National/European identities and political alignments
| Author | Russell J Dalton |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1465116521992878 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
National/European
identities and political
alignments
Russell J Dalton
Center for the Study of Democracy, School of Social
Sciences, University of California, Irvine, USA
Abstract
Reflecting on the articles in this special issue of European Union Politics, this essay first
asks whether EU scholarship has sufficiently conceptualized and measured what it
means to identify with the European Project and/or the European Community. The
evidence in this special issue indicates that many citizens now have attachments to
Europe, albeit in uncertain depth. European attachments also exist in combination with
or as an alternative to national identities. European/national identities also now overlap
with partisan attachments, potentially forming a new basis of political cleavage. The
research in this collection demonstrates a rich portfolio of methods to examine this
important topic, and yields new evidence of how geographic identities are related to
public opinion on issues such as immigration.
Keywords
European Community, European identity, immigration, national identity, party
alignments
One of the primary goals of the European Project has been to moderate the
nationalism that had led to conflicts among European nations culminating in
World War II. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman saw this as a major objective
of European integration. Konrad Adenauer also saw a European attachment as a
Corresponding author:
Russell J Dalton, Center for the Study of Democracy, School of Social Sciences, University of California,
3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Email: rdalton@uci.edu
European Union Politics
2021, Vol. 22(2) 340–350
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116521992878
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