Publications of Kissane, B.

National identity and constitutionalism in Europe: Introduction

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on how identification between a people and its constitution can be established when there are conflicts over core values, another on how an ethnically homogeneous state with a liberal constitution, nationhood and citizenship remain dominant issues in constitutional politics in Hungary, as well as a case study concerning Spain which emphasizes the importance of reaching a negotiated settlement acceptable to all parties even at the cost of a coherent constitutional arrangement.

The marriage of state and nation in European constitutions

This article maps out the role played by national identity in modern European constitutions. It does this by comparing its impact on constitutions across Gellner's time zones of European nationalism, and shows how the impact of nationalism has increased gradually over time, and is now strongest in Central and Eastern Europe. It concludes with a reflection on why this has been the case, and why constitutional politics have increasingly lent themselves to nationalist influences in the modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil wars, party politics and the consolidation of regimes in twentieth century Europe

The present article explores how winners' and losers' strategies for competition influence the possibility of democratization after civil war. Civil wars have been pivotal events in many states, but there has been little analysis of how they affect democratization. Since most have been won by the political right in twentieth century Europe one expects a correlation between civil war and the imposition of authoritarian solution to political conflicts. However, an analysis of five civil wars shows a wide variety in the patterns of political dominance achieved by the winners, ranging from total clampdown in Spain to the winners relinquishing power, as in Ireland. In between, Finland, Greece and Hungary combined various degrees of open competition with restrictions on the losers. In effect democratization can be as likely an outcome of civil war as regression to authoritarianism. Explaining the variation in outcomes of the five cases is the objective of this article.