Whose Nation? Defining the Dimensions of Nationalism through Public Opinion in the U.S. and Spain

Abstract

Nationalism has been increasingly invoked in politics around the world, from calls for “America First” in the U.S. to the rise of the far-right nationalist Vox party in Spain. Closely related to the surge in nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment has intensified in many countries, and opposition to international alliances and organizations like the European Union has deepened. Yet the determinants and structure of nationalism today remain elusive. I challenge the prevailing view of nationalism as a one-dimensional continuum, as exemplified by “A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class, and Redistribution” (Shayo 2009). Instead, I hypothesize that nationalism is multidimensional, and consists of two main axes: one measuring degree of national identification and pride, or patriotism, and another axis measuring exclusionary attitudes toward immigration.

This thesis employs an original survey in the U.S. and in Spain to empirically measure nationalist attitudes and correlated preferences for immigration, thereby defining the dimensions that constitute nationalism. First, I present the findings from my initial quantitative analysis on the existing World Values Survey 2017-2020 wave to narrow down potential correlates of nationalism and identify questions that indirectly ask about nationalism, which is a sensitive issue and therefore challenging to directly measure. After selecting some World Values Survey questions and crafting further questions to directly measure nationalism through immigration sentiment, I present the results of the original thesis survey, which canvassed 1,404 respondents in the U.S. and 1,201 respondents in Spain during January and February 2021. I utilize principal component analysis (PCA) to determine the first five dimensions of the dataset in each country. As the name suggests, the statistical process identifies and reduces the dataset to its principal components, identifying the most salient determinants of national identification.

The results from the survey in both the U.S. and in Spain support my hypothesis of nationalism as multidimensional, although with slightly different axes than initially predicted. The U.S. data reveals two key dimensions: a values exclusionary-inclusionary dimension and an economic dimension. Based on the U.S. survey, I conclude that nationalism is motivated by a combination of economic self-interest and values-based receptiveness to immigration, which is strongly correlated with higher education. Though current literature debates one or the other as the motivation behind anti-immigration sentiment, my quantitative analysis of U.S. public opinion reveals that attitudes are motivated by both sources. Policymakers seeking to expand immigration should address both determinants of nationalism in order to increase public support for inclusionary policies. The Spanish data also reveals two main dimensions: a values exclusionary- inclusionary dimension and a populist dimension. The values dimension is similar to that of the U.S. The populist dimension measures not only preferences for redistribution but also respondents’ preferred recipients of redistributed wealth. The subsequent discovery of respondents in Spain who are strong nationalists and inclusionary in their notion of the nation and redistribution, as well as strong nationalists who are exclusionary and think wealth should only be redistributed to “real” Spanish natives, seriously challenges the findings and assumptions of Shayo (2009).