Despite the recent proliferation of literature on nationalism and on social policy, relatively little has been written to analyse the possible interaction between the two. Scholars interested in social citizenship have indirectly dealt with the interaction between national identity and social programs, but they have seldom examined this connection in reference to nationalism. Specialists of nationalism rarely mention social policy, focusing instead on language, culture, ethnicity, and religion. The main objective of this book is to explore the nature of the connection between nationalism and social policy from a comparative and historical perspective. At the theoretical level, this analysis will shed new light on a more general issue: the relationships between identity formation, territorial politics, and social policy. The cases at the centre of this study are three multinational states, that is, states featuring strong nationalist movements: Canada (Québec), the United Kingdom (Scotland), and Belgium (Flanders).The book looks at the interplay between nationalism and social policy at both the state and sub-state levels through a detailed comparison between these three cases. In its concluding chapter, the book brings in cases of mono-national states, like Germany and the United States to provide broader comparative insight on the meshing of nationalism and social policy. The original theoretical framework for this research is built using insight from selected scholarship on nationalism and on the welfare state.

A thoughtful discussion of some of the key moments in the rise of the respective nationalist movements...an important and welcome contribution to the debate that is ongoing in this field. Gerry Mooney, Journal of Social Policy This work is historically gripping; it opens door for researchers and policy makers ... Beland and Lecours take the reader through a historical yet pragmatic journey that is punctuated with logical and sequential arguments. George Christopher Braithwaite, Political Studies Review well argued and exhaustively researched Allan Craigie, Regional & Federal Studies

Daniel Béland is a Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and The University of Chicago, a Fulbright Scholar at The George Washington University, and a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. A political sociologist analyzing politics and public policy from a comparative and historical perspective, he has published four books (Une sécurité libérale? 2001 Social Security: History and Politics from the New Deal to the Privatization Debate 2005, States of Global Insecurity 2007 and Social Security: A Documentary History [with Larry DeWitt and Edward D. Berkowitz]) and more than three dozen articles in journals. André Lecours (Ph.D. Carleton, 2001) is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University. His primary research interests are nationalism, with an area specialization on Western Europe, and institutionalism theory. He is the author of Basque Nationalism published by the University of Nevada Press in 2007 and the editor of New Institutionalism: Theory and Analysis published by the University of Toronto Press in 2005. Professor Lecours' articles on nationalism, regionalism, identity politics, paradiplomacy, new institutionalism and Spanish and Belgian politics have appeared in a number of journals.