Why do some citizens of the European Union feel indeed European and
others do not? Although the officials of the European Union introduced many
symbols and discourses of unity, empirical studies show that the development of a
sense of belonging at the popular level is slow. This dissertation, by drawing upon
the established social identity theories, takes the investigation back to basics. It
develops a model consisting of the basic premises of the identity theories as well as
factors deriving from national and individual contexts that condition individual
experiences relating to the aforementioned premises. Rather than developing new
theories, this work's contribution to the study of European identity is that the study
presents as complete a model as possible based on the existing theoretical
frameworks as a cross-sectional analysis. Doing so, it unifies the disconnected
literature on the issue within a consistent theoretical logic and cross-validates the
patterns found in 15 countries through a large N multivariate analysis based on the
Eurobarometer 2000. Results yield that social identity theories are confirmed in the
case of European identity except for external demarcation principle.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4860 |
| Date | 25 April 2007 |
| Creators | McGee, Sibel |
| Contributors | Robertson, John D. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 682560 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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