Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Regional social movements in France had proposed since the 1960s new territorial divisions and autonomy for the regions. The Left in opposition had taken up these demands and has implemented, since coming to power in 1981, a programme of decentralisation to all administrative levels. However, the reforms at the regional level can be seen primarily as an extension of the existing établissement public régional and thus have not satisfied the aspirations and demands of autonomist and separatist movements. This tension between national and regionalist views of decentralisation is then examined in relation to Corsica, the only region to be granted a statut particulier.

Explanations for the rise of minority nationalist movements in advanced industrial societies tend toward being statist in character. In this paper, the procedures are examined by which minorities in Quebec and Wales have sought to offer an alternative basis for the legitimisation of group rights and participation within the state structures. Attention is drawn to the pivotal role of language reproduction in these case studies and to the implications for the survival of the minority culture of this new form of local state dependency. Though the tangible benefits which have accrued to the minorities as a result of nationalist mobilisation are acknowledged, disquiet is expressed as to the primacy given to language-related policies and to the future prospect of extending the legitimacy of the minority tongue from public to private domains. In this respect, Quebec offers a more integrative pattern than Wales, where language intrusion is causing conflict within the Welsh-speaking minority and is creating new sources of class-based friction. However, it is concluded that both in Wales and in Quebec the reform of language policy is part of a wider restructuring of social and political relationships. Further research is clearly needed on the economic implications of language planning and on the class restructuring which postwar developments have produced within the Welsh and Québecois societies.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widely held viewpoint in Western studies of the USSR that ethnic nationalism is necessarily a threat to the Soviet state. After questioning of the premises upon which a conflict-based theory of nationality relations has been constructed, it is argued that by focusing on the cross-patterned reticulation model of social and ethnic stratification that we will be in a better position to understand why the politicisation of national identities cannot be assumed to be automatic or uniform. Ways in which the state controls the politicisation of ethnoterritorial cleavages are then explored, by focusing on the internal passport system, the federal structure, and language planning. The problems faced by a nationalistically sympathetic cultural intelligentsia in mobilising support around ethnoterritorial cleavages is also touched upon. The paper concludes with a summary of what socioeconomic and political changes are likely to fuel the engines for political action where easily identifiable ethnoterritorial cleavages and a sympathetic regional political leadership make this possible.

In this paper the activities of regional and nationalist movements in Britain are analysed with respect to five hypotheses: The degree and form of representation, including the role of elites; the extent of participation in regional identity; the form of existing and desired forms of decentralisation; the extent of specificness of regional issues; and the extent of central economic and political dominance. Seven major areas are analysed: Shetland, Orkney, Western Isles, Cornwall, Wessex, the North, and North Devon, with some analysis also of Scotland and Wales. The existence of a considerable level of participation in regional identity in some regions, and a remarkable degree of success, by working through existing institutions, of movements in Shetland, Orkney, and North Devon will be demonstrated. For other regions, however, participation is ‘dormant’.

The main features of Australian land taxation at state and local levels are set out first and emphasis is put on the limited role it plays today. Various conceptual problems such as the reasons for imposing special taxes on land, the distinctions between different taxes, such as site value rating, taxes on increments in land values, and charges aimed at the recovery of infrastructure and servicing costs, are explored in some detail. A final section looks at policy alternatives in Australia in the light of the preceding discussion.

The 1984 regional policy package is expected to save £300 million per annum compared with previous arrangements. An attempt is made to itemise the sources of this saving. It can be seen from the results that it is hard to reconcile the various stated expectations of Government. Discussion of certain data problems highlights deficiencies in the regular supply of information, and leads to the conclusion that when major policy changes occur it should be normal for explicit consideration to be given to the supply of information needed to monitor the operation of the new policy.