Democratic legitimacy through the lens of national identity: the Basque Country and Spain
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Date
2025
Authors
Ayotte, Francis
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
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Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Political Science
Abstract
In the decades emerging after the creation of the liberal multicultural thesis in the 1990s, it has become increasingly apparent that various obstacles have greatly obstructed the development of pluralist and multicultural policies with Western liberal democratic states. Such policies have largely stagnated or regressed, and there has been a noticeable reemergence of majority nationalism and what has been termed ‘majority backlash.’ On the other side, these issues have only increased the sense of illegitimacy of these states from the perspective of minority communities, especially national minorities in multinational states. This thesis utilizes poststructural and agonistic democracy theories to consider and theorize how liberalism’s insistence on impartiality and rationality makes it struggle to account for tensions which emerge symbolically around identity, primarily in this case, national identity. This thesis highlights how these tensions around identity manifest in the real world by conducting a discourse analysis on two distinct national groups within one nation-state – Spain and the minority Basque nation. Examining diverging narratives regarding the constitution of the demos and the characteristics assigned to it during this period underscores the problematic assertion of universality in liberal democratic theory by first outlining the significance of the symbolic dimension of democratic representation and legitimacy. It is thus argued that the role of majority nationalism in liberal democracies cannot be sidestepped or ignored in multicultural and pluralist theories of democracy due to its foundational role in legitimating liberal democratic order.
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Keywords
National identity , Liberal democracies , National majority , National minority , Spain , Basque Country , Basque self-determination