Judith Sijstermans’s research while affiliated with University of Aberdeen and other places

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.

Throughout its 40-year history, the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest) has established itself as an important player within the Belgian party system, albeit with significant electoral fluctuations. In 2019, it became the second largest party in Flanders. The party developed and maintained a mass-party organisation by investing significantly in local party branches and in a rigid vertically articulated structure. It relies heavily on social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate to supporters beyond the more limited group of party members. Using both modern and traditional tools, VB representatives aim to create communities of supporters bonded to the party, facilitating dissemination of the party’s messages. Despite this investment in a grassroots organisation, the VB’s decision-making remains highly centralised. Social media and local branches allow informal consideration of members’ views, but the party has not created significant mechanisms for internal democracy. While it is often claimed that political parties have moved away from the “mass-party” model, this article demonstrates that the VB still maintains characteristics of the mass party, albeit with a modern twist. New social media tools facilitate attempts to foster communities and disseminate party messages among a wider group of supporters, both formal members and more informal sympathisers.

On 1 October 2017, Catalans went to the polls to vote on independence. Catalan independentists called for international, particularly European, support. EU leaders remained wary, but representatives of Europe’s sub-state nationalist parties flocked to Barcelona to express their solidarity. In this article, we show that the Scottish National Party’s support was both less cohesive and less intense than the more assertive expression of solidarity from the Flemish Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie. We consider party interactions in the European context through the lens of transnational solidarity. We find that solidarity is refracted through intra-party dynamics, domestic policy debates, and the historical trajectories of parties in the European context. Existing international relationships provide arenas for interaction, but ultimately domestic opportunities conditioned parties’ responses to the Catalan referendum. This meaningful, albeit contingent, solidarity between sub-state nationalists is worthy of exploration in the context of ongoing Catalan and Scottish independence processes.

In the 1980’s minority nationalist parties adopted a policy of “independence in Europe.” Paradoxically, the policy simultaneously advocated conceding powers to a supranational body and taking back powers from the state. EU regional development programs initially spurred these pro-European policies, but these programs have since failed. Given the EU incentives, why do minority nationalist parties remain pro-European? I test a bottom-up, party political theory and use the British case studies of the Scottish National Party and the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. I argue that these parties have remained pro-European because they are small oppositional parties. As small oppositional parties, minority nationalist parties have unique strategic mechanisms that incentivize policy inertia. These mechanisms are: (1) the continuity and dominance of party leadership in making EU policy, (2) underdeveloped policy positions, and (3) the importance of transnational coalitions. Implications include the possibility that as minority nationalist parties grow in size and power, they might alter their European position to suit changing strategic considerations.