populism

SOVEREIGNISM AND NATIONALISM

from the rise of populist sovereignism:

The Hague Centre for strategic studies (hcss)

Bringing the Two Concepts Together: Populist sovereignism is a new term – one that, we submit, captures core features of a phenomenon that manifests itself throughout the modern world. Some of these features have been analyzed in isolation from one another, which has inhibited a comprehensive understanding of the more fundamental phenomenon that is afoot. Observers have, for instance, labeled populist sovereignist parties in Europe ‘insurgents’76 or ‘Eurosceptics’.77 Euroscepticism follows from sovereignism, but focusing exclusively on the EU obfuscates these parties’ foreign and security policies more generally. ‘Insurgents’ is also a misnomer – populist sovereignist parties have been around for decades and, as we will show, seven parties have governing experience.

Elements of populist sovereignism have also been studied as characteristics of ‘right-wing populism’ or of ‘the populist radical right’.

conducted under those labels informs our concept of populist sovereignism, these labels do not fully capture the salient characteristics of current movements. First, the coupling of populism and sovereignism is not an exclusive characteristic of rightwing parties. Left-wing populist sovereignist parties also exist. Second, while many populist sovereignist parties are labeled right-wing because of their anti-immigrant rhetoric, the eclectic policy agendas of several, such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, defy right-left categorization.79 ‘Populist sovereignist’ is therefore a more apt term: it supersedes the left-right divide and does not restrict analysis to one institution (the EU), while it also captures the underpinning worldview that drives these parties.

Textbox 2.1 Why sovereignism and not nationalism?

Our use of the term ‘sovereignism’ is, admittedly, fairly unorthodox. Why did we not resort to the more commonly used term ‘nationalism’? And how do the two differ – if at all?

Nationalism has two main attributes. First, nationalism creates a common identity based on “common culture, past, project for the future and attachment to a concrete territory”. Second, it defends the idea “that state and nation should be congruent”. Based on this, the power of nationalism comes from “its ability to engender sentiments of belonging to a particular community”.80 Nationalism therefore implies a movement that seeks to make a state congruent with a ‘nation’ of people held together by a common sentiment derived from a purported common history, culture, race, or other unifying identity or category (an “imagined community”). By contrast, movements are ‘sovereignist’ if they assert that no foreign power should be able to delimit the authority of the state within its jurisdiction.

To simplify the distinction between nationalism and sovereignism, the difference between the two can be conceived of in this way: whereas nationalism primarily relates to the ‘nation’ of the ‘nation-state’, sovereignism primarily relates to the ‘state’ of the ‘nation-state’. ‘Nationalism’ and ‘sovereignism’, like ‘nation’ and ‘state’, are often (but not necessarily) linked concepts that nonetheless cannot be collapsed into each other. Nationalism gains its characteristics primarily from the unifying sentiment of an imagined community and mission of creating a state that is coterminous with the nation. Sovereignism gains its characteristics primarily from its mission of asserting or reasserting the state’s exclusive authority over its territory and affairs.

This distinction is useful theoretically – and, we argue, necessary for accurately labeling current movements as primarily sovereignist and not simply nationalist. In reality, nationalism and sovereignism may coexist