Citizenship After the Nation State (CANS)

Citizenship After the Nation State (CANS) examines the multi-level nature of citizenship. The intellectual project seeks to identify the way that individuals define communities of solidarity at different territorial scales (local, regional, state and continental), the perceived importance of government decisions or citizen participation at different levels of government and the conditions under which regional or supra-state communities or policy communities become important sites of citizenship for individuals that might rival the state as the 'natural' site of citizenship. The research contributes directly to debates about the territorial rescaling of political life, as well as feeds into UK debates about the impact of devolution on policy variation and political participation.

CANS will test hypotheses about the impact of independent variables such as territorial identities, government structures and actual/perceived wealth. For example we will test whether stronger regional identity, a regional government that is perceived to be stronger and greater perceived regional wealth make one more likely to identify with a regional community of solidarity or more likely to participate in regional politics. We will explore relationships at the local, regional, state and continental level but our primary focus is the extent to which we can speak of regionalised citizenship. We will employ multi-level methods of analysis, so that we can identify with precision the impact of individual perceptions of, for example, regional legislative competence, and actual regional authority.

The network builds on an existing partnership across five states (Austria, France, Germany, Spain, UK) and brings in new expertise and new country partners (Belgium, Canada, Hungary, Netherlands, Sweden, US). The goal of the network is to submit funding applications to facilitate a cross-national regional-level survey of multi-level citizenship attitudes and behaviour, creating an unprecedented data resource for students and researchers. The network will fund meetings among applicants to identify best practice in regional cross-national surveys, best practice impact and knowledge exchange opportunities and identify state-of-the-art research on specific elements as yet under-explored in the UK political science literature such as cosmopolitan cities and immigration, regional economics and trust.

The network will hold a PhD summer school with participants from the eleven partner countries (and two from the UK). Each student will be paired with an academic from another institution, facilitating a year-long mentoring relationship that will encourage greater use of the existing CANS dataset, related discrete datasets and will result in a showcase summer school in which students may present their research findings and build networks among their peers.

CANS has two main communities in which impact will be won. The first is the policy community - civil servants and elected representatives, along with intermediary bodies like the quality media and think tanks which help shape policy debate. Our dataset will offer to the policy community in each of our regions data about support for policy variation, for policy control over specific fields at different territorial levels and more broadly about public evaluations of the regional system of government. Such a dataset offers to the policy community unprecedented data about the expectations of government at different territorial scales and the trust or efficacy gaps that may exist. In addition, it will help policymakers and opinion formers to understand where citizen expectations deviate significantly from 'average' expectations and when they are operating within a devolution paradox gap (ie when large numbers of citizens want regional control over policy but do not want policy variation). Understanding citizen expectations about the ideal roles and responsibilities of different levels of government, as well as the baseline support enjoyed by them, is important for policy communities. Within the UK, it will provide essential background to the constitutional reform debates and processes surrounding the scope of regional government that exist in many of our case study regions.

Second, the CANS network, to be funded by an International Partnership and Networking grant, will impact the academic community and early-career researchers. We have created an impact and knowledge exchange committee within our network to ensure that the large grant applications we produce will build opportunities for knowledge exchange and impact into the design, conduct and dissemination of the project. Here we are interested to determine whether organisations such as IRPP (which partially funded CANS data collection in England) or the Forum of Federations will sponsor user events to ensure civil servants are made aware of the findings and dataset.

For additional details about impact please consult the Pathways to Impact document.