Michael Keating - Independence Analysis

Half of Basques would like to have a Basque rather than a Spanish passport. Voters in these places do not want their own armed forces or currency or closed borders. Majorities do tend to think that they have a right to recognition as more than an undifferentiated regional unit and would want to be able to renegotiate their place in the state and international order. There is a desire to control their own taxation but not a total rejection of social solidarity with the rest of the state.

Such findings are not as outlandish as might appear. Independence in Europe does not mean independence in the classic sense. The currency, defence and control of borders are not merely government competences, they are among the tasks that have traditionally defined the very meaning of sovereignty. Many nationalist movements in Europe have gone even further, questioning whether sovereignty itself has the same meaning in a modern and interdependent world. Instead, we might think of independence as a bundle of competences that could be separated from each other and considered individually. In fact there is nothing particularly new in this, since doctrines of shared and divided sovereignty exist in political and legal theory in many parts of Europe. It is not by chance that most of these are small nations with big and historically aggressive neighbours, who have no interest in doctrines of absolute independence and every reason to support overarching systems of international law and order. In the present era, the combination of recovered tradition and the emerging European opportunity structure have given rise to forms of post-sovereign thinking, going beyond classical state formulations altogether

European University Institute, Florence