Faculty of Law

Federalism is an important institutional option for the management of difference in multinational states. A number of scholars have argued that the internal boundaries of such states should divide each constituent group into several federal units. In theory, boundary engineering of this type should activate cross-cutting cleavages, subvert secessionist movements and, ultimately, foster political integration and stability. This article, by contrast, demonstrates the conditions under which the subdivision of territorial units can destabilise polities. Where statehood is a central symbol in nationalist narratives of constituent groups, the fragmentation of the sub-state unit will be perceived as a threat to national identity of the group in question. The article compares former Yugoslavia and Nigeria, two cases in which such processes led to divergent outcomes.

This article offers several interlinked hypotheses aimed at greater understanding of sustainable internal self-determination (political autonomy) within multinational states. At its core is the argument that political grievances of the largest national collective are a critical element in understanding the possibility of accommodation of claims for internal self-determination. Where majority grievances are intense and directly linked with the claims to self-determination of smaller national communities, self-determination will be a constant source of destabilizing political tensions. The second part of the article posits that even in such circumstances, there are ideational and organizational pathways through which majority grievances can be tempered. I use the example of socialist Yugoslavia and post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina to illustrate this point and suggest future areas for research.

Through a detailed examination of institutional discourses in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article demonstrates that formal political institutions may play a more layered role than is allowed by existing theories of nationalist and ethnic conflict. Competing institutional preferences of Bosniak, Serb, and Croat elites are not simply instruments for the achievement of collective or individual goals. They are symbolically salient expressions of collective identity as well. For Bosniak elites, the stated preference for a non-ethnicized territorial framework and majoritarian central government suggest the vision of a multiethnic, but not institutionally multinational, Bosnian political community. Their Serb and Croat counterparts, by contrast, insist on the continued ‘ethnicization’ of the territorial architecture and the central government apparatus. These preferences express an understanding of Bosnia as a state of three discrete political communities. Any attempts at comprehensive institutional reform must thus reckon with the opposing and deeply embedded visions of institutions-as-symbols. The theoretical implications of this work go well beyond the Bosnian case.

The modern state rests on a collective delusion. It requires that most of its residents agree that the arbitrarily drawn borders of the state are logical and permanent, and that the population living within those borders forms a single political community. Yet, one of the most persistent features of the past 200 years of history has been the resistance to this political fiction. The homogenizing idea of the nation-state continues to be challenged by multinational reality. ` This course investigates central aspects of this tension. It starts with exploring the link between nationhood and legitimacy of modern statehood, and examines the issue of ethnic and national diversity as they relate to political legitimacy. It then shifts to the explanations for successful and unsuccessful homogenization of national identities within states. The second half of the course examines the various aspects of the politics of multinational statehood, from the management of difference through federalism and consociationalism, to mobilization for secession and secessionist outcomes. We will explore both successful and unsuccessful secessions, including those pursued through violent and non-violent means (civil wars and referenda). The course also addresses domestic and international, as well as political and legal aspects of the practice of creation of new states. Course materials combine theoretical and conceptual readings with case studies from around the world.

This article addresses the debate about the relative utility of accommodative federalism as a method of conflict management in multinational states. It challenges the 'substantivist' bias of existing literature by demonstrating that symbolic aspects of territorial reform (formal recognition of minority nationhood) may matter more than substantive ones (e.g. shifts in decision rights or resources) in accounting for the escalation of secessionist crises. The argument rests on a comparison between processes of territorial accommodation of Catalonia and Quebec. When autonomy for minority regions is broadened without symbolic recognition, majority elite response unfolds in the policy arena, mostly through attempts to symmetrize autonomy arrangements. However, when combined with formal symbolic recognition of minority nationhood, the extension of territorial autonomy paves the way for majority political backlash. Majority's open political opposition to the minority national project can, in turn, produce a strong secessionist counter-reaction.

Comparative political scientists have sought to remedy their subdiscipline’s structuralist tendencies by paying greater analytical attention to transformative political events. Yet, our conceptual understanding of events remains rudimentary. The article addresses this conceptual gap in two ways. First, it foregrounds symbolic meaning-making as the constitutive attribute of events. Second, it demonstrates that events are not inherently agency-facilitating by developing the concept of prospectively framed events. These are occurrences that actors know will take place, but of whose outcome they are uncertain. Political challengers frame the upcoming event so as to discursively trap incumbents into political action they would rather not undertake. The article demonstrates this process by tracing the conflict between secessionist challengers and political incumbents within the Catalan nationalist movement between 2006 and 2010. The concluding section discusses the causal implications of the argument.

Grievance is a prominent feature of mobilization for radical political change. Existing scholarship, however, does not pay sufficient attention to the temporal texture of grievance narratives. Temporally “flat” narratives of
grievance are ill equipped to provide either the cognitive or emotional stimulus for major political reorientation. In response to this issue, the article develops the concept of collective exhaustion master frames. These are frames that narrate the aggrieved community’s arrival to a threshold of collective impatience. Such narratives have two functions—to legitimize radical departures from prevailing political habits (a cognitive task) and
to stimulate collective impatience with the political status quo (an emotional management task). In addition to developing the concept of exhaustion frames, the article demonstrates its empirical relevance by outlining five distinctive framing episodes, starting with the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The conclusion outlines the future directions for the study of collective impatience and points to the range of implications for political psychology and adjacent disciplines.

This chapter examines the role of private big business in the debates on the economic costs and benefits of secession in Catalonia, Quebec, and Scotland. It conceptualizes private big business as a unique social actor, one with the incentive, the power, and the legitimacy to challenge secessionist actors' claims about the economic consequences of independence. In addition, it outlines the strategies deployed by secessionist actors to counter or neutralize big business skepticism. The chapter is a conceptual stepping stone toward a larger project on the role of business actors in identity conflicts and social mobilization.

n the growing literature on the management of differences in multinational states, institutions (such as territorial autonomy or power-sharing) are typically understood as means through which various stakeholders achieve their goals. This scholarship is largely silent on the expressive and symbolic dimensions of those institutions. This is a major oversight, limiting our understanding of the politics of multinational states. I demonstrate the importance of institutional meaning by exploring the politics of federal a/symmetry in Canada, particularly in response to Quebec’s demands for greater recognition. The article’s central argument is that formal federal symmetry expresses and symbolically reproduces Canadian state nationalism. Attention to the symbolic dimension of state institutions—including federal ones—has the potential to open up new avenues of understanding of both the politics of institutional change in multinational states and the impact such change might have on the stability and inclusiveness of those states.

The nation-state is a double sleight of hand, naturalizing both the nation and the state encompassing it. No such naturalization is possible in multinational states. To explain why these countries experience political crises that bring their very existence into question, standard accounts point to conflicts over resources, security, and power. This book turns the spotlight on institutional symbolism.

When minority nations in multinational states press for more self-government, they are not only looking to protect their interests. They are asking to be recognized as political communities in their own right. Yet satisfying their demands for recognition threatens to provoke a reaction from members of majority nations who see such changes as a symbolic repudiation of their own vision of politics. Secessionist crises flare up when majority backlash reverses symbolic concessions to minority nations. Through a synoptic historical sweep of Canada, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, The Symbolic State shows us that institutions may be more important for what they mean than for what they do.

A major contribution to the study of comparative nationalism and secession, comparative politics, and social theory, The Symbolic State is particularly timely in an era when the power of symbols - exemplified by Brexit, the Donald Trump presidency, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement - is reshaping politics.