The 1960s was to be a watershed decade for the re-emergence of ethnicity as a means to oppositional movement mobilisation throughout Europe. States that had become associated with external elites implementing foreign value systems and doctrines in Britain, Spain and Yugoslavia, due to the predominance of a certain ethnic group at the centre and the clearly demarcated geographical regions on the periphery, were now facing movements that were clearly utilising cultural symbols as means of expressing their discontent with, and opposition to, what the state stood for (Boal & Douglas 1982; Curtin et al. 1984; Chaffer 1988; Watson 1996). The creation of new narratives to suit the times, and the subsequent joining of them with narratives of past mobilisations was to place collective memory and shared cultural experience at the centre of much of the political focus (Smith 1983: x). Culture was to become a reference point in response to increased centralisation and act as a means of communication directed at the centre (Deutsch 1963b). The manifestation of a socio-cultural alternative to state defined cultural norms would be seen by Irish, Basque and Croat nationalists as a form of symbolic resistance to the perceived cultural hegemonisation of state.

Greenfeld (1993a: 18) felt that the development of national identity was contingent on cultural specific reasons of pre-modern political development. A point that Markovits and Oliver (1981: 168-169) believe is due to the importance of culture as a tool of political mobilisation outside the paradigm of state repression of the periphery. Culture here plays mainly a motivational role by formulating a focal point for movement activity. The relation between cultural development of a people and formalisation of the nationalist paradigm is dynamic in that both are responsive to pressures placed upon them by the state, and hence change their strategies accordingly.

Cultural Reasons for National Movement Mobilisation: The Peripheries Response to Homogeneic Centralist Cultural Encroachment.

It is within this fluid relationship that the national movement as a narrative, that of a cultural self-manifestation of a community’s history, comes to the fore (Bhabha 1994a, During 1994). The telling and the retelling of a community’s place within the order of societal development becomes a self-generative process that can act as a catalyst to political mobilisation. The nation here acts as a sign of discontent that emerges in times of crisis only to submerge until needed again (Tilly 1993b, 1994b). In this way Bhabha (1994b: 1) feels that much of the literature, except perhaps for Anderson (1993), has ignored the “cultural temporality” of the nation as a movement that utilises cultural circumstances and differences as a means to coherent political mobilisation.

It is in the context, of acting as a cultural manifestation of peripheral discontent against overtly centralist policies, that cultural movements have become equated with the liberation of the people they represent (During 1994: 139). For many minority groups absorbed within large nation-states the borders of political subjugation were not necessarily defined along geo-political lines. They were rather cultural markers that symbolised enfranchisement into the predominant ethnic culture of the centralist elite (Calleo 1995: 19). Culture was thus to take a significant role as both a line of demarcation in terms of class access into the power structures of state, and as a focal point for the raison d’être for a group’s exclusion and subsequent peripheralisation; what Smith (1987: 3) calls a “mobilisation of sentiment.” Communities semi-permanently denied access due to their unwillingness to change began to see their cultural distinctiveness not as a bane to further socio-political development, but as a reason for the development of autonomous structures outside the direct control of the state.

The lessons learnt by disenfranchised ethnic groups through periods of centralisation and industrialisation were geared around the recognition that to survive the processes of modernisation these peripheralised communities must adapt to the conditions that surrounded them (Smith 1991: 70). They were able to realise that for the community to survive modernity, the formation of a coherent political unity based on communal solidarity of purpose and necessity would have to be forged from cultural networks that pervaded society. A homogeneity of purpose then becomes important for a movement seeking restructuring of the state as higher levels of cooperation, communicatively speaking, is needed internally to ensure a heightened state of mobilisation (Gellner 1986: 15; Anderson 1988: 21).

So at the very same time that men become fully and nervously aware of their culture and its crucial relevance for their vital interests, they also lose much of the capacity to revere their society through the mystical symbolism of a religion. So there is both a push and pull towards revering a shared culture directly, unmediated in its own terms: culture is now clearly visible, and access to it has become man’s most precious asset (Gellner 1983a: 176).

The cultural manifestation of the oppositional national alternative is communicative in essence. Designed to allow for the growth of cultural awareness, through placing great significance on the rites of passage embodied in the cultural iconism of the ritualisation of protest, belief and value systems, so as to achieve more coherency within the movement, it becomes an effective tool of oppositional protest (Kecmanovic 1996: 3). The very fact that culturally distinctive organic entities, like language, exist only serve to heighten the legitimacy of these movements as true representatives of the cultural, social, and political needs of these marginalised communities (Deutsch 1979: 33-37). More importantly, in terms of movement repertoire, cultural distinctiveness produces a sense of exclusiveness which can instigate pride within the marginalised community (Greenfeld. 1993a), or the political polarisation considered a necessity for radical mobilisation to occur (Gellner 1983a: 175). Especially, if one accepts that the successful movement is the one that can portray the struggle, and hence the ‘enemy’, as significant to the continued cultural development of the population they represent. This cannot be achieved if the object of disdain, in this case the state, is working with great fluidity.

These submerged cultural networks become a communicative political response to the opposing ideology of state (Melucci 1985). For Hutchinson (1992: 111), this was an exemplification of the fact that cultural nationalism is but a transient force that usually gives way to political nationalism, but never truly fades from the scene. It submerges and then re-emerges usually in response to a deep seated crisis of identity that occurs when centralist state bureaucracies persist with cultural modernisation at the expense of minority identity (Gellner 1974b; Cairns 1994). The development of the Irish national movement from a secular to a joint Protestant-Catholic enfranchisement movement, in the early parts of the eighteenth century, into a Catholic-Gaelic clerical movement, and the eventual transformation into a civil rights movement, reflects the movement ‘mimicking’ the state’s integrative processes, suggesting:

that cultural nationalism is a recurring and, at times, a formative force, capable of channelling the energies of aspiring social groups, “blocked” by established statist patterns, into new political directions. Indeed, the different visions of the Gaelic heritage presented by the three revivals indicate that it may remain a potential matrix of Irish identity, should there be a revulsion against the currents of Europeanisation now washing over Ireland (Hutchinson 1992: 116).

Submerged ethnic roots, hence, can play an important socio-psychological role in reawakening collective consciousness in a long suppressed community. Smith (1987: 2), in discussing the role of submerged ethnicity waiting readily for the catalyst to mobilisation to occur, noted that mythology, memory, destiny, and belonging tend to allow for the development of a mobilised entity known as nationalism which is nothing more than the political mobilisation of organisational cultures. The role of this oppositional cultural mobilisation is significant in defining the parameters of who is ‘we’ and who is the ‘other’. Deutsch (1979: 203) says that for many the words ‘independence’ and ‘security’ symbolise “the freedom and protection of the self from the non-self,” suggesting that the cultural identification with the oppositional movement is a message sent to the centre from the periphery that their needs are not being met. It is also a veiled threat that if sufficient political opportunity structures are not created then new repertoires will be employed to deal with this continued marginalisation.

This reference to the ‘heroic legends of primitive peoples’ lies at the very heart of the inner world of nationalism. To overlook it is to miss one of the mainsprings of a nationalist upsurge since the French Revolution, namely the way in which recent dilemmas and crises are partly resolved through the quest for a lost or submerged past, whose ideal images and exemplars act as prototypes and models for social and cultural innovation (Smith 1983: x).

Culture is utilised as an almost pre-political formalisation, ritualisation and structurisation of the past, into a coherent form of contemporary activism (Gellner 1986; McLaughlin 1993). Thus, culture is more than a physical bond. It is a psychological link that ties individuals into a unified community possessing the necessary symbols for social and political mobilisation (Deutsch 1969b: 15). For Connor (1994: 11) this occurs when there is a rapid transformation of society that incurs a weakening of established social patterns of state sponsored politicisation and when there is a perceived need on behalf of the political community for this void to be filled. The significance, thus, of possessing one’s own flag, language, or narrative as a symbol of independence lies in its signification of intent. As such culture can at once polarise society whilst also challenging the other, i.e. the state.

Identity as a Source of National Movement Mobilisation: National Movement Means of Achieving Social Cohesion, Strategy Consolidation and Communal Resistance to State Centralism.

In times of social, economic and political disparity the national community, or the national movement, becomes the pater familias in which we subsume our ego into the superego in return for the promise of deliverance (Kecmanovic 1996: 114; Tarrow 1977: 122). In doing so it gives the participant, involved in direct social action controlled by the national movement within the cycle of protest, the perception of choice and influence in the day to day running of the movement. Greenfeld (1993a) notes that it is here where the national community, ie, movement, out laps the structurised centralist state. Nationalism requires only for the individual to be actively nationalistic, to openly portray pride in the nation daily, for them to have a perception of importance through deed. Thus, for an Irish Catholic Republican Nationalist, daily experiencing the realities of economic disenfranchisement at the hands of a Protestant state elite, the once yearly participation in a public march not only places them at the centre of the activism for a moment but also provides a sense of self-worth through ritualised self-assertion. This provides a place for all in an often alienating society. A Greenfeld (1993a) points out:

Transcending oblivion through posterity; the restoration of collective dignity through an appeal to a golden age; the realisation of fraternity through symbols, rites and ceremonies, which bind the living to the dead and fallen of the community; these are the underlying functions of national identity and nationalism in the modern world, and the basic reasons why the latter have proved so durable, protean and resilient through all vicissitudes.

This ritualisation of self-assertion is dependent on the state’s ability to provide structures for rebellion within the conflict between centre and periphery. As movements are at once dynamic and reactive, they tend to perpetuate according to the relative state repression that emerges with each renewal of peripheral demands (Smith 1991: 163). The state, hence, provides the forum for the ‘ethno-genesis’ of the other (Wilson 1991; Nikolas 1996; Conversi 1997). This may take the form of the periphery ‘mimicking’ the state ideologically, culturally and strategically. Yet, this ‘mimicking’ is far from complimentary, rather it is a parodying of the state. That is a cyclical reinterpreting of the state’s identity which is eventually assessed, processed and acted upon by the peripheral movement in order to create an autonomous space for the national movement to counter the centre’s own ideational development

Nationalism, moreover, fulfils a psychological need to know one’s “culturo-historical inheritance” amongst social actors desiring a similar charge of state centre-periphery relations (Smith 1991: 163). The ability to share this displacement with others who possess a similar form of social communication, cultural patterns, personality structures, and social habits, tends to provide a security of purpose; in this sense nationalism can be viewed as “one peculiar response to this double challenge of opportunity and insecurity, of loneliness and power” (Deutsch 1979: 25). It is this ability to recognise the commonality of traits that provide the raison d’être for potential future political mobilisation of the periphery in the form of a counter-movement to the state (Weilenmann 1963: 33-34).

Social movements and nationalism per se, once combined, can access political opportunity structures found in the cleavages that emerge between the parallel development of state and periphery. Ideologically this provides space for competing ideologies to continually shape and reshape their communities’ identities within the cycle of reform-protest-reform. Repertoires, of both the state and oppositional movement, expand accordingly. Each strategic intensification of the conflict further entrenches the role of the national doctrine in representing the demands of both communities (Gellner 1988: 208). This leads to a dynamic relationship which defines the centre and periphery’s movements according to each new action frame found within this cyclical perpetuation of each other’s mobilised identity (Brubaker 1996: 20-21) Thus, the core of the radicalisation of ETA’s nationalist ideology can be traced to the three major shifts in the state’s perception of what is Spanish nationalism. For the movement is but a reaction, an affectation of the nature of the state’s perception of it’s own ideological relevance to the continued development of the centralist state doctrine.

Here identification is an extension of action frames designed to, if not replicate, then modulate its manifestation according to the actions of the state that has peripheralised the movement in the first place. Whether or not civil, human, or communal rights are the issue, the validity of having a ready made reference frame for future mobilisation in times of unseen state engendered cleavage is endorsed by movements facing periods of lull in the cycle of protest. In Croatia this is shown in the way communities who had previously sought integration, rallied behind the nationalist banner in order to assert a desired change in direction on political, social and civil issues (Drakulic 1993: 20).

National Movement Expression of the Collective Popular Will and the Nation as a Resource Frame for Future Anti-State Mobilisation.

National identity provides for the consolidation of a united political will. A notion that is perpetuated by the will of the people in order to consolidate their cultural specific path to political and social development. Yet, it is one that is responsive to the integrative processes of the state. It is in this union that a dynamic relationship develops between the expression of identity and the assertion of an identity as a means of collective demonstration (Brubaker 1996: 22). National movements tend to realise this and include this identification factor of nationalism with their own perception of community; an important fact in the ritualisation of protest within the psyche of potential activists through rebellion, uprisings and revolutions (Weilenmann 1963: 46.) As such a nation, I find, is merely the conscious moulding of a people into a physical expression against an extended order. It is a mental/intellectual union of collective minds, along a culturo-specific line, in order to more easily protect the rights, law and common will chosen by the people.

Nations, hence, are collections of individuals who unite into a political unit according to their needs, it is the historic re-emergence of the cycle of protest in the collective psyche of the marginalised community that I believe creates a space for the development of the cultural significance of the nation. Thus, each expansion of repertoire is but a response to the sophistication of the centre’s response to peripheral rebellion. Nationalism allows for an increase in repertoire creating a larger scope in which the movement can interact in the battle against the competing state identity (Schöpflin 1995; Kupchan 1995).

In this sense the national identity becomes an embodiment of living protest, as the formalisation of an oppositional identity that competes directly with that proffered by the state (Kecmanovic 1996: 14). National identity provides the movement with a new codification and structurisation outside the less fluid societal definitions that emerged as a by-product of ‘Great Nation-State’ consolidation that enables the peripheral move to ‘mimic’ action for action, frame for frame, the state with the aim of wresting the control of state instigated reform away from the centre (Smith 1983: xxi).

National consciousness, hence, acts as a cohesive agent for movements who otherwise would struggle to justify continued existence after the initial goals of the movement had been achieved (O’Brien & Vanech 1969; Druckman 1994). The sense of societal continuance gained through equating the struggle with the historic experience of the community, places the movement’s existence at the centre of the political mobilisation potential of the community. If the necessity of the movement is proven for the continuance of the community, then a condition of reciprocity based on the ability of the movement to provide the political opportunity structure that the state has failed to, becomes integral to future identity mobilisation; even if within the structure of state engendered conflict. Simultaneously, the national consciousness provides the movement public legitimacy that is wider than the cause of their initial mobilisation within the established cycle of state reformation and peripheral development.

Central to nationalism’s ability to be viewed as a strong cohesive force within a movement, is in how it is perceived as both voluntaristic and dynamic, whilst still granting a sense of continued development of revolutionary ideological processes geared to change according to the state’s reaction (Tiryakian & Nevitte 1985a: 58-61). Rogowski (1985: 87) felt that the success of nationalism lay in the harsh rationality of its joint exclusive and inclusive nature through its ability to produce value-maximising behaviour when faced with the self-interest of competing elites and increased state-engendered social division. The contemporaneous nature of the doctrine is derivative of the link between the perception of a mode to individual self-determination, through enfranchisement and the revolutionary nature of its demands of creating shifts within society, through pressuring the centre to create more access points for marginalised communities on the basis of the perceived rights of collectivities (Kamenka 1975a: 7-10).¹ This effectively created a doctrine that placed sovereignty at once both within the individual and the collective.

Doctrinal nationalism, hence, purports to oppose elitist concepts of ideological rule from the centre through supporting the dissolution of power upon the periphery and the re-legitimisation of new power centres (Nairn 1993: 160). It is disruptive, and as such, enacts the role of dynamic agent of societal change whilst reconsolidating the position of the movement employing it ideologically as an inviable right. The subsequent exclusion of the movement does not necessarily mean acceptance amongst the elite that had been previously opposed. Especially, considering that the rivalry between the two groups may be so intense that there is honour in ignoring the enemy by both sides. This means that the potential advantages that may be gained in initially breaking the mould, may be outweighed by overall costs of state initiated repression (Kecmanovic 1996: 45; van der Wusten 1988). For fledgling movements, bent on reforming repressive state systems, who rely on significant popular support under such heavy policing, this can prove enticing when initial costs may outweigh immediate gains. Specifically, during lulls in the cycle of protest in periods of centralist appeasement of initial protest demands.

The movement by itself is the progenitor of national consciousness but it is the states reaction to this ideological mobilisation that transforms this innate awareness into political agency. State ideology acts as the trigger in this process, but in itself, this state ideology may be but a response to external ideological pressures that emerge as a by-product of state centralisation (Tilly 1975b, 1975c, 1994b, 1997). One that forces the mobilising movement to seek a similar ideological justification for their oppositional organisation through ‘mimicking’ the state itself. Herein lies the dynamic relationship between the ruling elite and the peripheral elite. As a legitimising agent, nationalism provides the necessary link between the old order and the justification for the required change.

Ideology, namely, legitimises both the authority and its competency range by linking them to the goals and needs of the overall society. People’s willingness to comply with nationally authorised instructions, and particularly their understanding that they do so by choice, largely comes from this ideological legitimisation of the area covered by the particular authority (Kecmanovic 1996: 129).

In the former Yugoslavia, this occurred through the continuous equating of ethnic allegiance with the organic political community (Bohman 1969; Calhoun 1993; Popovic 1994). This was a by-product of viewing the official communist ideology of state as an extension of foreign rule (Schöpflin 1995: 52). In such circumstances, the nationalist ideology provides an umbrella for marginalised groups who are seeking an ideological filler in times of state and elite transition, in order to re-establish a continuum between one’s historic place within society and the reason behind oppositional mobilisation (Sharp 1996: 12). This ensures that ideology becomes a new pillar of social organisation and a stabiliser for transcending societies (Havel 1985: 34-35; Misztal & Jenkins 1995: 328). Accordingly, in such circumstances, nationalist ideology becomes an example of “temporal dissonance” and resistance to an elite instigated ideational regime (Avineri 1994: 30).

National movement mobilisation provides a framework for complaints and grievances, whilst the state official ideology supplies a fulcrum of contention (Tarrow 1995: 192). Thus, in a world political system defined in the legitimacy granted through the attainment of the nation-state, the predominant ideology of liberation, consolidation and implementation becomes nationalism. The Serb national movement of 1878 (Dragnich 1994), and the Irish national movement of 1922 (Curran 1981), had succeeded where others had not through the legitimacy gained in the attainment of statehood (Sharp 1996: 17).

Anthony Smith (1991: 91) noted that the one movement that had originally framed its existence in terms of an ‘anti-colonial’ movement may transcend into an integrationalist movement once the original goal had been achieved. The nation-state becomes the focal point and justification for all political activity. This allows for an elite to shift from key moral and ethical issues based around actions geared initially for the betterment of the national community to a movement that is ideologically juxtaposed to that of the state; even if it goes against the principles they originally fought for. Nationalism can thus be an instrumental and incremental doctrine that is shaped according to the needs of the community that it represents in response to the nature of the cycle of reform determined by the shifting state centre.

As a coordinator of political action, it can dictate the level of protest activism undertaken by justifying it through equating the action to the necessary survival of the community (O’Brien 1969; Levi & Hechter 1985; Prazauskas 1991). Thus strategies of VDA, terrorism, or open warfare that may often be contrary to the original value system of the movement can be implemented with greater justification as the failure of the social movement could be equated to the purposeful repression of the people. The key to its successful utilisation lies in what Tilly (1993b: 30-31) recognises as its innate functionalist methods, but not in terms of a ‘Nation Building’ paradigm rather as a means to facilitate continuous rebellion against a state elite deemed perennially the enemy. A circumstance that places the peripheral nation at the centre of continuous mobilisation, but also subsequently dependent on an escalation of the crisis to justify a permanent state of heightened movement mobilisation. It is but a response to opening or closing political opportunity structures and as such an ideology of change and cohesion.

Movements that adopt the nationalist doctrine do so when there is a lack of congruence between state and national community (Krejci 1978; Anderson 1993; Connor 1994a). The fact that nationalist ideology delineates the pre-political equivalent of state infrastructure for people who have yet to attain statehood is also a reason why it is viewed as a potential facilitator to ideational mobilisation (Smith 1991: 17). Symbolism and popular sentiment become its lure, mobilisation its potential power. In essence it is a movement of popular discontent that mobilises itself on ethno-cultural lines in order to provide peripheral communities with an alternate option to political organisation than the one offered by the centralist state (Mosse 1975; Gellner 1979; Rokkan & Urwin 1983; Jenson 1995). Smith (1991: 73) saw nationalism as:

an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation.’ ²

It is within this context, of being a unifying force within mobilising social movements, that nationalism will be explored as an extension of the ideological repertoire for peripheral movements in the following six empirical chapters of this dissertation. For elites seeking avenues to mobilise entire communities to a cause such as civil rights, or full enfranchisement, the nationalist ideology provides the link to the collective memory and historic narrative of a given community. As a form of political mobilisation, ethnic awareness is potent due to the fact that it does predate more contemporary social constructs used to deal with post-industrial socio-political cleavages.³ This is due to the collective nature of ethno-national identification, which once utilised as an ideology, may act as a facilitator of collective behaviour within a movement seeking a central ideology (Smith 1987: 50, 1992). It may under certain circumstances provide the bond considered necessary to unite disparate parts of the community.

Indeed, in addition to posing the primacy of the ethnonational bond, over all internal cleavages, ethnonationalism also maintains that the ethnonational bond is stronger than any ties that transcend the national group. The case of Northern Ireland is instinctive on this point (Connor 1994c: 160).

The national movement, moreover, utilises the doctrine of nationalism in order to acquire a measure of effective control over the behaviour and political will of its members (Deutsch 1962: 79). Nationalism’s advantage over other doctrines is its role as a consciousness moulding agent that provides a mental link between the ideals of the elite with that of the needs of the masses through interlocking the two (Weilenmann 1963: 46). By threatening the legitimacy of the state created ethnic identity, through mobilising along culturo-ethnic lines, the national movement goes one step further than more traditional movements as it threatens the very identity of the elites and their place within the organic structure of society (Havel 1985: 82). Nationalism as a doctrine, hence, allows for the thread between moments of rise and fall in protest movement activity to be ever present within the latent cleavages of society. This, gives the “cause” a sense of organic and historical continuity and relevance to the perceived repressed community (Tarrow 1996: 51). One that exploits lasting cleavages as Tarrow (1995: 198) states:

The violence and intolerance of the 1990s constitute a truly alarming trend. But this is not the first great wave of movement in history, nor will it be the last. If its dynamics come to resemble the social movements that we have encountered in this book, then its power will at first be ferocious, uncontrolled and widely diffused, but later ephemeral. If so, then like previous waves of movement, it will ultimately disperse “like a flood tide which loosens up much of the soil but leaves alluvial deposits in its wake.

Thus, it follows, that as an ideology it will not be separated from the ideational movements that adopt its doctrine in the rest of this study. What will be henceforth explored in the coming empirical chapters is its role as societal polariser by both state and periphery, and its ability to achieve the desired goals of socio-political independence or autonomy, depending on political opportunity structures created by reforming elites within the cycle of protest-reform-protest. Imperative to this is the role of national expression in the state’s centralisation campaigns and hence the subsequent ‘mimicking’ of ‘official’ nationalism by peripheral elites. It is here, within the cycles of protest-reform-protest, where I believe the ability for the movement to dictate the pace of action-reaction-action lies. In this way, if the movement cannot ‘mimic’ the state strategically, ideologically, and politically, then they will fail to maximise political opportunity structures created within the perennial struggle between shifting centres and responsive peripheries. The role of the national movement is to subsequently exploit these fixed cleavages so as to attain maximum gain in political systems that would otherwise prefer to consolidate their power within the state without much care for ‘peripheral’ concerns.