Economic crisis and national attitudes: experimental evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT

How do national economic crises affect citizens’ feelings of attachment to the nation? Does a country’s loss of economic status trigger expressions of nationalism as is often assumed? Building on insights from social identity theory, we hypothesize that crises of the national economy do not lead to a generalized increase of nationalism but that the effect is conditioned by individuals’ perceived socio-economic status. In addition, we explore whether framing national economic difficulties as a result of policies imposed at the level of European institutions enhances the conditional effect of the crisis on nationalism. Drawing on data from a survey experiment in Spain, we find that when exposed to messages about the crisis of the national economy, national pride is strengthened among lower-class individuals but weakened among the upper class and that the effects on nationalism are important only if the loss of national economic status is framed in terms of European responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Nationalism
• patriotism
• perceived socio-economic status
• status loss
• blame attribution
• survey experiment

Acknowledgements

We thank Eva Anduiza and the members of the Democracy, Elections and Citizenship Research Group for their suggestions on a previous version of this article. We are also very grateful to the reviewers, whose constructive comments greatly helped to clarify and improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

María José Hierro http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4165-9947

Guillem Rico http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6359-8909

Notes

1 At least theoretically, higher classes can also be negatively affected in their own economic position during hard economic times. This should reduce the distance between the higher classes and the prototypical citizen. As a result of this process, higher classes’ identification with the nation should be increased instead of reduced. To test for this possibility, the perceived economic status of the higher classes should be manipulated. Unfortunately, our experiment manipulates only the economic status of the country, not the economic status of the individuals.

2 Counter to Solt, Han (2013) has defended the increase in the national pride of poor people as a result of income inequality but only in countries with many migrants.

3 Note that here we do not manipulate people’s perceived socio-economic status but the nation’s economic status.

4 The sample was drawn from a non-opt-in panel provided by Qualtrics in Spain. Respondents in online surveys tend to be younger and highly educated. To partially correct for this bias, the sample included sex, age, and education quotas.

5 See the supplemental appendix for the detail on the distribution of the treatment and control conditions among participants in the survey.

6 In June 2016, 29 per cent of the population considered the situation of the economy to be only fair; 40 per cent considered the economy to be in bad shape, and 28 per cent, in very bad shape (CIS, study number 3142). The most recent data on the attribution of responsibilities for the economic crisis comes from a study conducted May–June 2014 after the European elections took place (CIS, study number 3028). This survey includes a question that asks respondents about the degree of responsibility for the Spanish economic situation by different institutions. Twenty-five per cent of the people made the EU fully responsible for the Spanish economic situation compared to 41 per cent that made the Spanish government fully responsible. The mean values for the eleven-point scales used to assess the level of responsibility of the EU and the Spanish government were 7.5 and 8.2, respectively.

7 Asking people directly about the extent to which they are nationalist might appear odd, but this is a relevant question in the Spanish context, where alternative forms of nationalism (the Catalan and Basque) oppose Spanish nationalism. This and the question about the degree to which the individual identifies with Spain are frequently used questions in Spanish surveys.

8 Correlations do not vary substantially across experimental conditions.

9 Unlike Shayo (2009), who equates income to the social class identification, we use a measure that better captures perceived socio-economic status. Because identification is placed in the domain of the subjective, we rely on an indicator of status that is subjectively, instead of objectively, constructed: self-perceived social class. Ultimately, Shayo’s original theory is not based on objective measures of group membership (based on nationality, or income) but on subjective measures of identification. We have also tested whether the effects of our treatments are conditional on people vulnerability in the job market (using respondents’ employment status, level of education, and household income). Results indicate that, unlike subjective social status, these variables do not moderate treatment effects.

10 The final number of cases included in the analyses is reduced to 635 as a result of drop-outs before survey completion and missing information regarding the ideology of some respondents. People without Spanish citizenship or born abroad (n = 38) are excluded from the analysis because alternative national identities can be more relevant to them than the Spanish identity. Given that participants in the survey were forced to answer to these questions, the reliability of the answers of this type of respondent could be lower.

11 National pride has been also estimated using an ordered logistic regression; however, because the results do not change substantially to those obtained using OLS estimation, we report here the latter for ease of interpretation.

12 Table A2 of the supplemental appendix reports the estimates of the main effects. Results indicate that the unconditional treatment effect is not statistically significant for any of the dependent variables. These results also run counter to the expectations of the diversionary nationalism theory.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the LIVEWHAT project financed by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme [grant number 613237].