Metropolitan and post-national urbanity beyond (pluri)nation(al)-states in the EU: Benchmarking Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country

Abstract

This article compares the cases of the three small, stateless, city-regional nations of Scotland, Catalonia, and the Basque Country in the period after September 2014. Since the referendum on Scottish independence, these nations have, depending on their unique contexts, engaged differently in democratic and deliberative experimentation on the “right to decide” their futures beyond being referential (pluri)nation(al)-states in the UK or Spain. Most recently, the Brexit referendum has triggered a deeper debate on how regional and political demands by these nations could rescale the fixed (pluri)nation(al)-states’ structures while even directly advocating for some sort of “Europeanization”. Based on a broader research programme on comparing city-regional cases titled ‘Benchmarking City-Regions’ (www.cityregions.org), this paper argues that the differences in each of these three cases are noteworthy. Yet, even more substantial are their diverse means of accommodating smart devolutionary strategic pathways of self-determination through political innovation processes among pervasive metropolitanization responses to a growing “post-national urbanity” pattern in the European Union. Ultimately, this paper aims to benchmark how Scotland, Catalonia, and the Basque Country are strategically moving forward beyond their referential (pluri)nation(al)-states in such a new European geopolitical pattern that can be called “post-national urbanity” by formulating devolution, and even independence, in unique metropolitan terms.