Abstract
This book starts with a summary of the teleological tendencies in the literature on territorial politics and nationalism but also sets out the key question of the book. It explains the selection of the Dalmatian, Istrian, and Vojvodinian cases. Regardless of initial similarities, the outcomes of regionalist mobilization in the cases took the form of constitutionally guaranteed and (nearly fully) functional regional autonomy in Vojvodina; the de facto cultural and administrative autonomy of Istria; co-optation by the central state and the complete obscurity of political regionalism and the absence of an institutionalized autonomy in Dalmatia. To answer the question, the author proposes to look at histories and historiographies, intergroup relations, and economic factors as common arguments regionalist entrepreneurs use in their region-building endeavours.
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Notes
- 1.
The use of the term ‘historic’ in this book does not necessary imply a glorious past but rather the fact these regions emerged in the past and continue to exist.
- 2.
See, for example, Michael Keating, Rescaling the European State: The Making of Territory and the Rise of the Meso (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
- 3.
References to regions (and regionalism) in this work are to sub-state regions and not to their supra-state homonyms, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
- 4.
Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism (London: St James Press, 1990), also Mini Nationalisms: Autonomy or Independence (Greenwood Press, 1982).
- 5.
Xose-Manoel Núñez Seijas, “The Region as Essence of the Fatherland: Regionalist Variants of Spanish Nationalism (1840–1936)” in European History Quarterly 2001; 31.
- 6.
Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
- 7.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 8.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
- 9.
Lijphart, Arend. ‘The Wave of Power-Sharing Democracy’ in Andrew Reynolds (ed), 2002.
- 10.
Erin Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 39–44.
- 11.
Roeder, Philip G. Where Nation-States Come from: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
- 12.
Dawn Brancati, “Pawns Take Queen: The Destabilizing Effects of Regional Parties in Europe”, Constitutional Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 2, (2005), p. 156.
- 13.
It must be noted that although not explicitly referring to Brancati, Jonathan Bradbury shows that there is no necessary causal relation between promotion of sub-state identities by political parties and increased demands for independence . Thus, my argument in theoretical terms is not unique. Bradbury shows that in the Welsh case the increased assertion of Welshness has not led to a rise in support for independence . See Bradbury, Jonathan, and Rhys Andrews. “State Devolution and National Identity: Continuity and Change in the Politics of Welshness and Britishness in Wales.” Parliamentary Affairs 63, no. 2 (April 1, 2010), pp. 229–49.
- 14.
Stefano Bartolini (2005) offers a concept of exit that can be used both for analysing non-secessionist demands by the sub-state regions as well as the territorial management strategies by the central state. Bartolini suggests that territories can exit from within state organizations, creating various forms and levels of partial exit that can be exercised within (and across) territories and is radically different from the total exit options such as secession.
- 15.
Although there are different criteria including geographic, historical, and political for defining states that belong to Southeastern Europe, the states that are most commonly included are Albania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav states (sometimes excluding Slovenia), Greece, and Romania. Hungary, Italy , Moldova, and Turkey could be included as well, depending on the criterion used, although very seldom. This work does not refer to the latter as Southeastern European states. For a more detailed analysis see Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
- 16.
Certainly there are other factors such as territorial management schemes of the central government, for example),
- 17.
Istrian Democratic Assembly, Istarski demokratski sabor – Dieta Democratica Istriana (IDS-DDI).
- 18.
This was to a large degree the case with the Dalmatian regionalist parties analysed here.
- 19.
However, the Dalmatian regionalist party (Dalmatinska akcija—DA) was officially erased from the register of political parties in 2003, following a number of unsuccessful electoral results and attacks by the central state authorities in the 1990s.
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Stjepanović, D. (2018). Introduction. In: Multiethnic Regionalisms in Southeastern Europe. Comparative Territorial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58585-1_1
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