The ties that bind. An empirical evaluation of the political theory of liberal nationalism.

While Europe has become an immigration continent, research has demonstrated that native citizens perceive immigrants as a threat for their national identity. Despite the prominence of national identity in public debates on social cohesion, empirical research evaluating the beneficial effects of national identity for social harmony remains surprisingly scarce. Nevertheless, there are several arguments, largely advocated by the political theory of liberal nationalism, why it can be expected that national identity has positive externalities for bringing about social cohesion. While this theory is largely framed around affect (identifying with the nation), what is largely missing in current, mainly theoretical, scholarship is a validation of the theory by looking, in a comparative perspective using survey data, precisely at what kind of ties are able to bind citizens together. The aim of my research is, by applying multilevel analysis on the 2008 wave of the European Values Study, examine how people living within a national community think about its social contours and, more specifically, how these conceptions of national identity affect, across different national contexts, relevant political and social attitudes, as there are trust and related types of horizontal solidarity as well as vertical relations to the nation-state and supra-national organizations.

Keywords:Liberal nationalism, National identity, Social cohesion, Immigration, Multilevel analysis, European Values study

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology