How Many Similarities and How Many Differences? the Nature of National Identity in a United Europe

At the beginning of XXI century Europe is subject to the internal integration on a scale having no historical precedent. In the widespread opinion the very important factors facilitating the process of integration should be sought in a historical-cultural reality of a kind of common European identity as well as in a redefinition of the concept of national interest. Therefore, several interesting question may get our attention: To what extent the countries forming the European community differ, and to what extent are similar in so called national attitudes? What is the nature of European patriotism and a sense of national identity? Are there any divisions here? If so, what is their nature? The author tries to answer these questions by analyzing data from two studies on "National Identity” (1995 and 2003) conducted within the International Social Survey Programme. Description and classification of the European countries on different dimensions of national attitudes leads to the conclusion that Europe is divided into two fundamentally different national-cultural clusters. Their origin results from a huge disparity in the level of collective self-esteem, which is an expression of civic pride in a quality of liberal-democratic state in various aspects of its functioning. It also turns out that the basic division corresponds almost perfectly to the "cultural shift" on a dimension defined by R. Inglehart as survival vs. self-expression culture. What is important and not so obvious, the other central dimension of cultural values, defined as tradition vs. secularization-rationalism, in no way contributes to explanation of the nature of two basic national-cultural European clusters.