State making or state breaking?’ Crisis, COVID‐19 and the constitution in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom

Abstract

As the first cases of COVID‐19 emerged in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom, they did so against a backdrop of heightened constitutional contestation. Capturing the period January 2020 to December 2021 which included three waves of the pandemic in each state and the delivery of vaccines, this article examines how state and sub‐state nationalists articulated their constitutional preferences and territorial claims in the pandemic period. We particularly explore whether the crisis changed state and sub‐state nationalists' territorial demands and how it was used to advance or bolster their territorial aspirations. We find that whilst the pandemic entailed an amplification of extant frames in favour of state dissolution and state integrity, the frames remained, broadly, similar between the pre‐pandemic and pandemic period, suggesting that sub‐state and state nationalist actors stick to a similar playbook, even at moments of profound crisis.

Representing Scotland: Conservative narratives of nation, union, and Scottish independence

“…In line with other empirical research (see, Cetrà and Brown Swan, 2022;Anderson et al, 2023), our analysis highlights the centrality of the economy in Conservative narratives regarding Scotland and its constitutional future. We discern two distinct approaches that appear aimed at different audiences.…”

“…Independence was articulated by the party as a way of pursuing self-determination, but more centrally, pursuing a range of economic and social policy goals, not possible within the constraints of the Union (Mooney and Scott, 2015;Béland and Lecours, 2016). Particularly during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic which coincided with our period of analysis, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon benefitted from perceptions of greater competence, despite outcomes in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom being broadly similar (Anderson et al, 2023). In the summer of 2020, support for independence increased, enhancing the salience of the independence question, and triggering more vociferous attacks on the part of Unionist political actors.…”

“…Specific to the UK case, we examine how state nationalist political elites conceive of Scotland as a political entity within the Union, vis-à-vis England as the majority nation. Second, we expand on our previous empirical research (Brown Swan and Cetrà, 2020;Cetrà and Brown Swan, 2022;Anderson et al, 2023) on state nationalism by focusing on the rhetorical narratives used by Conservatives in the UK to make the case for the Union and against independence. As other scholars have highlighted, research on majority/state nationalism is crucial 'to provide much-anticipated clarification on the relationship between majority and minority nations by fundamentally exploring the means by which the core nation operates' (Lecours and Nootens, 2011: 15).…”