Business of Nations
BUSINESS OF NATIONS
Business matters. Scholars disagree – as they have since the 18th century – on just how private enterprise shapes politics and society, but they do not disputes that it does. This ongoing project on the role of business (public and private) in the run-up to independence referenda ties together ideas about business/politics and nationalism/identity. It revolves around a deceptively simple question: why is it that secession referenda in wealthy democratic regions normally produce divided electorates, whereas nearly everywhere else they result in massive majorities in favour of independence? The only attempt at an answer to-date suggests a deceptively simple response – it’s about democracy. This project suggests that it has more to do with the social influence of private big business. Should you care about this if you aren’t interested in secession/nationalism? Absolutely – this is also a story about how power is exercised in democracy.
Karlo Basta. “The State of Nationalism: Nationalism & Capitalism.” Studies on National Movements.” Vol. 13, No. 1 (2024): 141-159. Click here to access.
While the scholarship on the role capitalism played in the genesis of nationalism is relatively coherent, our understanding of the relationship between those two phenomena once they have emerged is much more disjointed. Are capitalism and nationalism inherently conflictual or is their relationship a symbiotic one? Under what conditions is one of those two patterns more likely? Clues about this dimension of the link between capitalism and nationalism are not readily available in existing accounts of either phenomenon. The goal of this article, therefore, is to cull and systematize various strands of ideas about how these two phenomena might be connected.
Karlo Basta. “Business as a Political Actor: Mapping the Role of the Private Sector in Independence Referenda.” In Ryan Griffiths & Diego Muro, eds. Strategies of Secession and Counter-secession. Lanham: ECPR Press, 2020. Click here to access
Debates in the lead-up to secession referenda frequently revolve around the economic consequences of independence. Scholars have not yet considered the role of a key actor in those debates – private business. This omission is particularly glaring given that political actors themselves, both those favouring secession and those advocating for status quo, seem to believe that what business has to say matters. This chapter theorizes private big business as a unique political actor with the incentive, the power, and the legitimacy to participate in public debates on secession. It then maps the strategies deployed by big business as it opposes secession, as well as of secessionist actors as they try to reduce the perceived damage of business intervention in the debates. The chapter broadens our understanding of the range of relevant actors in nationalist contestation.