Searching for 'nation-ness'

Professor Godfrey Baldacchino continues his appraisal of Malta's unfolding relationship with the European Union in the light of Malta's status as an example of a 'nationless state'. This week he looks at the onset of partisan and religious hegemony. In the final part he explores the possible dialectics of an emerging nationalism with an entrenched, two-party political system and its totalising discourse in Malta.

Following a major survey of the economic and democratic track record of various states, Srebrnik argues that a society's sense of identity and self-worth, coupled by cultural values that promote trust, innovation, education and hard work, are the most important factors in determining winners in a global economy.45

The statement has the features of a truism; but the spatial separateness and 'geographical precision' of small islands certainly appear a priori to bestow them with the potential for a stronger sense of self, pride and identity.46

Empirical research also suggests that small, mainly island, states are also likely to have a strong democratic tradition.47 What Srebrnik fails to identify in his otherwise excellent essay is that identity is also relational; a strong sense of the self can depend on a strong sense of 'otherness'.

With a benign colonial administration keen to maintain Malta primarily for strategic reasons rather than exploitative economic ones, the obvious 'other' - the colonial master - was hardly an enemy, unlike in many other colonial settings.

Armed insurrections for independence, those potentially excellent schools for the formation of nationalism, were therefore never contemplated in Malta. If anything, it was the exact antithesis - irredentism or integration - which was seriously considered.

The ties with something larger intimated cynically by Naipaul have been and remain strong:48 in language, tourism, legislation, education and culture, Britain remains magnetic to the Maltese.

Such a paternalist relationship - described in such strong terms as 'upside down decolonisation'49 - is shared with many of the citizens of Britain's non-sovereign overseas island territories.50

This is the somewhat exasperating context to Malta's application to join the European Union (EU) which, as may be expected from such a cultural context, remains gripped by debates which maintain strict partisan political lines.

On one hand, the NP (currently in power) remains enthusiastically in favour of EU membership at the earliest opportunity, and has negotiated those special conditions deemed crucial in recognition of Malta's specific circumstances.

On the other hand, the MLP (which froze Malta's application to join the EU when it was returned to power during 1996-1998) argues against EU membership which, it claims, is not in Malta's best interests since it would effectively cheat the Maltese of sovereignty and transform Malta into the EU's work or holiday destination; this could thwart locals from employment opportunities or affordable housing in their own country.

In lieu of EU membership, the MLP advocates a customised relationship or 'partnership', often mentioning Switzerland as an example. There is no evident, intra-party debate: party discipline is draconian.

The Church, nudged regularly to take a stand, remains defiantly and, predictably, aloof.

Yet, one may argue that it is precisely in relation to the EU that the historically elusive, external 'other' - a precondition for a nascent Maltese nationalism? - may have suddenly appeared.

The EU membership debate is replete with references to national artifacts or symbols: sovereignty, neutrality, national language, national institutions, culture, representation in European institutions, status of foreign workers, access by foreigners to local real estate, control over local fishing grounds, the replacement of the local currency (the Maltese lira) by the euro, the adoption of various EU common trade and security policies, promotion and protection of local agricultural products, traditional cuisine...

Possibly, a novel Maltese nationalism is being generated by and through such debates.

A long, uncertain road

Malta's formal relationship with the EU goes as far back as April 1971, when an association agreement between Malta and the EU entered into force. Malta was indeed the third country to enter into such an agreement with the then EU-6 and indicated an initial readiness of the island to seek favourable terms of engagement in the globalising European economic space.

Indeed, the association agreement was originally meant to proceed to a customs union. However, this step was never taken since subsequent Maltese Labour governments preferred setting up a protectionist regime which promoted indigenous industry, particularly in small scale manufacturing, agriculture and artisanal fisheries.

The policy change came with the election of the Nationalist government in 1987 on a liberalising platform and the formal application to join the EU was lodged in July 1990. In June 1993 the European Commission expressed a favourable opinion on Malta's candidature. In 1995, Malta, along with Cyprus, was informed that the formal pre-accession dialogue would start within six months of the conclusion of the next inter-governmental conference.

This was duly concluded at Maastricht in 1997; but, by then, the MLP had been elected to power and Malta's application for EU membership had been 'frozen' by the MLP.

A special agreement should be explored between Malta and the EU, argued the MLP, a 'Switzerland in the Mediterranean' option which would defend Malta from the threats to its economy and sovereignty which would inevitably follow from full and uncompromising EU accession.

The MLP lost power after 22 months in office; the re-elected NP reactivated Malta's application, and the country joined the 'Helsinki six', which were cleared to commence accession negotiations in December 1998. Malta started its screening of the acquis communautaire in spring 1999 and formally launched its accession negotiations in February 2000.

Reconstructing identity?

The EU-Malta issue may appear to be a classic case study of an unfolding 'core-periphery' relationship. As intimated in Hache's essay referred to earlier,51 changing historical, political or economic circumstances can do much to trigger off an identity transformation, which can then manifest itself in a change of populist discourse.

The local debate about the pros and cons of EU membership is certainly intense, occupying much air time on radio and television as well as columns of newsprint.

But it is not exactly a 'debate': politicians, in strict discipline, toe the party line; while experts and academics, rather than being seen as independent and critical 'third parties', are often associated readily with a political stripe - which may very well be true - thus truncating and debilitating the influence of their 'critical wisdom'.

Notionally, the opportunity for EU membership is a step towards a different, supra-national basis of identity, a neo-tribal 'Europeanness' which is itself the object of intensive identity making.52

The prospects of eventual EU membership may be obliging some Maltese to think, at long last, of themselves in relation to an external other: something they have very rarely been obliged to do in their history, and certainly never in circumstances where they are alone facing 'the other' in deciding on the parameters of a complex, evolving relationship which they will soon have to decide upon.

Nor is looking at other countries of any help to the Maltese here. There may be another 12 EU candidate countries at the moment, but the predicament of Malta is simply unique and not comparable to any of the other states. The 'Yes' and 'No' lobbies regularly highlight episodes in one or other EU state, always plentiful, to demonstrate the respectively positive or negative aspects of EU membership.

The responsibility of the decision is gradually dawning; and nationalist issues appear to be coming to the fore in the debate. The concerns are clearly neither partisan political nor religiously defined: they cut across party and ideological lines and reflect rather the balance between isolation and integration that any sovereign state must, through the very instruments of jurisdiction, fashion in the contemporary world.

Would this identity crisis facilitate a nascent Maltese nationalism? Such a phenomenon would certainly threaten the existing, proto-ethnic duopoly which has seen regular alternations of power between the two political parties for 30 solid years.

As if to nip this threat deftly in the bud, the MLP has declared that it will not accept the results of any NP government-run referendum on EU membership. Instead, the MLP would only accept the results of the next general election - scheduled not later than the beginning of 2004 - as that popular vote deciding in favour or against eventual EU membership for Malta.

Should the NP comply, then one wonders to what extent a rigidly partisan vote would dictate Malta's European destiny, rather than the other way round.

The crisis of looming Europeanness among the Maltese may exacerbate a smooth transition towards the acceptance of a paternal, benign, external other. The 'EU question' can bring about a cultural condition that has surfaced various times in Malta's recent history: this would be the willing incorporation into the cultural, if not economic and political, ambit of a larger state.

The latter years of the reign of the Order of St John in Malta were a period of subtle but deep Gallicisation, broken only when the position and wealth of the Catholic Church in Malta came under threat from the occupying French.53

Subsequently, it was irredentism with either Britain or Italy that explained most of the local political tussles of the 19th and early 20th centuries; had the NP's plans for Malta to join Italy in the 1930s, or the Labour Party's plans for Malta to join Britain in the 1950s materialised, then as a matter of course, Malta could have been part of the EU since either 1957 or 1973.

What evidence of nationalism is this, when the alleged nation seeks to thwart - rather than struggle for - its own political sovereignty? Can one conceive now of a novel brand of nationalism, one that is comfortable even as it seeks to diminish, rather than enhance, the autonomy and discretion of its statist and political dimension?

Malta's unitary, national identity appears to be ultimately anti-nationalist (externally) and proto-ethnic (internally). In such circumstances, sovereigntist appeals can come across as manufactured rearguard actions to brake, or replace, the movement towards regional supra-nationalism, as well as to cement the status quo of partisan gridlock. Will they succeed in doing so yet again?

Back in 1971, the showdown of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff with Edward Heath, his British counterpart, was a historical conjuncture which also kindled feelings of 'one-nation' among the Maltese. Mintoff's 'maverick' foreign policy has had many detractors; but it certainly attempted to bestow some pride on the Maltese as more than the happy natives of a small and marginal state.

His industrial development policy also sought a sense of 'economic self-reliance' without a fortress economy. This included an ambitious programme of nationalisation - of banks, airline, energy and telecommunications enterprises. The adoption of a Republican Constitution in 1974 and the complete dismantling of Malta's millenary 'fortress economy' role by 1979 were nothing less than remarkable feats.

Malta as 'one nation', however, was not to be. After 1977, the MLP policy met massive opposition from a variety of local interest groups; and the democratic crisis of the early 1980s forcefully re-established the 'either-or/us-them' partisan paradigm.

Gellner and Grillo have both argued that nationalist ideology emerges as a reaction to industrialisation and the uprooting of people from their local communities.54 In the Maltese island state of a paltry 316 km2, which has also leapfrogged the industrialisation stage in its transition from agriculture to services, this imputed dramatic upheaval has not happened and is physically inconceivable.

This suggests that Malta may have an affinity with other small, compact, island states in the contemporary status of an elusive nationalism.55

So much for Commissioner Guenther Verheugen's appeal to the Maltese to make up their mind and decide. The historic referendum on EU accession appears to be heading towards yet another partisan contoured and partisan driven contest.

"... [T]here is no sign of political consensus on issues and little sense of a concept such as the 'national interest'."56 In such an eventuality, the Maltese are likely to confirm their standing as 'ambivalent Europeans'57.

The challenges of eventual EU membership would thus remain subsumed under a snug duopoly, certainly as far as the decision to join or not to join is concerned. Malta looks set to lumber on into the foreseeable future with the momentum of statist 'extantism'58 and the credentials of a non-nationalist, albeit sovereign, state - including the glaring, insightful absence of a single national day.59

(Concluded)

References

45. Srebrnik (note 33), p. 68.

46. D. Weale, 'Islandness', Island Journal, Vol. 8, (Canada: University of Prince Edward Island, Institute of Island Studies, 1992), pp. 81-2.

47. Anckar & Anckar, (note 21).

48. Naipaul (note 14).

49. Hoefte & Öostindie (note 19), p. 93.

50. Winchester (note 18).

51. Hache (note 22).

52. P. Schlesinger, 'Europeanness: A New Cultural Battlefield?' in J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (eds) Nationalism (Oxford: OUP 1994), pp. 316-325; B. Laffan, 'European Union: A Distinctive Model of Internationalisaton?', European Integration Online Papers, Vol. 1, No. 18, 1997, http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1997-018a.htm.

53. V. Mallia-Milanes, 'The Genesis of Maltese Nationalism' in V. Mallia-Milanes (ed.) (note 39), pp. 1-18.

54. E. Gellner Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1983) and R. Grillo, 'Introduction' in R. Grillo, (ed) 'Nation' and 'State' in Europe (London: Academic Press 1980), pp. 1-18.

55. G. Baldacchino, 'The Other Way Round: Manufacturing as an Extension of Services in Small States', Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1998, pp. 267-279.

56. Commentary on Malta from 2002 Report on Candidate Countries Progress towards EU Accession, released by UNICE, Brussels, June 6, 2002. Reported in The Times (Malta), June 7, 2002, pp. 1, 14.

57. J. Mitchell, Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta, London, Routledge, 2001.

58. After B. Schaffer, 'The Politics of Dependence', in P. Selwyn (ed) Development Policy in Small Countries (London: Croom Helm 1975), p. 25.

59. Malta has five national days which, in themselves, reflect the competing claims for national importance of historic events which remain associated with one particular political party; or, in an act of desperation, a resort to a day of some religious or populist (and therefore national?) significance.