decades. However, issues of self-determination , various other non-violent centre-periphery disputes and manifestations of territoriality are present throughout the continent. Demands for autonomy or independence in Western Europe in the cases of Scotland, Catalonia, or Flanders have received significant scholarly and media attention. Other similar instances of territorial politics often go unnoticed. Politics of multiethnic regionalisms in the historic¹ regions of Dalmatia , Istria , and Vojvodina (in present-day Croatia and Serbia ), were overshadowed by the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia . This book is an attempt not only to do justice to the cases but also to add a valuable contribution to the scholarship on territorial politics and nationalism . By shedding light on plurinational, multinational, and sectional regionalism in Istria, Vojvodina, and Dalmatia since 1990, we can achieve a more nuanced understanding of territorial challenges in European states and beyond.

Territorial politics is one of the largest growing and relevant areas of European political science. The role of non-state actors, multilevel governance, minority rights, European integration, and multilevel party politics are issues attracting an ever-growing number of scholars. While analysing these questions, many studies have considered territories as spatially bounded and historically and geographically determined entities. This is changing gradually and the emerging literature is showing the constructed and frequently overlapping nature of territory.² Despite this, focus is still very much on the territory of the nation-state frequently disregarding other sub-state political or functional territories. Regions,³ due to their smaller geographical size (as compared to nation-states) are sometimes considered conceptually subordinate or of secondary relevance to those of nations. Regions are said to develop into nations and not the other way round. The nation-state is seen as the telos of territorial politics. The book challenges these deterministic understandings of territories, nations, and regions.

Teleology of Exit Options

Disregarding the rough-and-ready argument made by Louis Snyder that regionalism is simply nationalism on a smaller scale or ‘mini-nationalism’,⁴ there is a dominant position in the literature spanning disciplinary boundaries that the processes of construction of regional polities are inherently linked to the ideology of nationalism and eventually lead to the demands for, or actual establishment of, an independent nation-state. Tendencies falling under what can be called the ‘teleology of exit options’ argument are discussed in detail in the following chapter but are worth spelling out. These are related arguments that, however, differ somewhat in focus.

The first one is the straight-line argument and it is particularly dominant in historical and sociological analyses of the development of nationalism . The claim is that regionalisms are either absorbed by central state nationalisms or that they eventually become national projects in their own right. This is often illustrated by prominent examples such as the Catalan regionalism , which over the course of time but especially in the early twentieth century has become a national project.⁵ The argument illustrated by the case studies of this book is that the reverse is possible as well; nation building could develop into regionalism and could seek legitimacy from the same building material (interpretation of histories, identities, and economy). The straight-line argument can be found, albeit in a somewhat different form, in the work of a Marxist-leaning scholar, such as Miroslav Hroch, who considers the creation of modern nations as a linear process (coupled with a predefined set of stages of development) and a telos represented by the ‘fully developed’ nation.⁶ Although Hroch is explicit about the ‘degree of completeness’⁷ of nations other prominent theories of nationalism , such as the one proposed by Ernest Gellner,⁸ often imply that nation building is a one-way process too.

Equally prominent is the understanding, primarily in the fields of international relations, conflict studies, and law, that the institutionalization of territorial autonomy (or other types of decentralized/devolved sub-state regions) is a stepping stone to secession, thus contributing to the slippery slope argument. Arendt Lijphart, in defence of consociationalism, argues not only that regional autonomy strengthens intraethnic cohesiveness increasing the likelihood of interethnic conflict, but also that establishing regional autonomy is a slippery slope to independence .⁹ A more developed argument along similar lines is that by Erin Jenne, who locates autonomy claims on a continuum where cultural autonomy is referred to as less extreme, territorial autonomy moderately extreme, and secession/irredentism as the most extreme claim.¹⁰

There is another argument in the literature, more nuanced and qualified, about the influence of autonomous institutional precedents in the creation of independent states. According to the main proponent of this approach, Philip Roeder, the design of a state’s institutions is the key factor that determines whether politicians will muster sufficient support for independence .¹¹

Finally, there is an argument that regional (sub-state identities) and their politicization incite secessionist demands. Dawn Brancati argues that claims for autonomy are more likely to lead to instability if they are made by regional parties.¹² The ‘negative’ effects associated with decentralizations are, according to her, caused by regional parties that are likely to stimulate conflict and secessionism by promoting regional identities and advocating legislation that can be harmful to other regions or minorities.¹³

Prima facie, many of the arguments falling under the ‘teleology of exit options’ are common sense, especially Roeder’s reference to institutional structures. We can take the recent example of Ukraine’s autonomous region of Crimea to confirm most of the above claims in the literature—an autonomous region of a sovereign state (albeit with the blatant interference of a kin-state) unilaterally seceded while the previously existing institutional framework was used to achieve those aims. Regional identity was mobilized against the central state especially as regards the language policies. However, accepting these arguments at face value could have normative implications, which might be used to justify the central state’s suspicion of autonomy as a stepping stone to secession and towards the possible suppression of minority claims. But, most importantly, many of these arguments in the literature are marred by ‘selecting on the dependent variable’.

Thus, it is worth looking at cases in which secession was possible. There were institutions in place, regional identities were mobilized, and claims were made for the establishment/maintenance of a regional polity, but neither independence featured as a prominent exit option¹⁴ nor did regionalist political parties stimulate conflict: quite the contrary. Thus, rather than speaking of nationalist projects, the subjects of this book are particular kinds of regionalisms, the multiethnic regionalisms.

Multiethnic Regionalisms in Southeastern Europe

Just as elsewhere in Europe, the relations between territories, nations, and regions in Southeastern Europe¹⁵ have been highly convoluted. Nationalism and its violent manifestation in the ex-Yugoslav space in the 1990s are the subject matter of a significant number of scholarly and other, oftentimes sensationalistic, publications. Nevertheless, regionalism , a phenomenon similar in many ways and often intrinsically related to nationalisms in Southeastern Europe, remains underresearched.

A mention of Balkan politics in the 1990s and early 2000s evokes images of ethnic conflict, sectarian nationalism , and political volatility. However, there exist(ed) political projects in the former Yugoslav countries, Croatia , and Serbia in particular, which illustrate that the construction of territories based on exclusive and ascriptive ethnic and/or religious identities was not the only way of engaging in territorial politics. These contested political spaces of Dalmatia and Istria in Croatia and Vojvodina in Serbia were often portrayed by the regionalist political elites as safe havens of coexistence and in many cases avoided violent conflicts amongst regional groups. Some were more successful in their endeavours to institutionalize regional pluralist specificities than others. Istria’s and Vojvodina’s interethnic relations were also largely unscathed by the dissolution of the federal state. On the other hand, Dalmatia lost almost its entire Serb minority and remained a bastion of Croatian nationalism . Even after the 2000 democratic changes, the attempts by Dalmatian regionalist politicians to mobilize an omnipresent regional sentiment towards the creation of a regional polity failed.

Given the similarities of historical experiences and the political context of these cases in the last 25 years, the key objective is to explain why the outcomes of regionalist mobilization varied across the cases. The book shows how regionalism failed to dominate the political space in places where one could expect it to be present (such as Dalmatia ) considering that the regionalist elites used similar strategies and tools of region building from 1990 onwards and that there are precedents of political institutions specific to each of the regions. The primary concern here is to explain how regional political elites (regional entrepreneurs), represented by political parties, used historical, intergroup, and economic references and symbols for (re)constructing regional polities in the three historic regions of present-day Croatia and Serbia .

Hence, the leading question of this book is as follows. Taking into account the existence of historical institutional precedents in Dalmatia , Istria, and Vojvodina and seemingly similar region-building strategies of regionalist political elites, why and how did the outcomes of region building in these sub-state regions differ? In these three cases there were regionalist political parties that emerged initially in 1990 at the time of the establishment of multi-party politics in former Yugoslavia . The declared aim of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Politics, Territory, and Nationalism: A Conceptual Framework
• 3. Istria in Croatia: The Politics of Plurinational Regionalism
• 4. Dalmatia in Croatia: The Politics of Sectional Regionalism
• 5. Vojvodina in Serbia: The Politics of Multinational Regionalism
• 6. Statehood Alternatives: Plurinational, Sectional, and Multinational Regionalisms Compared
• Backmatter