During most of the 1960s, the CSN was both an advocate of provincial autonomy and a defender of federalism. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, a majority of its leaders and militants came to favour separatism. Many of them saw independence as a precondition for the creation of a socialist Quebec. In 1972, the CSN rejected capitalism, endorsed socialism, and envisaged an internal referendum on the independence issue. The internal debate, however, took place only after the Parti quebecois was elected to power in 1976. Fearing internal divisions and disaffiliations, the CSN did not endorse separatism. Being disappointed with the Parti quebecois' governmental record, the CSN was content to give a critical support to a yes vote in the referendum in 1980.

The "end of the century" nourishes a questioning movement on national identity and on the concept of modernity that is encouraged by the Quebec essayists. We propose an organization of the elements of the sovereign narrative which would be able to conduct and constitute a generative grammar of its argumentation. Our project consists in creating a matrix of the nationalistic discourse during the 1995 Quebec referendum period on sovereignty. This schematic figure will bring to its most simple expression the narrative of the Quebec nationalistic discourse selecting examples from ten texts of our primary bibliography. Our matrix will incorporate ideas, dogmas, theories, facts and myths stemming from the ideological discourses. We will see how these elements do interact, to be able afterwards to gather them in a framework on which national identity and legitimity of the national accession to sovereignty should be based. The study of this narrative of the past, as well as the analysis of the public characters will be leaded by the sociocritical approach of discourse analysis. / The francophone cultural nation living on the territory of the Province of Quebec demonstrates itself through the values of tenacity, solidarity, labour and openness of mind towards "Others". The nation increases the standing of a society project based on a democratic basis, condemning the traitors of the Quebec nation. This history concerns the francophone majority even though it is linked to the other "oppressed peoples" of the World History. This "french-quebecer" history is enhanced with a collective memory, projected towards the future in making the project of sovereignty the purpose of its teleological progression.

Explanations of sub-state nationalism that draw on the effects of patterns of uneven economic development suffer from two conceptual problems: (1) they fail to explain why state actors are not able to adopt and implement long-term strategies to correct these effects and (2) they fail to account for the range of ideologies that can be used by sub-state actors to mobilize against the state. In this dissertation, I use an institutional analysis to overcome these problems by specifying the structural conditions under which a range of counterhegemonic groups can emerge to challenge state nationalism. The analysis is applied to a case study of interwar Catalonia, which examines three separate campaigns for political autonomy. 1906--1908; 1917--1919; and 1930--1932. Two modes of analysis are used. First, an institutional analysis is used to determine the structural conditions for the emergence of counterhegemonic movements. I argue that levels of institutional incorporation in a state can determine both the conditions under which a counterhegemonic group can emerge and the range of ideologies that can be used to organize against the state. Institutional incorporation refers to the variable level of institutions that together constitute the corporate structure of the state. The institutional analysis is applied to Southern Europe generally and Spain specifically, in order to identify the political groups in early twentieth-century Catalonia which challenged state nationalism by mobilizing around alternative state projects. Second, a rational actor approach is used to examine the strategic interactions of two sets of political actors in Catalonia, nationalists and republicans, in order to specify the conditions under which they attempted to gain political power and obtain political autonomy for Catalonia on three separate occasions. The combination of an institutional approach at the macro-level and a rational actor approach at the micro-level brings to light the importan

The official language policies and their basic concepts, the principle of personality in Canada and the principle of territoriality in Switzerland, are critically analyzed. The two democratic federations are compared as two multination states since 'nation' is defined in cultural terms. Language survival is justified in liberal theory through minority rights. The principle of territoriality that assures the dominance of the linguistic majority over a territory within the federation is in accordance with liberal democracy if fundamental rights are protected. The principle of territoriality contributes thus to political stability within a multination federation. There is no movement in Switzerland that is fed by a language-based grievance despite the existence of three linguistic minorities: Switzerland accommodates successfully linguistic diversity. In Canada, the perception that the survival of the French language might not be sustained fuels a secessionist movement threatening the unity of the federation.

Politicized collective identity (PCI) is a recent social psychological model developed by Simon and Klandermans (2001), which theorizes how the identity of social groups engaged in power struggles becomes politically or socially active, that is, how group identity becomes politicized. Virtually absent from current PCI theory is any mention of the role of language in the politicization process. The purpose of the present study was to incorporate recent theorizing in language into a theory of PCI. The analysis focussed specifically on the use of linguistic structures and strategies in both reflecting and shaping the final stage of a fully politicized collective identity, that is, the efforts of groups to involve the wider society in their struggle. Methods and theory taken from critical discourse analysis were applied to campaign material arising out of the intensely contentious political struggle over Quebec independence during the 1995 referendum campaign. The primary material was the official referendum campaign booklet, to which both sovereignists (the Yes side) and federalists (the No side) had contributed an extensive outline of their respective positions. Given the advanced stage of politicization of these groups, this material served the third and final stage of PCI—the attempt of each side to involve society by triangulation, in which groups seek to enlist the support of third parties in their struggle. The results revealed how this stage was constituted in and through discourse, that is, in a wide variety of linguistic structures and strategies such as lexical choice, metaphors, semantic macrostructures, and intertexuality. It was also noteworthy that the first two stages that Simon and Klandermans had proposed (grievances and adversarial attributions) were reintroduced in the third stage as topics of discourse and were recruited into the involvement strategies of the Yes and No sides. These findings demonstrate that the theoretical integration of language and PCI contributes to a greater understanding of how groups enlist third parties and thus builds upon Simon and Klandermans's theory of politicized collective identity.

This thesis examines the reaction of organized labour to Quebec separatist nationalism for the period between 1960, the year of the creation of the Rassemblement pour l'independance nationale and the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and 1980, the year of the first referendum on Quebec's constitutional status. The thesis investigates four labour organizations: the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN), and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Quebec (CEQ). It shows in which ways the positions of the four centrals have been informed by their members' national identifications and the emotional and cognitive mechanisms that resulted from these identifications.

This dissertation explores the factors shaping American foreign policy toward secessionist crises since the end of the Cold War. The main research puzzle is the following: Why is it that, facing the resurgence of secessionist movements in the last 15 years, the United States reacted to it by supporting the territorial integrity of central states in some cases (Serbia, Somalia, Moldova), while recognizing the independence of secessionist states in other cases (Croatia, Eritrea, East Timor)? How can this apparent inconsistency be explained? This dissertation argues that regional stability is the main U.S. interest when responding to secessionism. It asserts that, when facing a secessionist crisis, the American government will choose the option (i.e. supporting state integrity or secessionism) that provides the greatest expected gain of regional stability depending on the evolution of the crisis. This explains why the American government's response to secessionism fluctuates from one case to another. / The performed qualitative analysis, which includes cases taken from two regional settings, the Balkans and the Horn of Africa, confirms the effect of the regional stability factor on the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. It shows that the fluctuation of the U.S. response is not caused by political inconsistency but by a coherent set of regional stability interests. The research also proceeds to the measurement of two competing arguments---namely ethnic politics and business interests. Case studies show that these domestic arguments fail to account for the research puzzle under investigation and that the regional stability argument consistently offers better explanations and predictions. Thus, this dissertation challenges liberal claims that domestic politics define foreign policy.

For much of the last twenty years, political leaders and academics have assumed that the survival of Canada depends on constitutional reform, and never more so than in the wake of the 1995 Quebec referendum. This thesis updates the literature by explaining the remarkable story of the last several years: the achievement of a national unity peace in the absence of constitutional reform. The explanation centres on the post-referendum shift in federal strategy from constitutional reform to Plan B, a strategy based on the rules of secession that has its origins, it is argued, in the Reform Party's response to Mulroneyera constitutional reform. The thesis concludes that Plan B was a successful national unity strategy because it made secession seem risky and undesirable, but also because the strategy - unlike constitutional reform - was based on widespread national support and on the viability of the constitutional status quo.

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