1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

C00123268
role of violence as a movement strategy. He has also The nation-state structure, though fiercely criticized,
drawn attention to the manner in which the Spanish is also a near-permanent political feature, and it will
state sought to placate ethnic demands for separatism structure the degree of regional autonomy available to
by offering a form of regional autonomy to Euskadi, substate nationalities. A "Europe of the Nations" ideal
Catalonia, Gallicia, and Andalucia. The gesture origi- is still a long way removed from the regional eco-
nally generated much euphoria but was followed by a nomic reality that most groups must face but, despite
decade of disappointment that was manifest in what the apparent impracticability of the desire for regional
he calls the "rejectionist option"-whereby the major- autarky, remains one of the most strident voices heard
ity of the electorate in the Basque provinces consis- in Europe.
tently voted in an anti-Madrid fashion. The trend is
obvious in each-of the seven elections held since the
Basque Autonomy Statute entered force. The situation The Nation-State in Transition?
was compounded by the post-1987 trend in which
regionalist parties gained electoral strength in Valen- The nation-state is being challenged and reevaluated
cia, Aragon, Navarra, Majorca, Cantabria, and Canar- by a number of contemporary forces, both from above
ias-areas that had little, if any, sense of historical and from below. Within the new European order, two
regionalism. trends have a particularbearing on the capacity of eth-
nolinguistic minorities to renegotiate their role in the
The nature of Basque nationalism is likely to change European division of labor. The first is the weakening
as postindustrial Spain continues to evolve and adjust. of national economic sovereignty and the transfer of
The trend toward a loosening of the central grip on the key economic powers from state legislatures to the
constituent regions is gathering pace here as in many European Commission, and the second is the sharing
other European states. Clark forecasts that: of political authority among units in the state system.
as advanced industrial societies become more com- Despite the current difficulties with the European
plex, diverse, and pluralistic, they require regimes Monetary Regime (ERM) and the post-Maastricht
that are more decentralized, disaggregated, and negotiations, the European Union has gone a long way
autonomous. In Spain, where the existing local and toward an integrated management of the constituent
provincial units may be too small or too restricted in economies. It has established policies on competition,
other ways to assume a vigorous role in the manage- trade, monetary exchange rates, science and techno-
ment of society, the solution lies in the creation of
middle-range political entities called 'meso-govern- logical research, and-to some extent-foreign
ments,' smaller than the nation-state, but larger and affairs. At the regional level the growth of agreements
more encompassing than cities and provinces" such as the Four Motors program, which linked
(p. 41). Baden-Wurttemberg, Rhones Alpes, Lombardy, Cata-
lonia, and Wales, help sustain an element of relative
This conclusion is valid for Italy, France, Belgium, autonomy from the central state apparatus; this is par-
and the United Kingdom but unlikely to be adopted ticularly important for job creation and for construct-
willingly, especially in the latter. ing a more diverse economic profile than has hitherto
been the case. In places like Catalonia and Wales,
If the drift toward separatism in Spain is contained, where inhabitants continue to speak indigenous lan-
however, a significant ethnic issue will remain in guages, this decentralization is an obvious way to
Euskadi and Catalonia. There is increasing evidence slow down outmigration and language shift, thereby
that the post-Franco reforms designed to introduce easing one of the key determinants of ethnic antago-
Eusquerra and Catalan to new public domains, such as nism. Such moves represent a broader pattern of
education, commerce, the media, and the law, have attempts that seek to bypass some central state author-
been less effective than anticipated in assimilating ity and nurture regional-level power.
nonindigenous Spaniards and North Africans into the
new nationalist social order.
48