This leading scholar draws on extensive research from four plurinational states - the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Canada - to provide a radical rethink of the very nature of sovereignty and the state. This innovative account demonstrates how transnational integration and other demands on the nation-state have broken the automatic link between state and nation, and goes on to provide a major new analysis of the subsequent challenges of recognition of nationality and democracy.

European integration questions the relationship between nation and state. It under-mines traditional sovereignty and weakens the need for statehood. Minority nationalist movements have in many cases adopted the European theme, adjusting their ideology and strategy accordingly. Some have used “new regionalist” themes to construct new systems of action below and beyond the state. Europe provides opportunities for territorial movements and grants some minority protections. There are differences between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe because of the evolution of state (...) structures. The prospective European constitution risks formalizing the European Union as a two-level game of states and the Union, with little room for regional and minority claims. (shrink)

After Newman’s decision to become a Roman Catholic in 1845, Oxford witnessed a fierce battle over the future of the university: would Oxford remain a Christian and Anglican institution, or would it become a purely national, and secular, endeavor? On the Anglican side, the most weighty protagonist was Newman’s former colleague, Edward Pusey. Among those arguing for a national and secular university was Henry Halford Vaughan. In the early 1850s, Pusey and Vaughan engaged in a written controversy, in which they (...) respectively championed a tutorial and a professorial model of learning. However, the issues at stake were much broader than mere pedagogy, and went to the heart of the nature of the institution as a whole. (shrink)