VARNATPOL examines how national identities can bring us closer together but may also drive us further apart. While existing research on national identification's ability to ameliorate polarization focuses on attachment to a shared identity, this project explores how different types of national identities can deepen political divisions. To address this issue, the project examines the role of national identities in shaping politics at both the mass and elite levels across Western democracies.
For ordinary citizens, this project relies on both novel and existing survey data to explore not only the intensity of national identification but also how different people imbue their national identities with divergent, sometimes contrasting, meanings. It investigates the implications of these national identities for political attitudes, polarization, perceptions of democracy, turnout, and vote choice—and how these have changed over the last three decades.
At the elite level, the project uses state-of-the-art tools of automated text analysis to investigate how parties’ appeals to different types of national identities have evolved since the 1940s across Western countries, and how these appeals differ across the left-right divide and specific groups of parties (party families).
By bringing together these two levels of analysis, this project provides novel insights into the various ways in which national identities shape electoral politics in our polarized times. It shows that the implications of national identities for electoral politics extend far beyond the current emphasis in the literature on anti-immigration policies. It also demonstrates that claims about the current surge in the salience of national identities in politics should be considered within a broader historical context.
