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Can territorial disputes within countries be a basis for affective polarization? If so, how does it vary across territories? A burgeoning literature on affective polarization has largely focused on partisan divisions; we argue that contentious political issues such as those relating to territorial integrity can also be a basis for such affective polarization, where citizens feel concord with those sharing such policy preferences and animus for those who do not. We specify hypotheses about territorial‐policy‐based affective polarization and bring comparative survey evidence from three European regions with salient and contentious territorial claims: Scotland, Catalonia and Northern Ireland. While these three cases encompass different outcomes of territorial disputes, our results show strikingly similar levels of affective polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While fossil fuels are a well‐researched element of nationalist discourse, the relationship between nationalism and renewable energy has not yet been adequately explored. We address this gap by investigating the impact of the energy transition on the Scottish National Party's (SNP) discourse between 1983 and 2021. Through an analysis of SNP manifestos and speeches, we discursively trace the evolution of three pertinent amalgams of nationalism—green nationalism, resource nationalism and techno‐nationalism—revealing renewable energy to have been co‐opted and deployed in all three. Rather than the energy transition intuitively resulting in the decline of fossil fuel‐based nationalisms in favour of those rooted in an emergent renewable energy paradigm, we find that adaptations in the SNP's discursive strategies allowed the former to co‐exist with the latter, enhancing complementarity and mitigating goal conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish Labour, once viewed as the most divided party in the UK, appears buoyant, the result of the growing popularity of its leader, Anas Sarwar, a more positive relationship with UK Labour, and most notably, significant gains in the polls. The party has sought to find a centre ground in a political system defined by opposing visions of Scotland's political future, a strategy which has previously left it squeezed between more assertive nationalist and unionist rivals. However, with little prospect of another independence referendum in the near term, this centre ground may yet prove fruitful. The party has an opportunity to position itself as a viable alternative in a dramatically changed political landscape. While Labour's optimism is not unfounded, its polling perhaps speaks more to the weaknesses of its political rivals than the strength of the party itself; and questions persist about Scottish Labour's political vision and constitutional offering in a political system which remains bifurcated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: globalisation; nationhood/national identity; Scotland/Scottish; theories of nationalism EN globalisation nationhood/national identity Scotland/Scottish theories of nationalism 805 809 5 07/03/23 20230701 NES 230701 Tom Nairn was a remarkably evocative writer, an exquisitely intuitive theorist of national I ism i and nationality. Just as Tom was barely aware of the influence of his work on nationalism studies, Ben was unaware of the consequences of his own intuitive theorising. (Nairn, [10], p. 16) Third, the global reach of the United States post-2001 rather than the fading Ukanian empire became his point of reference for the "Third Coming" of nationalism (Nairn, [9]; Nairn & James, [11]). [Extracted from the article]

One of my discussions with Tom led to me applying this concept to England and insisting that if it was true that Scottish nationalism was obscured by the institutions and symbols of the British state, then this was even more the case for England. Nairn's England: Reappraising tom Nairn on English nationalism. Keywords: Tom Nairn; Nationalism; Modernism; England; Scotland EN Tom Nairn Nationalism Modernism England Scotland 801 804 4 07/03/23 20230701 NES 230701 I first encountered Tom Nairn when I saw a copy of I The Break-up of Britain i (Nairn, [6]) at a friend's house after my undergraduate degree had concluded in 1994. Tom gave a perspective on nationalism in general and Scottish nationalism in particular that many of the non-Scottish students had not encountered before. [Extracted from the article]

From 1794, when the British volunteer movement began in earnest, to 1802, when the French Revolutionary Wars came to an end, the established clergy preached numerous sermons to volunteer military units throughout England and in parts of Scotland. These sermons sought to articulate a sense of Britishness in such a way as to command more or less universal assent, meaning assent both to the ongoing war effort and to the national enterprise more broadly considered. Volunteers across the country were taught to see Great Britain as a nation chosen by God to stand alone against the onslaught of French principles, and they were encouraged to derive a sense of purpose and meaning from their local contributions to the national struggle. The volunteer sermons bridged the gap between local attachments and national commitments, and in so doing they played a significant role in the formation of a national consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Sea oil discoveries introduced a qualitative divide that gave rise to at least the prospect of an economically viable Scottish independence, insofar as it made the "Scottish economy" a legitimate point of contestation on constitutional lines. In turn, this problematised the nature of minority nationalism in advanced, developed, post-imperial capitalist regional economies. The research assesses how economic factors -- most notably oil -- materially affected the prospects of asserting power, and thus the possibilities for imagining collective agency as a national (i.e. Scottish) project. Oil helped shift "New Left" thinking away from assimilationist and modernising projects of assimilating regional consciousness into "national" projects, while also inspiring outright nationalists to define their own project in relation to the earlier phases of nationalism. The study thus contributes to recentring the study of Scotland, with a smaller emphasis on the local dimension and identities, as against the role of national actors in untangling relationships with wider geopolitical and geo-economic forces. The claim is not simply that global forces formed the qualitative divide that made nationalist action possible; but also that these were conscious considerations of actors in the aftermath of North Sea discoveries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]