The emergence and transformation of self-determination claims in Hong Kong and Catalonia: A historical institutionalist perspective

Introduction

The death of nationalism, especially in its most radical, secessionist forms, has been predicted many times. Diffusionist theorists envisioned the post-Second World War era to be characterized by the consolidation of existing nation-states through modernization (Deutsch, 1966). This position was supported by the work of modernist scholars of nationalism for whom industrialization, state centralization, and “national integration” were intertwined processes (Gellner, 1983). At the turn of the 21st century, most scholars were not dismissing nationalism but they were positing that, in a post-sovereign world, new self-determination claims would most likely not emerge. In such a world with perceived porous borders and transnational networks, a common assumption was that politics in communities that had not prominently featured nationalism and self-determination claims would remain devoid of this type of mobilization while established nationalist movements would gravitate towards moderate autonomist (as opposed to secessionist) positions (Keating, 2001). Yet, the last decade has suggested a different dynamic. In Catalonia, where nationalism has historically been largely autonomist, secessionist claims have become dominant within the movement. In Hong Kong, where territorial identity had never played a prominent role in politics, the last few years have witnessed a proliferation of movements and parties seeking self-determination and even independence. In recent months, conflicts between secessionist forces and their respective states have evolved into full-blown crises, with the Spanish state suspending Catalonia’s autonomy status, and the Chinese state asserting its supremacy and that of its symbols over Hong Kong in ways unimaginable only some years ago.

This paper seeks to explain these unexpected developments. Drawing insights from historical institutionalism (Lecours, 2005; Steinmo et al., 1992), it looks for transformative events that could account for the rapid emergence (in the case of Hong Kong) and transformation (in the case of Catalonia) of self-determination claims. The paper argues that a state’s rigid response to a community seeking the protection or promotion of its identity, interests, and/or autonomy may constitute such a transformative event (especially if this response is highly visible). In Hong Kong, the Decision of August 2014 on political reform, which denoted a concerted effort by the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to delay or perhaps even halt the democratization process, played a decisive role in the creation of self-determination and secessionist movements and parties. In Catalonia, the 2010 judgment of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the 2006 Reform of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy was the transformative event that altered the focus of Catalan nationalism. A severe recession and the formation of a Partido Popular (PP) government in Madrid in 2011 increased the impact of the judgment.

The paper is divided into three sections. The first section discusses how historical institutionalism provides insights for explaining change in self-determination claims, with a particular focus on the concept of transformative event. The second and third sections develop the cases of Hong Kong and Catalonia, respectively. In the conclusion, we present what the comparison reveals and discuss the major differences between the two cases.

Historical institutionalism, nationalism, and self-determination claims

The last decade or so has witnessed both the emergence of nationalist self-determination claims in communities where they virtually did not exist and their radicalization in places where they had previously been moderate. Catalonia and Hong Kong are two such communities; Scotland is another, as independence claims have historically been marginal, only to become dominant in the nationalist movement within the last decade (Keating, 2009). These developments have been surprising for many reasons. The first is that there were few signs that nationalist claims of self-determination would develop in Hong Kong and that, in Catalonia, these claims would become predominantly secessionist. Indeed, Hong Kong had long been considered a politically apathetic and overly pragmatic society (Hoadley, 1973; King, 1977; Lam, 2012; Lau, 1982) seemingly devoid of a national identity (Mathews et al., 2008). It follows that Hong Kong’s public and political parties have, until recently, consistently eschewed positions on autonomy that could be deemed radical. In Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) promoted independence in the 1930s and in some years during the democratic period, but the nationalist movement was always overwhelmingly autonomist (Balcells, 1995). The second reason is that multinational states, especially liberal-democratic ones, made substantial accommodations towards minority communities, which was expected to moderate nationalist self-determination claims. Spain is a prime example of these types of developments, as the transition towards democracy led to the establishment of a federal arrangement, the Estado de las Autonomías (Moreno, 2001), which granted autonomy to Catalonia. Although operating in a non-democratic setting, China’s apparent commitment to the doctrine of “One Country, Two Systems” seemed to provide Hong Kong with the safeguards deemed necessary for the preservation of its way of life, therefore making the development of nationalist politics improbable. The third reason is that the premium placed on various forms of transnationalism (social, economic, cultural and, in some instances, political) at the turn of the 21st century appeared to defy the rationale for the radicalization of self-determination claims. In Europe, integration seemed to mitigate the importance of sovereignty and thus discourage nationalist movements from seeking complete independence (Keating, 2001). In China, the continuing opening and growth of the economy yielded benefits that could discourage most forms of self-determination politics. This was especially the case in Hong Kong, a prosperous yet natural-resource-poor region whose elites—economic ones in particular—were bound to be highly receptive to China’s robust cooptation strategies.

Hence, the radicalization of self-determination claims in Catalonia and the development of these types of claims in Hong Kong represent surprising outcomes. Historical institutionalism has stressed the notion of critical juncture for explaining change, especially sudden, path-departing change (Collier and Collier, 1991; Mahoney, 2000). In this context, a critical juncture corresponds to “an event or set of events occurs that has a large and enduring impact” (Mahoney et al., 2016: 77). Critical junctures are usually understood as macro events, such as war, regime change, etc. that alter the course of history in the societies in which they occur, and their importance can often only be ascertained long after they have taken place. While it is unclear at present whether recent changes in self-determination claims in Hong Kong and Catalonia are direct manifestations of major critical junctures, the suddenness of these changes suggests that they were linked to events of a transformative nature (Sewell, 1996).

The concept of transformative event has been used by scholars of social movements to refer to “a crucial turning point for a social movement that dramatically increases or decreases the level of mobilization” (Hess and Martin, 2006: 249). The concept is in many ways similar to that of trigger event, which “starkly reveals to the general public for the first time that a serious social problem exists and that deliberate policies and practices of the powerholders cause and perpetuate the problem by violating widely held societal values and the public’s trust” (Moyer et al., 2001: 54). A transformative event not only brings attention to a given issue and increases mobilization on it, but also enables the awakening of a new consciousness and the articulation of a new narrative that challenges the status quo (Basta, 2017). Here, timing (when things occur) and sequencing (their occurrence in relation to other occurrences) are central to developing an explanation for change (Pierson, 2004). As McAdam and Sewell point out (2001: 112): “It is not the event itself, but the importance that comes to be assigned to it in the immediate aftermath of the event that determines its transformative potential.”

In order to understand rapid and significant changes in the self-determination claims of a political community, it is necessary to look for transformative events in the relationship between this community and the state. Indeed, scholarship on nationalism, particularly from a historical institutionalist perspective (Bertrand, 2004; Lecours, 2007), has emphasized the role of the state in shaping nationalist movements. Every multinational state comes with a conception of its own nation, its definition of “national interests,” and its institutional structures of accommodation, which are typically challenged in some way by internal national communities (Gagnon and Tully, 2001). These challenges can be met by various perceived degrees of flexibility (or rigidity) on the part of the state, whether through its executive, its legislature, or its judiciary. For example, a state may choose to emphasize a monist conception of its national identity, which is likely to trigger in the minority national community the perception that identity questions cannot be negotiated. Conversely, the state can choose to allow for some recognition of internal diversity of nationhood, which fosters perceptions of flexibility on identity. Moreover, the state can define unilaterally the interests of the state-wide nation, or take into account how the internal national community defines its own interests, with the latter involving more flexibility on fiscal and policy questions than the former. Finally, the state can defend an institutional status quo, which can feed the perception in the minority national community that the existing system is a take it or leave it proposition, or it can adopt structures of territorial divisions of power in accordance with the preferences of this community’s political parties.

We posit that, at the broadest level, a state’s rigidity in dealing with an internal national community is more likely to trigger a sharp rise, or radicalization, of self-determination claims than is flexibility. In some circumstances, a state’s position that is perceived as flexible on identity, interests, and institutional accommodation can gradually lead to more radical self-determination claims such as secession, or in others it can blunt the development of such claims. However, rapid change from a moderate to a more radical position is typically the result of an approach perceived as rigid in the minority national community that has produced important and widespread discontent. Yet, the link between how a state is perceived (as rigid or as flexible) and the radicalization of self-determination claims is highly dependent on how and when the state expresses its position towards the internal minority community. When such expression comes from a formal statement from the executive, a new legislation or policy, or a judicial decision, there is often great meaning attributed to it. This is not to say that state rigidity is the only factor at play. The impact of the state’s expression of its approach towards the internal national community is also a function of other events occurring, or processes unfolding, at or around the same time. A number of endogenous (or even exogenous) factors, such as economic or political crises within the region, can exacerbate the effects of transformative events at state level, or provide the context that enhances the significance that is attributed to them at regional level. However, alternative explanations based upon these types of factors lack explanatory power. For example, the economic crisis of 2008 may have contributed to the radicalization of nationalism in Catalonia but such radicalization occurred elsewhere in the absence of a recession (for example, in Québec during the early to mid-1990s). In sum, given the centrality of the state to issues of self-determination and secession, any explanation that minimizes or disregards the importance of the state would be unconvincing.

The relationship between transformative events and the radicalization of self-determination claims is not a direct one. Events are in many ways socially constructed, and they only acquire their significance and transformative attributes through a process of interpretation (Basta, 2017) that can be carried out by a variety of social and political actors. By their capacity to aggregate interests, articulate identities, and frame issues in ways that are both socially relevant and politically expedient, political parties are often the main agents in this meaning-making process. As Toubeau and Massetti (2013: 301) point out, “As the principal instruments of democracy,” “parties play a constitutive role in shaping federalism” and its dynamics. Indeed, much of the literature on regionalism and decentralization has emphasized the role of party politics in shaping region-state dynamics (Alonso, 2012; Barrio and Rodríguez-Teruel, 2017; Toubeau and Wagner, 2015). Interpretation is anchored into perceptions as much as it is grounded into actual events, and secessionist parties have an incentive to frame events denoting state rigidity as evidence of the unviability of the status quo. This way, secessionists will seek to capitalize on such instances to enhance the perception that regional autonomy is being eroded, and as a justification for a more radical course of action (Basta, 2017). As mentioned earlier, it is not the events so much as the new narratives they enable that are transformative in nature. When they are successful, agents of change manage not only to galvanize support for their political position, but also establish their hitherto marginalized narrative into the mainstream, thus destabilizing the status quo and transforming the political landscape (Basta, 2017).

In the next two sections, we trace the processes (Beach and Pederson, 2013) that have resulted in significant changes: the emergence of a self-determination movement in Hong Kong and the secessionist turn of Catalan nationalism. The objective of this comparison is to generate a hypothesis on why nationalist movements radicalize their self-determination claims. For this purpose, we follow a most different systems design. Hong Kong and Catalonia differ in many political, cultural, and economic aspects, not the least in their respective political systems and autonomy statuses. Yet, there is a common outcome in the form of the radicalization of self-determination claims. Since the many aspects where Hong-Kong and Catalonia diverge cannot logically explain the common outcome, our attention is drawn to what they share, namely a perception that the state is rigid in responding to their claims for accommodation.

It is important to keep in mind that this paper is solely concerned with the transformation of self-determination claims as opposed to wider societal and political developments. The transformative events we identify in this paper should be strictly situated at this level of analysis rather than in the larger political trajectories of Hong Kong and Catalonia. In fact, it is possible to identify critical junctures whose bearings on the sociopolitical development of Hong Kong and Catalonia have been more fundamental, namely Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997 and the democratization and instauration of a system of Autonomous Communities in Spain in the late 1970s. By laying out and institutionalizing autonomy regimes, hence creating and reinforcing regional interests, identities, and expectations on self-determination, such critical junctures can perhaps even be credited with propelling regions on a path towards self-determination politics in the first place (Alonso, 2012). Such an understanding of critical junctures, however, says little about the actual evolution of self-determination claims, including their sudden radicalization, once this trajectory has been set in motion. Our use of the concept of transformative event into a historical institutionalist framework enables us to do just that. Our objective in the next two sections is precisely to make sense of why it took nearly two decades for self-determination claims to become fully articulated and politicized in Hong Kong, and to become radicalized into secessionist ones in Catalonia.

Hong Kong: The birth of a national consciousness

A defining juncture in contemporary Hong Kong politics has been the Handover of 1997. The Handover was important not only in laying down the institutional framework that came to reshape Hong Kong’s political system, but also in redefining its sovereignty and autonomy status as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for a period of at least 50 years, under the principle of “One Country, Two Systems.” Particularly significant in articulating the parameters of Hong Kong’s autonomy regime is the Basic Law (HKBL), a constitutional document “prescribing the systems to be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in order to ensure the implementation of the basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong” (China, 1990: Preamble).

The HKBL constitutes the legal framework within which conflicts over self-determination have been articulated. Hong Kong and Mainland authorities have sought to enhance their legitimacy by highlighting the extent of the SAR’s autonomy vis-à-vis the PRC, portraying the HKBL as embodying “the important concepts of ‘One Country, Two Systems,’ ‘a high degree of autonomy,’ and ‘Hong Kong People administering Hong Kong’ ¹ (Information Services Department, 2016).” However, as the oft-overlooked preamble indicates, the HKBL was above all a tool for the central government to assume its rule over Hong Kong (Tai, 2012). While pan-democrats may have originally perceived the HKBL as a protection against encroachment by the state, the interpretation of this legal framework, including the scope of Hong Kong’s autonomy regime, is largely under the control of Beijing’s technically unelected legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (SCNPC). This, however, was not fully obvious in the first decade of the Handover, which went surprisingly smoothly considering the generalized anxiety that preceded the transfer of sovereignty. There were certainly a number of frictions, such as the mass-protests against the planned anti-subversion law in 2003, but demonstrators’ success in defeating the proposal helped restore faith in Beijing’s goodwill. Although, as Cheng (2009) has observed, the protests also marked the beginning of a more interventionist Hong Kong policy by Beijing, its effect would be felt only years later. The 2000s were in many ways China’s decade, culminating with the grandiose Beijing Olympics in 2008. The narrative of China’s rise, combined with the relatively liberal leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao in Beijing, was probably enough to convince many Hong Kongers of the auspiciousness of having their fate tied to China’s.

It is mainly the protracted process of democratization that became the battlefield in which Hong Kong’s autonomy regime has been debated. Hong Kong’s democratization process goes back to the 1980s, at which time, the colonial government launched reforms aimed at laying out a democratization framework in anticipation of Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty in 1997. Echoing emerging calls for democratization, the HKBL specifies that “[t]he ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures” (HKBL, Article 45), and that “The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be constituted by election” (HKBL, Article 68). Given the PRC’s gradualist approach to democratization in Hong Kong, rules and procedures on legislative and executive elections have been updated following decisions made by the SCNPC and voted upon in Hong Kong’s legislature. However, these decisions so far have reflected the determination of the Central and Hong Kong governments, together with pro-establishment parties, to constrain the pace and extent of democratic reform. This has led to the further consolidation of the party cleavage opposing the pan-democratic to the pro-establishment camp.

At the heart of Hong Kong’s increasingly fragmented party system is a semi-democratic legislature that currently allocates half of its 70 seats to business-dominated Functional Constituencies. Since Beijing has successfully coopted a large share of business elites, this arrangement has given pro-Beijing parties an almost certain majority in Hong Kong’s legislative council (Fong, 2014). As a result of this, pan-democrats have consistently been relegated to minority status despite continually obtaining a majority of seats in Geographical Constituencies (Loh and Civic Exchange, 2006). This has, in turn, directly contributed to the increasing fragmentation of the anti-establishment camp, whose actors have grown divided on strategies and ideologies. Internal dissent has sometimes been propelled by what many see as an overly compromising attitude on the part of the Democratic Party, the largest and most influential party in the pro-democracy camp. In 2006, the Civic Party was founded, which would eventually become the camp’s second largest party (Lo, 2010). The year 2006 also saw the formation of the more radical League of Social Democrats, which would then lead to the foundation of the equally radical People Power in 2011. Although more confrontational, these parties were not explicitly advocating self-determination.

The year 2010 was particularly turbulent on the political scene, featuring intense debates in the context of negotiations on democratic reform for 2012. In early 2010, in defiance of both pro-establishment parties and the Democratic Party, five pan-democrat legislators resigned from their seats, triggering a by-election in which they called voters to re-elect them, portraying the process as an informal referendum on democratic reform. All five were re-elected. The Democratic Party’s relatively conciliatory (though certainly not uncritical) stance towards the SAR and Central governments, notably the party leadership’s willingness to make significant compromises on democratic reform, once again attracted severe condemnations by other pro-democracy parties (Kwong, 2016: 64). In 2010, internal disagreements resulted in a split in the party, as prominent members joined the Neo Democrats. On the whole, political institutions in place, electoral rules in particular, played an important role in radicalizing and fragmenting an already institutionally marginalized pro-democracy opposition. This “Transition fatigue” (Kwong, 2016; Ma, 2011) that has afflicted democracy advocates in the face of democratic stagnation would ultimately play a key role in the development of self-determination ideologies.

In 2012, a number of events took place that pointed to a growth in self-determination sentiments in civil society. First, a number of nativitist associations were created in reaction to parallel trading, birth tourism and immigration from the Mainland. Their protests, sometimes incorporating elements of far-right rhetoric (Sautman and Yan, 2015), were generally successful in generating a sense that incoming Mainland migrants and visitors were a threat to Hong Kong’s culture and quality of life. It is partly in the context of these demonstrations that protesters began to fly the old colonial flag, controversially invoking a sense of nostalgia for Hong Kong’s “golden age” of British colonialism as opposed to indirect Chinese rule. Some of these feelings may have been partly inspired by scholar Horace Chin Wan’s controversial Facebook posts and his ensuing book “On the Hong Kong City-State,” published in 2011, which conceptualized Hong Kong as a City-State within China and called for the fencing off of Hong Kong to prevent the inflow of Chinese tourists and immigrants.

Second, and more importantly, were the mass demonstrations against the Moral and National Education program that was being planned for insertion in the primary school curriculum from the 2012–2013 academic year onward. In many ways, the Moral and National Education curriculum, or more precisely the response to its implementation in civil society, acted as a catalyst in the emergence and politicization of a Hong Kong national consciousness. Student unions across the region were particularly concerned with the program, which extoled the virtues of China’s political system, and was considered by many as a brainwashing instrument enabling the Central and SAR governments to manipulate the minds of Hong Kong’s youth. Ahead of its introduction, a group of secondary school students led by Joshua Wong founded Scholarism and organized mass protests that were successful in delaying the curriculum’s implementation as a mandatory subject. The group, in particular its leader, would play an instrumental role in future civil disobedience movements. However, leadership changes in both Hong Kong and the PRC soon counterbalanced, fed and escalated these societal developments. In July 2012, CY Leung, a Beijing loyalist who would become profoundly unpopular, became Chief Executive of the SAR. This coincided with the rise to power of the distinctly conservative and authoritarian Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party later in 2012 and subsequently as PRC President in 2013. Presumably in an effort to consolidate and project their power, the two adopted a hardline attitude in the face of an increasingly active and organized civil society, which could only further radicalize the opposition.

Interestingly, although Hong Kongers were certainly not as devotedly patriotic as Pro-Beijing forces would have liked them to be, there were few signs of overt anti-Beijing sentiments before the Moral and National Education curriculum was tabled. It is, in a sense, the impatience of some pro-Beijing elements with a population otherwise apathetic to identity issues that created the backlash in which a substantial segment of Hong Kong’s youth became deeply concerned with identity issues and came to harbor deep anti-Beijing sentiments. In 2013, the Hong Kong University Student Union (HKUSU) published a collection of essays on “Hong Kong Nationalism,” thus being among the first to propose the idea of Hong Kong as a self-determining nation. In February 2014, they published an issue of their student magazine on “The Hong Kong Nation Self-Determining its Fate.”

While the Moral and National Education debacle played an important role in the emergence of a Hong Kong national identity, it is the so-called “August 31 Decision” of 2014 on electoral reform that constituted the main transformative event in the development of self-determination claims. Having suffered a series of setbacks in their previous rounds of negotiations on electoral reform, pan-democrats put extra efforts into garnering public interest and support for democratization ahead of the 2017 elections. Some rallied around an “Occupy Central” campaign which threatened to paralyze Hong Kong’s Central District—its main business and financial centre—if their demands for the election of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage in 2017 were rejected. In an attempt to add pressure on Beijing, Occupy Central leaders organized a poll—promoted as an informal referendum—in which voters were called to select one of three methods for the nomination of candidates for the position of Chief Executive. According to Article 45 of the HKBL, candidates for the position must first be nominated by an allegedly “broadly representative committee” which has to this day been largely aligned with pro-Beijing interests. The three methods proposed in the Occupy Central poll included provisions for civil nominations, which pan-democrats saw as the only option to ensure that elections would not be entirely manipulated by Beijing.

In a nutshell, the August 31 decision by the SCNPC was that the Chief Executive could be elected by universal suffrage from 2017 onward, but that candidates for the post would still be screened by a nomination committee presumably aligned with pro-Beijing interests. Moreover, the threshold for the nomination of candidates would be set to half of all committee members, therefore effectively screening out pan-democrats. In other words, the decision was tantamount to having the population vote by universal suffrage on candidates indirectly nominated by the central government. In addition, Beijing reiterated its requirement that the Chief Executive must “love Hong Kong and love the country,” insinuating that any candidate who wished to expand the scope of Hong Kong’s autonomy or confront the central government would be declared ineligible to stand for election. In fact, the 31 August decision was echoing a White Paper on “The Practice of the One Country, Two Systems Policy” released in June 2014, which implied the primacy of the “One Country” over the “Two Systems” and stressed that “[t]he central government has the power of oversight over the exercise of a high degree of autonomy in the HKSAR” (Xinhuanet, 10 June 2014). While the reasons for Beijing’s assertiveness and rigidity on these matters remain unclear, it conceivably had to do with the desire of incoming state leaders to consolidate their power over the Communist Party, and that of the latter to strengthen its grip over society—including Hong Kong’s—in an era where the party’s legitimacy and its communist legacy are bound to face increasing challenges.

Beijing’s increasingly centralistic and nationalistic rhetoric would only boost the resolve of its opponents. In late September, displeased with hesitations on the part of Occupy Central leaders to actualize their threats to launch and coordinate the civil disobedience movement, student associations, backed by multiple organizations, eventually took over the campaign and launched what came to be called the Umbrella Movement, paralyzing key districts until early December 2014. Although protesters disbanded without seeing any of their demands on universal suffrage met, the movement nonetheless played a critical role in further strengthening millennials’ political awareness and their sense that Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “One Country, Two Systems” formula could not be taken for granted, paving the way for a new era of participatory politics.

If the Moral and National Education curriculum instituted the context for the rise in discourses on Hong Kong as a nation and the politicization of civil society, the August Decision, and the ensuing Umbrella Movement, opened a transformative period in the creation of organizations and political parties advocating a variety of self-determination options. While most of these parties seemed to lack a clear ideology and strategy, their rationale may best be expressed in the statement by Hong Kong Indigenous spokesman Edward Leung that “as long as we are under Chinese rule there is no hope to realize democracy or real autonomy in Hong Kong” (Phillips and Cheung, 2016). In other words, realizing that Hong Kong people’s interests, especially those of pan-democrats, could not be maximized within the Chinese state, some actors began to conceive of independence as a way—perhaps the only way—for Hong Kong to pursue its political, social and cultural development. At least at its incipient stage, self-determination was seen as means to achieve democracy in Hong Kong, rather than as an end in itself.

Since the last legislative election campaign in the summer of 2016, debates on nationalism and self-determination, previously unheard of in Hong Kong, came to overshadow many other aspects of Hong Kong’s political scene. In many ways, self-determination parties can be considered the new radical faction of the anti-establishment camp (previously known as the pan-democratic camp), a position which used to be occupied by social democrats. In the September 2016 legislative election, newly formed “localist” parties went out to win 6 out of 40 seats in geographical constituencies, although four of their elected representatives (alongside two democrats) were subsequently disqualified for failing to take their oath of office in accordance with the stipulated rules, with some pledging allegiance to the “Hong Kong Nation” (instead of the HKSAR of the PRC) and using derogatory language in reference to the state. The central and regional governments have vowed to crush self-determination forces, but given the dynamics currently at play, there is a risk that further hardening their stance and depriving these forces from legitimate channels of expression will further feed and radicalize the self-determination movement.

Catalonia: From autonomist to secessionist nationalism

Although Catalan nationalism has a much longer history than Hong Kong nationalism, until very recently, Catalan nationalism mainly looked for autonomy rather than secession. Developed in the late 19th century by a Catalan bourgeoisie that felt Spain’s “backwardness” was holding back the region, the nationalist movement sought to increase both its influence and autonomy within Spain (Balcells, 1995). The creation of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) in 1931 pointed to a more radical form of left-wing nationalism, but calls for Catalonia’s independence were rare for most of the 20th century, even in the context of the Franco dictatorship. The Estado de las Autonomías, which instituted the Autonomous Community of Catalonia emerged from democratic transition and fulfilled, for the most part, the agenda of Catalonia’s historical autonomist nationalism. Despite some dissatisfaction towards the system of Autonomous Communities beginning in the 1990s, Catalan politics remained dominated, until the early 2010s, by the autonomist nationalism of Convergència i Unió (CiU, an alliance between Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya and Unió Democràtica de Catalunya) and its long-time leader Jordi Pujol, who always rejected the notion of Catalan independence while promoting the notion of self-determination (Guibernau, 2006).

Yet, on the Catalan national holiday (La Diada) in 2012, the streets of Barcelona were filled with approximately one million people voicing support for independence. Moreover, CiU disintegrated as a result of pressures to adopt a secessionist stance, something its Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) component did in 2012, before changing its name to Partit Demòcrata Català (PDC) in 2016. What triggered this transformation of Catalan nationalism from an autonomist to a secessionist movement?

As pressures for reforming Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy were increasing, a change in government in both Barcelona and Madrid after the 2003 and 2004 Catalan and Spanish elections, respectively, opened a window for addressing the Catalan claims for change. In Catalonia, CiU lost power for the first time since the transition to democracy. A shaky governing coalition was formed between the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC), ERC and Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV, a coalition of former Communists and Greens). In Madrid, a minority government of the left was also formed, led by the Partido socialista obrero español (PSOE) and supported by, among other parties, ERC. The political conditions were therefore favorable for negotiating a reform to Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy. However, the negotiations were difficult, especially because many in the PSOE were uncomfortable with several of the proposed clauses of the reformed Statute, especially the characterization of Catalonia as a nation (Keating and Wilson, 2009: 544). In the end, an agreement on the Reform of the Statute of Autonomy was reached and supported by both the Catalan and Spanish Parliaments. The reform was also put to a referendum in Catalonia where it was backed by 74% of voters with a voter turnout of 49%.

The potential effect that the reformed Statute could have had in stemming the tide of discontent over the System of Autonomous Communities in Catalonia was almost immediately negated by legal actions taken by a variety of political forces. Most importantly, the PP took the reformed Statute to the Spanish Constitutional Court arguing that half of its content was unconstitutional. The PP represents a brand of Spanish nationalism informed by a mononational conception of the nation and a particularly staunch commitment to the constitutional order of 1978, which led it to strongly oppose the reformed Statute. The mere fact that this reformed Statute was challenged in Court after all the proper political steps had seemingly been taken elicited much anger in Catalonia (Guibernau, 2013: 381). Few people expected that the Spanish Constitutional Court would uphold the entirety of the reformed Statute. Therefore, pressure on ERC and, especially, CiU, to announce their positions if and when the new Statute could not be enacted as agreed began to mount. Although both parties wavered in their discourse between 2006 and 2010, suggestions that a judgment unfavorable to the reformed Statute would represent some kind of end of the road for Catalonia within the Estado de las Autonomías began to be heard (Basta, 2017). During these four years, the forthcoming Court judgment was already being cast as a potentially transformative event. Just like in Hong Kong prior to the August 2014 Decision, a narrative of exhaustion stressing how Catalonia had tried multiple times to find its place within Spain, only to be denied modest accommodation, was being deployed ahead of the Court judgment, which became imbued with meaning as soon as it was pronounced (Basta, 2017).

The Spanish Constitutional Court’s judgment rendered on 10 July 2010 was largely as expected insofar as the Court annulled or interpreted narrowly many of the provisions of the Statute. Most of the flexibility shown in 2006 by the Spanish executive and parliament in attending to questions of institutional accommodation, national identity, and collective Catalan interests was erased by the Court’s decision. The Court found that the clauses attempting to limit the involvement of the Spanish government in fields now specified to be Catalonia’s were unconstitutional because they undermined the state’s ability to guarantee uniformity (Guibernau, 2013: 382); it provided some fairly narrow parameters for interpreting the indirect reference to Catalonia as a nation, specifying that such a reference had no legal value because Catalonia could only be a nation in the sociological sense; it also judged that the mechanism that would have provided Catalonia with increased fiscal autonomy was, along with the proposed alteration to the participation of Catalonia in the territorial equalization system, unconstitutional (Guibernau, 2013: 382). The annulment of these particular clauses was interpreted by nationalist actors in Catalonia to mean that remaining within Spain went against the collective financial interests of Catalans.

Like the August 2014 Decision in Hong Kong, the Court judgment turned the dissatisfaction towards the Estado de las Autonomías that had been slowly developing through the last couple of decades into a full-blown crisis, at least for Catalan nationalists who took it to mean that change was not possible within the existing system. The Spanish Constitutional Court’s judgment, therefore, was a transformative event for Catalan nationalist parties, who questioned the traditional autonomist position of the movement. The judgment was viewed as a sign of Spanish rigidity, as a message from the rest of Spain that no advances could be made to find new means of institutional accommodation, to express Catalan identity, or to further Catalan interests within the Estado de las Autonomías.

This interpretation, at least when it came to the notion of Catalonia’s interests, was aided by the fact that the Court’s decision came at a time when Spain was experiencing an economic recession that triggered a financial and fiscal crisis. The timing of the judgment compounded the political effects of the crisis. Catalonia was one of the Autonomous Communities hardest hit by the crisis, particularly on unemployment (Ruiz-Herta et al., 2014: 45). The Court judgment on the reformed Statute helped a territorial and nationalist reading of the crisis where Catalonia was depicted as unfairly bearing the brunt of much hardship. The fiscal provisions of the reformed Statute could have been presented by political actors in Catalonia as a shield against some of the effects of the crisis. Now that they had been struck down, much of the misery that was being experienced by Catalans at that time was attributed to the territorial structure of the Spanish state.

The crisis also compounded the effects of the Court judgment because it led to a re-centralization of the system of Autonomous Communities. The Spanish government blamed the Autonomous Communities for the country’s levels of public debt, which skyrocketed from 26 to 93% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2007 and 2013 (Gray, 2014: 27). By late 2011, the PSOE and PP agreed to

reform Article 135 of the Spanish Constitution to oblige all tiers of government in Spain (autonomous communities included) to adhere to the budgetary stability principle. Henceforth (with effect from 27 September 2011), neither the central nor the regional governments would be allowed to incur a structural deficit exceeding the margins set by the EU without incurring a penalty (Gray, 2014: 32).

In a fashion reminiscent of Xi Jinping’s accession to the Chinese leadership in 2012, the results of the 2011 Spanish elections further helped spur the secessionist turn in Catalonia. The formation of a PP majority government meant that neither CiU nor ERC could exercise any leverage on the Spanish government. Extracting decentralist concessions, as had been done in the past when either the PP or the PSOE were short of a majority, was therefore not an option for the next four years. Also, as the PP was, ideologically, the Spanish party most likely to be comfortable with politics and policies of austerity, its efficiency discourse involved a prescription for re-centralization (Calvo Mendizabal, 2014: 13), including the notion that the Estado de las Autonomías was proving too expensive for a country that was struggling economically. Indeed, under the PP government formed in 2011, Catalan nationalists felt the party was taking advantage of the crisis to implement a hard Spanish nationalist agenda of re-centralization disguised as policies of harmonization and rationalization (Muro, 2015: 25). By the summer of 2012, Catalonia’s fiscal plight was perceived as particularly dire, and prompted a proposal for a new fiscal “pact” with the Spanish state. In this context, Artur Mas traveled to Madrid to meet with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in September of 2012 to discuss a new fiscal agreement that would grant Catalonia an arrangement similar to the Basque Country and Navarre’s, but without the legal basis of historical rights (López Bofill, 2014: 73). The outcome of that discussion was fairly predictable, as Prime Minister Rajoy stated that any such arrangement was unconstitutional and that all of Spain needed to overcome the crisis together.

This perfect storm for the radicalization of self-determination claims in Catalonia culminated in the secessionist turn of CiU. For a party that had articulated a traditional Catalan autonomist nationalism throughout the democratic period, this was clearly a path-departing change. The party’s old guard was reluctant to go down the secessionist path. However, sticking to autonomist self-determination claims soon became an untenable position for the CiU. Not only was there tremendous pressure coming from civil society and secessionist forces for a radicalization of self-determination claims in the wake of the Court’s judgment and in the context of the economic crisis (Crameri, 2015: 111), but a new dynamic of electoral competition was emerging. ERC had put aside its secessionist agenda to enter a coalition with PSC in 2006 and participate in the negotiations on the reform of the Statute of Autonomy. In the 2010 Catalan elections, it was strongly indicted by its nationalist constituency, losing 11 seats from the previous elections. As a result, ERC was keen to re-establish its secessionist credentials. For CiU, a party of power and government in Catalonia, sticking with a traditional moderate nationalism when the winds of change were blowing towards ERC’s position was dangerous, especially as it was mired in corruption scandals. After a massive pro-independence demonstration on 11 September 2012, the PP government’s refusal to agree to Catalan president Artur Mas’ request for a new fiscal pact added to the difficulty for CiU to maintain its traditional nationalism. In that context, CiU leader Artur Mas called an election for November, which he said would be fought on the future of the Catalan nation. By that point, CiU’s new secessionist position was established.

This position meant that the Catalan government was embarking on a process of self-determination whose ultimate objective was to have a referendum on Catalonia’s political future, including the option of independence. The rigidity of the Spanish state’s response to the notion of a self-determination referendum helped Catalan nationalist actors who argued that no meaningful negotiations over the further accommodation of Catalonia were possible in the Spanish context. At first, the Spanish government mostly ignored the Catalan government’s statements about its “right to decide” and, later on, it condemned them as unconstitutional. The Spanish government’s rigidity on the possibility of a self-determination referendum encouraged the polarization of Catalan society, virtually conflating the so-called right to decide and independence. As a result, Catalans who found reasonable the notion that they should be able to speak to their collective future were pushed towards secessionist positions.

In January 2013, the Catalan Parliament adopted a “Declaration of Sovereignty and Right to Decide of the People of Catalonia” (Declaración de soberanía y del derecho a decidir del Pueblo de Cataluña). Two months later, the Declaration was found unconstitutional. After the judgement on the Declaration, the Catalan government created an “Advisory Council on National Transition” (Consejo asesor para la transición nacional), which was mandated to examine alternatives for a “national transition.” The Council proposed a series of steps: first, a request to the Spanish government and parliament for a transfer to the Catalan government and parliament of the necessary authority to hold a referendum; next, if the request is denied, the use of Catalonia’s own consultation legislation; then, if that is not allowed, a “plebiscitary election”; and, finally, if such an election fails to be acknowledged by the Spanish government, a unilateral declaration of independence (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2014).

In early 2014, the Catalan Parliament formally requested that the Spanish Parliament transfer to Catalonia the authority to hold a self-determination referendum. Three months later, the Spanish Parliament rejected this request. In September 2014, the Catalan Parliament approved the use of Catalonia’s legislation on non-binding popular consultations to organize a self-determination referendum. The Spanish government appealed the constitutionality of such a referendum, and the Court suspended the legislation. A couple of weeks later, President Mas announced that Catalans would be invited to vote on their collective future in the context of a “process of citizen participation,” a term referenced in the Spanish Constitution. This consultation went ahead despite the Spanish Constitutional Court’s order to suspend the vote after its constitutionality was appealed by the Spanish government.

The low voter turnout for this “citizens” participation’ consultation, most probably around 36%, illustrates the strong polarization of Catalan society generated by the process of self-determination, as most of those against independence abstained from voting. ² As a result, the apparent victory of the “independent state” option (81% in favor) was of little immediate help to secessionist forces in Catalonia. The Spanish government portrayed the exercise as a failure (based on the low voter turnout), and it indicted prominent political figures for their role in the organization of the consultation.

Then came a “plebiscitary election,” in which parties supporting independence campaigned together and presented a common list. CDC, ERC and their partners of the “Together for Yes” (Junts pel Sí) list presented the Catalan elections of 27 September 2015 as a de facto independence referendum (Martí and Cetrà, 2016). During the election campaign, parties from the “Together for Yes” list said they would begin a process of accession to independence if they won a majority of seats. Non-secessionist parties argued that no such mandate could be gained from an election. The “Together for Yes” list was fairly successful in having the election campaign center on the question of independence (Martí and Cetrà, 2016: 111). In the end, the “Together for Yes” list won 62 out of 135 seats (and 40% of the vote) while CUP (Candidatura d’Unitat Popular), a left-wing party that supports independence, won 10 seats. Secessionist forces won a majority of seats (72), but fell short of garnering majority of votes (40% for “Together for Yes” and 8% for CUP).

The radicalization process of Catalan nationalism continued, as the new government formed by the parties of the “Together for Yes” list held a referendum on independence on 1 October 2017, despite warnings from the Spanish government that it was illegal and unconstitutional. The results of the recent referendum are hard to ascertain, with 92% in favor of independence but with a voter turnout of about 43%, as most opponents of the secessionist option boycotted the vote. However, the reaction of the Spanish government, which consisted of indicting nationalist leaders and invoking article 155 of the Spanish constitution to dissolve the Catalan Parliament, continued to feed the view amongst Catalan nationalists that Spain will never change.

Conclusion

This paper has used a historical institutionalist approach to explain the sudden emergence of self-determination claims in Hong Kong and the radicalization of such claims in Catalonia. It argued that transformative events reflecting the central governments’ rigidity on issues involving identity, interests, and territorial autonomy have played a major role in the emergence and radicalization of these claims. While autonomy was initially taken for granted in Hong Kong, albeit with a measure of distrust towards the central government, a number of social and political developments involving the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing altered people’s perception of, and confidence in, the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. In particular, the refusal of the Central Government, in concert with the SAR government and coopted pro-establishment elites, to enable tangible reforms towards democracy in 2014, has played the role of transformative event in radicalizing some elements of civil society and of the anti-establishment camp. In Catalonia, the constitutional challenge to the 2006 Reform of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy and the resulting 2010 Court judgment triggered a secessionist turn within Catalan nationalism.

These events did not occur in a vacuum, as their effects were exacerbated by on-going political processes that featured struggles for change against a resistant central state. In fact, in both Hong Kong and Catalonia, these events were the straw that broke the camel’s back, as Hong Kong democrats and Catalan autonomists were already coping with a generalized feeling of exhaustion and disillusion. In both cases, events were framed as testimonies of the unviability of existing arrangements governing state–region relations. In fact, the two cases correspond to what Basta (2017) has termed “prospectively framed events,” whereby political actors anticipate and start making sense of events even prior to their occurrence. In Hong Kong, threats to organize the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement in the event of Beijing’s refusal to enable democratic reforms played an important role in framing the state as inimical to regional interests and in mobilizing the population. Indeed, this process entailed a profound reimagining of the status quo which questioned not only the legitimacy of the state and of its authority over the region, but also of values surrounding popular sovereignty, social order and authority more generally. Dynamics were similar in Catalonia, not only with regard to the prospective framing in the 2010 ruling, but also with recent discourses stressing the illegitimacy of the state’s resort to judicial means in suppressing what is portrayed as an expression of popular sovereignty.

This comparative study of Hong Kong and Catalonia supports the usefulness and applicability of historical institutionalist frameworks in a wide variety of contexts. Different institutional settings have, however, made for significantly different dynamics in these two communities. Although internal political dynamics are certainly important in Catalonia, the fact that Spain and Catalonia are fully democratic has contributed to pitting the region against the center in a more obvious manner than in the case of Hong Kong and China. In fact, the capacity of self-determination parties to form a majority government within Catalonia gives these political forces the legitimacy and leverage to confront the state directly. In Hong Kong, however, the only partially democratic system has ensured a high level of convergence between the regional and central governments, thus redirecting the conflict to its semi-elected legislature and blooming civil society. As a result, the nascent self-determination movement is directed not only against Beijing, but also against Hong Kong’s unelected elites and regional institutions. In this sense, the state in Hong Kong is not as spatially dichotomized as it is in Catalonia, or at least as it was prior to the current crisis and the suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy status. In fact, the fear of “Mainlandization” in Hong Kong is precisely an apprehension that regional institutions are being absorbed into the state, or that they are being transformed into appendages of the latter.