Of what cloth are the ties that bind? National identity and support for the welfare state across 29 European countries

Abstract

An oft-made claim is that national identity (NI) can function as social glue underpinning public support for the welfare state by encouraging the identification with co-nationals essential for redistribution. Empirical tests have largely ignored the possibility that the relationship depends on the kind of NI people hold, that various dimensions of welfare support are shaped by NI differently, and that these relationships depend on demographic context. Analyzing the European Values Study's 2008 wave, we find ample evidence that these distinctions matter: ethnic conceptions of NI are linked to general welfare state support, whereas civic and cultural ones are not. Moreover, all three national self-conceptions induce welfare chauvinism against immigrants, albeit to varying degrees, an effect that strengthens as immigrant diversity increases. Ultimately, we find nothing to suggest that NI can sustain public support for redistribution in an ever-diversifying age, and much to the contrary.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• European Values Study
• national identity
• public opinion
• welfare chauvinism
• welfare support

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and detailed comments. We are also indebted to Danny Hayes, Elmar Jansen, Jennifer Lawless, Steffen Mau, Jan Mewes, Eefje Steenvoorden, Stefan Svallfors, Jean Tillie, Tom van der Meer, Wim van Oorschot, Darshan Vigneswaran and Ling Zhu. Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 2011 Conference of the European Values Study Foundation (Bilbao), the 2011 Meeting of the HumVIB network ‘Welfare Attitudes in a Changing Europe’ (Lausanne), and the George Washington University European Politics Speaker Series (October 2012). We thank all those who attended those talks and provided feedback.

Notes

1 See Ceobanu and Escandel (2008); Janmaat (2006); Kunovich (2009); Perhson et al. (2009); Wright (2011).

2 See, for example, Ceobanu and Escandel (2008); Citrin and Wright (2009); Janmaat (2006); Kunovich (2009); Pehrson et al. (2009); Reeskens and Hooghe (2010); Wright et al. (2012).

3 All three measures are scored from 0 = ‘not at all important’ to 3 = ‘very important’.

4 They have been analyzed in terms of intra-item dimensionality (Heath et al. 2008; Reeskens and Hooghe 2010; Shulman 2002; Jones and Smith 2001a, 2001b), micro- and macro-economic causes (Kunovich 2009; Wright 2011; Wright et al. 2012), and in terms of their effects on other relevant attitudes (Ariely 2011; Pehrson et al. 2009; Reeskens and Wright 2011, 2013).

5 All contextual controls obtained from Eurostat (2011).

Additional information

Matthew Wright is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government at American University, Washington DC, United States.

Tim Reeskens is a Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research Council – Flanders at the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven, Belgium.