Description
To what extent do sub-state sovereignty movements consider trade as a factor in secession planning? Independence movements in political units such as Scotland and Quebec are often compared on policy dimensions such as the fiscal or economic agreements that will emerge between sovereign nations post-secession, however, decidedly little attention is paid to what expectations the independence movement has with respect to continuity in their participation in bilateral or multinational or trade agreements. This paper compares the discourses of trade across two aspirant sovereign political states – Scotland and Quebec – with attention to the expression of trade ambitions through political and media discourses. We compare the asserted expectations of the independence movements, particularly as expressed through political parties (the SNP and Parti Québécois), with those of the extant nation to see what degree of congruence exists and to identify potential gaps in expectations that will prompt policy disagreement should independence be successful. Supplementing a content analysis of the historical discourses of trade around the 1995 Sovereignty Referendum on Quebec Independence and the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, with contemporary interviews with members of regional and national trade offices, we offer a diagnosis of the limit infrastructure that exists to coordinate trade policy between aspirant and extant nations and the incongruence between states that may provoke sustained policy challenges post-successful bids for independence.
