Politics, Society and Political Identity

Alistair Cole

What is Political Identity? • Has Identity been ‘murdered’? Is it useless

‘scientifically’ (WJM MacKenzie) • The phrase identity does not refer to an

objective phenomenon and there is no agreed meaning.

• The meaning of identity has evolved, indeed been misused. Identity started off as meaning sameness of two objects, in the sense of identical. It then evolved to mean the continuity of an individual personality, hence difference.

• By extension, ‘ The phrase is a metaphor, moving from individual to collective’.

• In a metaphorical sense, identity can signify a broader use; in social identity/collective identity, the social or collective is given an individual personality.

Identity and the social sciences: 3 classic positions

• Cultural anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead writing in the 1920s, use identity as culture, to refer to whole societies. Mead assumed that each culture was unique, consistent and binding. Individual identity could not be comprehended outside of a collectivity.

• Other end of the spectrum: For psychologists, such as Erikson or Freud, identity played out within an individual personality.

• Sociologists (Goffmann), identity was only comprehensible in a social - group - context, since identity was shaped by interactionism. For Goffmann ‘the individual exists only in situations of social interaction’.

A Compound meaning• Whatever its initial meaning, identity has a compound sense;

identity can be individual, social (society), or collective (group). In practice these levels interact and are mutally entangled.

• At the macro level, political identity can be understood as ‘common purpose’, as an entity that persists through time. Classically associated with a nation-state… It consists of a combination of myths, symbols, rituals and ideology. Myths: the founding images of groups, nations, social groups, regions…. Symbols, such as flags, signs, language; rituals: especially understood in a political sense; ideology; coherent patterns of belief.

• Intermediate forms of political identity are class, race, religion and nation. In most cases, a rhetoric of identity strengthens - or otherwise - the cohesion of a group.

• But this throws up serious methodological issues

Methodological issues• There are methodological issues concerned here: does it

apply to individuals (individual-level analysis?) Or to collective entities (class, gender, race and so on) ?

• Can we make any assumptions about collective entities from individual analysis? In the worst cases, ‘identity’ becomes a form of primordialism or essentialism, in which individuals are credited with ascriptive (that is, not chosen by themselves) identities which are assumed to guide behaviour

• If we ascribe individuals to categories, such as class or gender, how do we know that these are meaningful for these individuals?

• There is a tendency to use identity as a master category, so that ethnicity or gender determine behaviour as class once did

Three contemporary research traditions

• Ethnographical analysis; researcher as a participant observer imbued with the culture of a group/tribe. Individual little autonomy

• Macro- Statistical analysis: political culture studies of the 1960s and studies of values of political scientists such as Inglehart

• Post-modern analysis 1). individual has recovered autonomy both from group and societal pressures 2). Individual chooses between identity choices and distinctive identity markers. Identity is constructed

• Studying identity thus involves two-three different levels of analysis: 1). Societal: what is the value of reasoning in terms of political culture? 2). Intermediate: how are individuals influenced by class, religion, race, ethnicity? 3). individual (how do individuals ‘mix’ their identities, or do they?

Tradition 1. Identity as national cultures

• Almond and Verba The Civic Culture, 1965.. Modern values-based research such as that of Inglehart

• Identify broad traits of a ‘political culture’ by means of a mass survey approach

• National stereotyping? Largely discredited in its original form. The ‘nation’ unit of analysis is problematic, at least in terms of values

• Link with ‘political development’ discredited today; an ethnocentric approach that took the US as the core benchmark for liberal democracy and looked to identify the cultural conditions for stable democracy

• Deducing system-wide conclusions from questions asked of individuals . Ecological fallacy.

• More purchase at the level of sub-cultures (e.g. Communist or Catholic sub-cultures)

Tradition 2: identifying Heavy sociological variables 1.

• Identity as forms of social cleavage. Cleavages are social or value-based conflicts. The term cleavage structure refers to the main lines of political division within a society.

• In their classic work, Lipset and Rokkan identify three main sources of division within European societies society:

• Anticlericalism [Republic]/Church , from the French revolution and subsequent wave of anti-clericalism across Europe (eighteenth);

• Centre-Periphery, from the imperfect process of state formation across Europe in the nineteenth century (19th century);

• Social class, inherited from the industrial revolution and the conflict between capital and labour, which largely structured 20th century politics.

• For Lipset and Rokkan most of the key cleavages in place in the 1960s were in place by the late nineteenth century; their thesis on the frozen character of cleavages remains very influential.

• Different countries can be characterised by the importance of one, or more than one cleavage – and this cleavage structure has had a very important effect in structuring the party system.

Heavy Sociological Variables 2 • Tim Bale identifies nine key cleavages that structure politics in Europe

today: in order of their appearance, these are:• Land-industry (18th century), representing the conflicting interests of

the aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie… gradually victory of the bourgeoisie and creation of bourgeois parties

• owner-worker, giving rise to the classic labour-capital division and to the birth of SD parties

• urban-rural cleavages, especially in countries such as Norway where the urban middle classes were of foreign extraction and the rural areas were peopled by poor indigenous peasants (agrarian parties, today largely disappeared)

• centre-periphery (regionalist/ minority nationalist parties)• church-state (clericalism/Christian democracay against anti-clerical

parties)• Revolution-gradualism ( Social Democracy and Communist parties in

1917)• Democracy-totalitarianism (rise of fascists in 1930s)• modernism/post-materialism(environmental and quality of life issues,

from 1960s onwards (Greens) • multiculturalism/homogeneity (far-right and populism)

Cross-cutting cleavages• These cleavages could stand alone: where there is only one line of

cleavage – the normal or residual social class one – then this acts as the fundamentally structuring element.

• But other cleavages might cut across the class one, and be more pertinent politically; this can be the case of religion, for example, where religious behaviour is very closely associated with a conservative orientation in most countries, whatever social class one belongs to.

• On the other hand, lower-level cleavages might be nested in higher order cleavages: thus, the centre-periphery cleavage – where minority nations resist the construction of a state – might strengthen divisions based on social class; especially if members of a minority community are also in an unfavourable socio-economic position.

• Thus cleavages can be structuring; reinforcing or cross-cutting.• Remains seminal for considering contours of European party

system

Tradition 3 Post-modern identity markers

• Individual chooses between identity choices and distinctive identity markers. Identity is constructed

• It is very unusual for individuals to have only one set of identities; much more usually the case for individual identities to be complex sets of allegiances, some of which are reinforcing, others not.

Identity Markers in contemporary Europe

• The most powerful traditional identity markers are nation, race, religion, class, territory and language

• Race has been virtually discredited as a means of identity. Pseudo-scientific racial studies have been discredited. Gene pools have been mixed everwhere, depriving racial analysis of any legitimacy.

• Religion is a source of cultural and semantic identity that we will consider below.

• Nation is an obvious source of identity, as are other forms of imagined community.

• Class has everywhere been declining as a source of identity.

• Territory and language will be considered in the next lecture

Constructing identities: the case of territory and identity

• In the constructivist tradition, individuals choose between varying identity markers.

• The Moreno ‘question’ offers a measure that allows individuals to combine their ‘ethno-territorial’ (regional) and their ‘civic state’ (national) identities.

• Other scales ask citizens to distinguish between up to four levels of identification: with locality, region, nation and Europe. These are difficult to operationalise. They assume the voter/citizen has the ability to integrate four or more dimensions

What is the Moreno scale?

• The Moreno ‘question’ measures dual identities through asking respondents how they combine their ‘ethno-territorial’ (regional) and their ‘civic state’ (national) identities. The Moreno identity scale was initially developed as a means of mapping the revival of ethno-territorial identities in the union states of Spain and the United Kingdom.

• Logically, this measure only makes sense where there are overlapping identities. Rather than withering away, as predicted by modernistic social science, minority nationalism has emerged as a powerful force across Europe. There has been a revival of ethno-territorial identities and a challenge to the centralist model of the unitary state

Multiple identities

• Though civic and ethnic nationalism are often in conflict, the core of Moreno’s argument is that modern states have witnessed the emergence of multiple identities.

• There is evidence that ‘citizens in advanced liberal democracies seem to reconcile supranational, state and local identities, which both majority and minority nationalisms often tend to polarise in a conflicting manner’ (McEwen and Moreno, 2005: 22).

Constructing Identities

• Moreno develops an ideal-type against which to measure ethno-territorial identities.

• Ethno-territorial identities reflect themselves in sub-state political institutions, distinctive party systems, language rights movements and cultural traditions and specific forms of elite accommodation.

• This measure has been used to measure ‘dual identities’ in Scotland, Wales, Catalonia, Basque country, Flanders, Brittany

• A. Cole used this scale to measure dual identities in Wales and Brittany

European Identity and globalisation

• Problem of ‘methodological individualism’.

• What is identity and how do we measure it?

• What do we do when we ask questions about globalisation? Can we expect a coherent response/

• European Values survey and Eurobarometer

Europeanisation of identities?

• Accession to the EU: does this produce a Europeanisation of identities?

• French and Dutch referendums. What were these measuring?

• Multiple identities• Permissive consensus• Conceptions of globalisation. How

constructed? Global governance? Or delocalisations?

European political identity and globalisation

• The EU itself acts as a legal order that embeds democratic institutions in its member-states – however much one might criticise the democratic deficit within the EU itself.

• The new accession states of 2004 and 2007 countries had each to meet strict criteria – the Copenhagen criteria of 1993 – to be able to join in the European Union.

• This provides a very good example of diffusion: of the imposition of norms of good practice and respect for human rights on members wanting to join the club.

• EU a strongly normative agenda, as well as a market. • Values of human rights, good governance, anti-corruption,

democracy, diversity… citizenship. • Framing as democracy – soutehrn Europe, CEE – or as markets

and regulatory stability – UK, nordic states..

A Christian Club?

• But deeper issues of identity: such as religion, cause conflict/division at the European level.

• Turkey, Romania, Bulgarian all pose specific contemporary challenges

• UK accession in 1973: brought in a protestant member.

Globalisation as a material reality?• Globalisation is, for the most part, used to signify a series

of objective material shifts bound up with the increasing mobility of capital, the trans-nationalisation of production processes, shifting patterns of trade, technological changes…that all facilitate world-wide economic interaction.

• The concept is used to refer to the spread of neo-liberal policy norms, the retreat from Keynesian welfare state and social democracy.

• The prevailing interpretation sees globalization as either a structural fact or a set of policy preferences.

• globalization makes powerful truth claims, requiring neo-liberal responses.

• There is dispute about the extent of novelty of globalization and the extent to which it is actually occurring. International exchange has always occurred; the terms of international trade do not offer equal opportunities to all nations or continents.

Globalisation and Europeanization

• The EU literature presents globalization in terms of being an external shock, a change from outside. Outside changes have strengthened the role of the EU as a stable governance system. There are a number of versions of this external argument:

• The neo-functionalist one, espoused by Sandholtz and Zysman (1989) whereby external economic change affected the preferences of business actors, who lobbied political authorities for the Single market and currency.

• Other accounts focus on the impact on national states (Schmidt) and the loss of economic sovereignty brought about by the integration in processes of global governance

• Others focus on the impact of global change on domestic constituencies (Moravscik, Milner).

• Each of these sees rather mechanical effects. Europeanisation then emerges as a west European effort to develop policies to cope with the anarchy of the globe.

Globalisation as discourse Too much emphasis given to the empirical verifiability of globalisation,

not enough to the saliency of globalization in contemporary policy processes. Globalisation is interesting in its ideational dimensions, how it structures political discourse.

• WE can not simply treat globalization as a matter of exogenous change. The social construction of globalization determines whether it will be contested or embraced.

• Globalisation as discourse can signify the irresistible triumph of neo-liberal solutions. It can also be used to delimit the range of available strategic opportunities.

• There is an widely diffused belief in the spread of globalization as economic liberalization across the globe. In the hands of politicians, economic globalization has become distorted and vulgarized, in the sense of there is no alternative (Blair and new Labour)

• globalisation has adopted a harder edge. For Leon Brittan, for example, globalization represented European level regulatory competence and neo-liberal policy options. This version sees globalization as an opportunity, rather than a threat.

• But there is a large degree of dispute about what globalization requires; there is normative dissonance.

Adapting to globalisation: the UK

• British Political discourse has framed globalisation as opportunity. Adapting to globalisation is inevitable and facilitates shifts from a manufacturing to a service and financial based economy

• Adapting to globalisation; the advantage of setting a superior order to that of the European Union, recalling the imperative of global governance (UN, WTO, etc)

• Globalisation a useful discursive tool to legitimise domestic change and to attract footloose capital (non-Doms)

• Globalisation: primarily an economic framing of what the EU is for and its limitations.