State making or state breaking?’ Crisis, COVID‐19 and the constitution in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom

Abstract

As the first cases of COVID-19 emerged in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom, they did so against a backdrop of heightened constitutional contestation. Capturing the period January 2020 to December 2021 which included three waves of the pandemic in each state and the delivery of vaccines, this article examines how state and sub-state nationalists articulated their constitutional preferences and territorial claims in the pandemic period. We particularly explore whether the crisis changed state and sub-state nationalists' territorial demands and how it was used to advance or bolster their territorial aspirations. We find that whilst the pandemic entailed an amplification of extant frames in favour of state dissolution and state integrity, the frames remained, broadly, similar between the pre-pandemic and pandemic period, suggesting that sub-state and state nationalist actors stick to a similar playbook, even at moments of profound crisis.