Multiple sovereignties? Civil society and territorial construction in Iparralde

Xabier Itçaina (1)

1 CED - Centre Émile Durkheim

The literature on peripheral nationalisms presents the French Basque country (Iparralde) as a classic case of a ‘failure’ of nationalism in contrast to the ‘success’ of its southern equivalent (Linz 1986). In 2006, a cross-border survey on territorial identities reiterated this view when noting that eleven per cent of the French Basque defined themselves as ‘only Basque’, against forty per cent in the Basque Autonomous Community (Baxok et al. 2006: 49). This conclusion, I argue, is valid only insofar as (a) the intrinsic value of quantitative surveys measuring self-identification is overstated (Itçaina 2010), and (b) identity-based movements are reduced to their formal political dimensions (i.e. their degree of institutional autonomy, the impact of peripheral nationalism on electoral contests and the party system, and the intensity of political violence). The conclusion would be less straightforward if one looks instead at civil society mobilizations that are no less political, although seemingly further removed from the formal institutional sphere.

Mots clés: Iparralde; Territorial construction; Civil society

Domaines: Science politique

Xabier Itçaina. Multiple sovereignties? Civil society and territorial construction in Iparralde. Åshild Kolås; Pedro Ibarra Güell (eds.). Sovereignty revisited : the Basque case, Routledge, pp.105-125, 2017, Routledge studies in radical history and politics, 978-1-13-806804-9. ⟨10.4324/9781315158341-6⟩. ⟨halshs-01686472⟩