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Radical and Moderate Basque Nationalism: Investigating Strategies for Accommodation
Unformatted Document Text:  1 Radical and Moderate Basque Nationalism: Investigating Strategies for Accommodation. André Lecours Department of Political Science Concordia University ## email not listed ## The persistence of sub-state nationalism in advanced industrialized democratic societies has forced states to develop management approaches and strategies. Spain is one such state since its contemporary sociological reality is characterized by multinationalism, which means that a segment of the country’s population identifies, at least to a degree, with a different national community from the one projected by the state. The Spanish state has been unable to forge a common and un-challenged nation such as the one constructed by the French state (largely through cultural assimilation) or the Swiss state (through mechanisms of political integration that excluded cultural homogenization). It is therefore faced with the task of managing nationalist movements, that is, of responding to their claims. In this context, the Basque Country stands out not only because Basque nationalism has a violent radical stream, but also because it is overall more uncompromising than, for example, Catalan nationalism. This paper examines what approaches and strategies the democratic Spanish state has favoured in responding to Basque nationalism, and it analyzes the consequences of these choices. The perspective adopted in this paper for discussing issues of nationalist conflict management involves two ontological and normative considerations. The first is that it would be illusory to speak of ‘solving’ the ‘national question’ in the Basque Country since the political conflict around this issue is strongly institutionalized in the territorial framework of the system of Autonomous Communities. What can be ‘solved’ in cases

Authors: Lecours, Andre.
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1
Radical and Moderate Basque Nationalism: Investigating Strategies for
Accommodation.
André Lecours
Department of Political Science
Concordia University
## email not listed ##
The persistence of sub-state nationalism in advanced industrialized democratic
societies has forced states to develop management approaches and strategies. Spain is one
such
state
since
its
contemporary
sociological
reality
is
characterized
by
multinationalism, which means that a segment of the country’s population identifies, at
least to a degree, with a different national community from the one projected by the state.
The Spanish state has been unable to forge a common and un-challenged nation such as
the one constructed by the French state (largely through cultural assimilation) or the
Swiss state (through mechanisms of political integration that excluded cultural
homogenization). It is therefore faced with the task of managing nationalist movements,
that is, of responding to their claims. In this context, the Basque Country stands out not
only because Basque nationalism has a violent radical stream, but also because it is
overall more uncompromising than, for example, Catalan nationalism. This paper
examines what approaches and strategies the democratic Spanish state has favoured in
responding to Basque nationalism, and it analyzes the consequences of these choices.
The perspective adopted in this paper for discussing issues of nationalist conflict
management involves two ontological and normative considerations. The first is that it
would be illusory to speak of ‘solving’ the ‘national question’ in the Basque Country
since the political conflict around this issue is strongly institutionalized in the territorial
framework of the system of Autonomous Communities. What can be ‘solved’ in cases


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