Sub-state nationalism and social solidarity : essays on Spain and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on sub-state nationalism in Europe, concentrating on the critical cases of Spain and the United Kingdom, where recent independence referenda in Catalonia and Scotland illustrate that sub-state nationalism is neither confined to weak states nor a thing of the past. In the first paper, I argue that the mobilization of sub-state identity in Spain influences preferences for what I term policy scope, the physical area in which a policy is intended to apply and be carried out, distinct from policy content, the intended effects of a policy. In the particular case of preferences for redistribution, I find that 1 that strong identifiers in the highly mobilized region of Catalonia, whether they identify more with Catalonia or with Spain, are more likely to support redistribution when its scope is the community with which they most identify.

The importance of scope is not merely due to in-group/out-group bias, but also stems from differential trust in political elites, such that shared identity between respondents and elites increases support for redistribution. In the second paper, I demonstrate that strong identifiers with sub-state units in the United Kingdom display attitudes of bounded social solidarity, adopting different redistributive preferences for the subnational and national community. British-identifiers display more encompassing solidarity and generalized trust, while sub-state identifiers are more apt to distinguish between state and region in their attitudes. Importantly, the bounded social solidarity of strong English, Scottish and Welsh identifiers is not solely the product of selfinterest based dynamics, but rather depends on the complex interplay of regional wealth, individual income, individual identity, and the effect of identity on social trust.

The third paper presents a framework for estimating multidimensional, dynamic group level latent preferences, and leverages it to compare the ideological leanings of Spanish regions. Geographic variation in preferences is particularly relevant in cases such as Spain, where strong regional identities complicate individuals' evaluations of what the state "should" do. Post-stratified regional estimates of latent ideology for Spanish regions highlight how fully understanding preference structure in this context requires grappling with concerns related to policy scope as well policy content.