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

Anderson, Paul, Brown Swan, Coree, Ferreira, Carles, Sijstermans, Judith (2023) State making or state breaking?’ Crisis, COVID‐19 and the constitution in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom. Nations and Nationalism, 30 (1). pp. 110-127. ISSN 1354-5078. E-ISSN 1469-8129. (doi:10.1111/nana.12983) (KAR id:102221)

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.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/nana.12983
Uncontrolled keywords: sub‐state nationalism; COVID‐19; Flanders; state nationalism; sub-state nationalism; Catalonia; Scotland
Subjects: J Political Science
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
SWORD Depositor: JISC Publications Router
Depositing User: JISC Publications Router
Date Deposited: 04 Aug 2023 08:39 UTC
Last Modified: 07 Mar 2024 11:23 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/102221 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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