1 INTRODUCTION “A nation is a large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people.”--Oxford English Dictionary “Two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are the artifacts of men’s convictions and loyalties and solidarities.”—Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (1983) As a native San Diegan, with branches of my family history tied to the United States since before the Revolutionary War, I feel comfortable here, a member of a society that I accept and which accepts me. The government that can influence my life in innumerable ways, though based 2,000 miles away from me, I feel no particular distance from. Those who represent me, and those who represent everyone else in this country, I view as part of the same fabric. Though a Georgia congressman and a California senator may disagree on every policy and come from significantly divergent ways of life, I still see them as part of the same nation, my nation. In other words, despite the enormous diversity of opinions, cultures, belief systems, and ways of life in the United States, in my view, I live in a country that represents my nation, and my nation is reflected by my country. To paraphrase famed social anthropologist Ernest Gellner, my nationalist goals, for the borders of my nation to be aligned with the borders of my state, have been fulfilled. In this regard, I am a very lucky person; in many places around the world, this is simply not the case. Nations (essentially this is a social construct, a community with a shared history and culture to form a distinct people) without a state (a political construct, an organized territory with a government with clear sovereignty) exist all over the world, from highly advanced and wealthy 2 democracies like Canada (Quebec) and Great Britain (Scotland) to some of the most desperately poor and dictatorial places in the world like Pakistan (Balochistan) and Myanmar (Shan). Collectively, these nations1 constitute millions of people, and in some cases, a significant proportion of the population and economic might of the states to which these nations belong (of the twenty largest cities in Spain, seven are in one of the three major Spanish nations-Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country). It may be difficult to fully understand the feeling of being within a nation that is not represented at the state political level, to have such distinct interests and beliefs, cultures and values-and in some cases even spoken languages-and to know that a majority may always thwart a nation’s goals, and that the protection of a person’s interests as he sees it within the context of his nation may, depending on the type of government, be at the whim of a people who are not a member of his nation and do not see themselves as such. This mismatch in the lines between the nation and the state, where the cultural boundaries of a people do not share the same area as its political boundaries, is largely a result of a complex and messy history. Nations have been conquered, been absorbed, been destroyed, have gone from one country to another, have been split, and in some cases reunited. There may perhaps be no better example of this than in Europe, which has had a long and colorful history of disregarding the desires of the nation in order to fulfill the needs of the political world. Depending on how you define the term (I will be using the members of the Council of Europe), there are 47 states in Europe today2. But if one looks at the history of Europe, the number of nations far exceeds that, 1This paper will use the terms “nation” and “region” synonymously. Though I recognize that there are important distinctions between these terms, for the purposes of this paper, the terms nation and region should be taken to mean the same thing: a social construct constituting a self-acknowledged community with a common history and culture. 2 http://hub.coe.int/ 3 with some current states consisting of over half a dozen distinct nations (Russia, for example, has 14 “autonomous republics”, indicating distinct nationalistic, linguistic, and religious differences). Possibly the worst case in Europe, in which the interests of international diplomacy and the wins and losses of war trumped any notion of national self-determination is the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During its existence from 1867 to 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with two parliaments and a single monarch, consisted of 12 distinct languages, ranging from German and Italian to Croatian and Ukrainian. In addition, the land mass constituted parts of what today are 13 different countries, none of which speak the same primary language (in other words, the languages spoken in the empire were geographically contiguous with nations outside the border of the Empire).3 Because of the enormous number of diverse language and national groups, politics often tended to focus on disputes among the language groups. This also may help explain in part how it was so easy for the Empire to dissolve after WWI, with such a strong lack of national unity. While some European states have reacted with enormous hostility and oppression to any notion of an internal group vying for the attention, loyalty, and attachment of the people, other states have reacted in more pragmatic ways. One of the ways in which the state can acknowledge the importance of the nation as both a cultural and a political unit, without dissolving the state, is to devolve power from the state to the nation. Devolving power can entail a wide range of responsibilities and duties, from minimal, mostly cultural powers to significant economic and political abilities. Occasionally these powers are devolved to local councils that work within the preexisting national government, while in other 3 Gaetano Cavallaro (2010). Disaster Ending in Final Victory: The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Gaetano Cavallaro. p. 201. ISBN 978-1413-46801-4. Retrieved 1 January 2013. 4 cases, a government bureau is set up at the state level to implement these nation-specific policies. At the most nation-specific level, the new powers are implemented through a national legislature, distinct from the state and designed to act upon the powers it has been provided by the state. Devolving power to a nation in the form of a parliament is important and differs from other forms of devolution. In some cases, power can be devolved by increasing power to local councils, or by creating special regulatory bodies controlled by members of that nation (for example, for many years, policy relating to Scotland in the UK was regulated by the Scotland Office, a bureaucratic branch of the UK government whose members were chosen by the UK government), or by increasing the autonomy of more localized groups, like schools or churches. Devolving power in the form of a parliament is important because it creates a unique yet familiar institution that could potentially end up competing with the state legislature. For nationalists, it places power in the hands of their own people (and often, nationalists will argue that they would be better suited to rule themselves anyway), outside the influence of the rest of the state. But devolving a legislature is important in other ways. People would vote for both parliaments and as a result individuals can feel a personal connection to both (rather than an unelected regulatory body) and understand the similarities between the two. Both of these legislatures have powers that can control or influence many important aspects of a person’s life. If one sees one of these parliaments as more competent, or better capable of addressing their needs, it could lead a person to desire greater power be invested in the more capable legislature. And if one sees the state legislature as acting against the needs of them or their community, they could look to the national legislature as the one that most adequately addresses their needs. Though a national legislature would not by definition lead to independence, it can provide a useful framework to 5 understand what independence might look like for a nation. It can give independence a more tangible feel, rather than a hazy view of what independence would mean. A national parliament can provide the concrete institutions that are vital to the establishment of the state. It can therefore make independence seem like less of an outlandish notion to consider. The devolution of power in the hands of a parliament is a significant event. In most cases, it involves the restructuring of government, and in the cases of Europe it often means devolving power from formerly unitary, highly centralist governments to quasi-federalist ones. However, for the governments considering this policy, many regard this restriction of power as a potentially dangerous proposition. As the next chapter will describe, a central issue with devolving power is not so much what the powers will entail, but how the people will react to this new provision of power, and was this will mean for the future of the nation and the state. Some (often the political elites who support devolution) will argue that devolving power to stateless nations is an effective way to provide those who feel their needs as members of a nation with distinct interests from the state are not being met, while still protecting the power of the state.