Many observers now expect the Catalan government to make a declaration of independence following the 1 October referendum, but what implications would there be for Catalonia if it did become independent? Paul De Grauwe (LSE) argues that there are parallels between the Catalan independence movement and other forms of nationalism in Europe. He suggests that such political movements present a paradox in a globalised world: when nationalist actors pursue more formal sovereignty, they achieve less real sovereignty of the people.
Credit: Raphael Tsavkko Garcia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, will not enter the history books as an enlightened leader. However, when in 2014 he had to decide to allow the Scottish referendum, he used his brain and opened the door for the vote to take place. It took place on 14 October 2014, and only 45% of Scots voted for independence.
The contrast with the referendum in Catalonia could not be greater. The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, stupidly decided to use violence to prevent a referendum in Catalonia, despite the fact that a peaceful referendum would most probably have led to a similar outcome as in Scotland. Spain and Catalonia are now on a collision course; a situation that could have been avoided if Rajoy had not suffered from dogmatism and a degree of nationalism equalling in intensity the Catalan version.
The Catalan nationalists have now been given a major boost thanks to Rajoy’s stupidity. The TV images of Spanish robotic police officers hitting old and young alike to prevent them from voting creates the perception of an oppressed people fighting for their freedom.
But nothing could be further from reality. The Catalans are not an oppressed people. They have a high degree of autonomy. They can organise their own education in their own language. No obstacles exist for the cultural development of Catalonia. It is the most prosperous region of Spain. Barcelona is a bustling city like no other in Spain. The Catalans are heard at the regional, national and European level. The image of an oppressed people is ludicrous. Catalan nationalism is of the same kind as the British nationalism that led to Brexit. And it is based on a number of myths.
Catalan nationalism is of the same kind as the British nationalism that led to Brexit
The first myth is that there is an external enemy. For the Brexiteers, these are the European authorities (the European Commission, the European Court, etc.), which impose their arbitrary will on Britain. For the Catalan nationalists, the enemy is the Spanish government oppressing the Catalan people.
The second myth is that the people who fight for their independence have a clearly defined identity. The task of national politicians is to listen to the will of the people. There can be only one voice. There is no room for different and opposing voices. The British government is now calling for patriotism. The opponents of Brexit are not true patriots.
The third myth is that independence will generate unsuspected economic prosperity. When the people “take back control” they will have the tools to achieve maximum economic prosperity. That is today the argument of Brexiteers like Boris Johnson. When Brexit is realised (preferably as soon as possible), Britain will have achieved its true destiny. “Global Britain” will take over from the protectionist EU. Great Britain will merrily conclude free trade agreements with the rest of the world, which will lead to unprecedented prosperity. A similar argument of more prosperity for an independent Catalonia is heard from Catalan nationalists today.
The reality is that globalisation undermines national sovereignty
The reality is that globalisation undermines national sovereignty. This happens in many ways. One example is that large multinationals blackmail national governments in Europe, with the result that corporate taxes decline almost everywhere. In no country is there a will of the people in favour of reducing these taxes. Yet this is the outcome because governments act as national entities. Were they to decide jointly on these taxes in Europe, multinationals would be unable to blackmail governments and there would be no creeping decline in corporate taxes.
Another example is that international trade today is not influenced so much by tariffs but by non-tariff barriers. Large countries decide on the standards and the regulatory environment that governs trade. There are now essentially three actors, the US, the EU and China that can aspire to decide about the nature of these standards and rules. The other countries play no role in this game. Thus, when the UK exits from the EU so as to gain more sovereignty (“to take back control”), this gain is only achieved in a formal sense. In fact, its real sovereignty declines. Obviously, the same holds for Catalonia.
We arrive at the following paradox in a globalised world: when nationalists pursue more formal sovereignty they achieve less real sovereignty of the people. They want to take back control and they end up with less control. That’s what the UK will end up with. And that’s also what the Catalan nationalists will achieve if they pursue their nationalistic dreams.
Yet this paradox also has a corollary: when countries in Europe renounce formal sovereignty this leads to more real sovereignty for the peoples of Europe.
This article was originally published at Paul De Grauwe’s personal blog and EUROPP. It gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Brexit or the London School of Economics.
Professor Paul De Grauwe is the John Paulson Chair in European Political Economy at the LSE’s European Institute. Prior to joining LSE, he was Professor of International Economics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He was a member of the Belgian parliament from 1991 to 2003. His research interests are international monetary relations, monetary integration, theory and empirical analysis of the foreign-exchange markets, and open-economy macroeconomics. His published books include The Economics of Monetary Union (OUP, 2010), and (with Marianna Grimaldi), The Exchange Rate in a Behavioural Finance Framework (Princeton University Press, 2006).
The main point here is the argument that pursuing greater formal sovereignty ends up diminishing sovereignty in a global world – that demands for greater control leads to less control. I am not sure that holds with regard to, for example, single currency membership – did Greece benefit from that. Do Greek people feel in control? Does it not distort very different national economies to their economic detriment? Also there are important and pertinent differences: Brexit was a vote to leave the EU, Catalonia wants to leave a democratic nation state; Brexit was more popular in poorer areas, Catalonia is Spain’s wealthiest area. Leave asserted UK would be economically better off outside the EU in the campaign, but in fact polls suggest the large majority of people don’t regret their vote even if there is an economic hit. That leads us in the direction of values. Democracy and having control over one’s live is a value in this respect.
Sovereignty is important in non economic respects. Without sovereignty, without feeling in control over one’s destiny, why should people grant legitimacy to elites? The argument seems to be the ultimate vindication of the Thatcherite notion of There Is No Alternative (TINA) – you simply can’t exit the EU, you simply can’t make choices that contradict the logic of global capitalism. This is effectively what the cultural, educational and business establishment are telling 17.4 million UK voters who simply took the view that they wanted to leave the EU. Likewise, whilst my hope is that Catalonia does not separate, ultimately the hostility to the vote is like asserting that ‘its simply not for you to decide’. Whither democracy?
Could not agree more that the clumsy restrictive actions of the Spanish goverent were very foolish. It makes a mockery of their claim to be a democracy.
It’s called preserving rule of law – without which there is no democracy (in Spain or elsewhere).
The key point here is that, as this post points out, in an inter-dependent world “more formal sovereignty leads to less real sovereignty”. This is a key argument which needs to be made again and again. This is something which “metropolitan elites” (LSE graduates?) instinctively realise as they jet round the world.
The problem is making the majority of people within countries, who do not mix with people of other countries on a daily basis, apart from casual meetings in the street or on holiday, realise this key fact.
Attempts to deal with this problem are fiendishly difficult, especially in the US and the UK, which have been used for decades to tell other countries what to do. Now, other countries actually have the cheek to tell the UK and US what to do!
There is a difference between having membership of a mostly democratic organisation such as the EU, which has built-in democratic rules (as well as some pretty brutal ways of asserting majority values) and being a unit of a nation state such as Spain or the UK. The older state organisations have less democratic accountability built-in – which is why Catalonia and Scotland are seeking autonomy, such as can be achieved nowadays.
I see the Prime Minister as an honest woman seeking to honour the vote of 17.4 million Britons in the face of obstruction from almost every quarter. Her speech in Florence was conciliatory and offered more constructive thought on the way forward than we have ever heard from Monsieur le Barnier.or the president of the EU Commission. My only concern, regardless, of the length of any agreed transitional period, is that it will relate solely to revision of existing trading agreements. This must not hinder the formal repeal of the UK /EU treaty to be effective at the end of March 2019.
I feel the need to correct this article at least in regard to the Catalonia independence movement where I think all the premises are wrong.
In the author words:
“But nothing could be further from reality. The Catalans are not an oppressed people. They have a high degree of autonomy.
They can organise their own education in their own language. No obstacles exist for the cultural development of Catalonia.”
This statement is essential false. The Spanish government has always been trying to change the Catalan
education despite the fact that theoretically the education administration has been transfered to Catalonia, as an
example the public speech that the Spanish education minister did, stating “Our interest is to Spanish-cize
Catalan students so that they feel proud of being Spanish.” Also, they have tried(not only once), to
change the laws in regard to Catalan school so they could change it as they see fit
(https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/4177432/20140306/catalan-government-forced-to-pay-for-private-
education-in-spanish.html)
“The image of an oppressed people is ludicrous.”
The list of the 34 judicial rulings by the Constitutional Court in favour of Catalonia with which the Spanish
government has failed to comply
(https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/the-list-of-the-34-judicial-rulings-by-the-constitutional-court-in-favour-of-catalonia-with-which-the-spanish-government-has-failed-to-comply/)
And also:
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/catalonia-referendum-government-suspended-de-facto-independence-spain-madrid-government-raid-a7957046.html)
Also, last time I checked there was around 26 Catalan laws suspended by this same court (just admitting the appeal by the Spanish govt. pauses the application of the law) and the rulings on
These appeals usually take years to sort out and are usually in favour of the Spanish government.
“The first myth is that there is an external enemy”
Won’t discuss this one as I don’t have the knowledge for it(even considering it also false). But the fact that many political movements claim this external enemy does not mean that there is never
one.
“The second myth is that the people who fight for their independence have a clearly defined identity”
ABSOLUTELY false. Many pro independence supporters are sons or grandsons of Spanish immigrant arrived around 1960 or more recent immigration. There is no such thing as the perfect Catalan (Even the previous Catalan president “Jose Montilla” was Spanish born). Actually you won’t find many people with none of his ancestors coming from outside of Catalonia.
“The third myth is that independence will generate unsuspected economic prosperity. ”
Again false in the case of Catalonia. Many pro union supporters spread this phrase to portrait the pro-independence supporters as some kind of deluded people, but again it’s never used by pro independence supporters.
What they actually say is that Catalan taxes should be managed by the Catalan government, in fact one of the main point of the 2006 Spanish amended ‘statut’ was to try to get closer to that.
Some info on the subject: (https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/4170005/20140129/catalan-businesspeople-annoyed-with-spanish-government-for-not-issuing-fiscal-balances.html)
Just as a final remark please stop trying to link all pro independence movements as if they were all the same thing, they are not, and the world is complex enough so different reasons bring the same result.
Renouncing formal sovereignty only leads to more real sovereignty if and only if you have some ideological commitment to globalism.
The low-hanging fruit of globalisation — reducing tariff barriers — has, with the main exception of agriculture, already been plucked. Consequently, globalists have gone off on the tangent of ‘reducing non-tariff barriers’ which are not only very different from tariff barriers but have very little effect on GDP growth. The biggest boosters of TPP and TTIP only argue that they would increase GDP by a risible 0.5% or less over the long term. The European Parliament has said that the Single Market losing its second largest member and largest export market would cause negligible aggregate damage to the EU27 economies in the long term — which is tantamount to saying that the Single Market also has negligible economic effects.
If there is one way to sum up globalisation these days it is this: it involves trivial economic gains in the aggregate; a concentration of these gains for the rich and a concentration of losses for the poor; and a significant limiting of the scope of democracy.
The clearest example is the introduction of the euro. Ludicrously trivial benefits that could have been achieved far more simply in other ways (‘ok, rather than merely banning transaction charges for withdrawing money from ATMs in another member state or for electronic transactions, let’s all give up our national currencies! Woo!’). For such benefits there are plainly catastrophic disadvantages. Had we all known at the time how the life of the euro would transpire then it would never have been introduced. Or rather, had we all known at the time what the people introducing it knew then it would never have been introduced, for as was said by them at the time the euro architecture was purposefully incomplete in order for some later crisis to force eurozone members to do things they would never do voluntarily out of European solidarity.
This is the crucial point: renouncing sovereignty in the way recommended only gives power to an elite plainly unworthy of it.
If there is one way to sum up globalisation these days it is this: it involves trivial economic gains in the aggregate; a concentration of these gains for the rich and a concentration of losses for the poor; and a significant limiting of the scope of democracy.
iagree with this comment!!