Decline of the Nation State? How the European Union Creates National and Sub-National Identifications

A widely held argument is that organizations such as the European Community will only succeed if an identification with these organizations develops; and the EC creates this identification. This, in turn, is supposed to diminish identification with national and sub-national regions. Based on this argument, some testable propositions are suggested referring to the conditions under which identifications with hierarchical regions – in this paper Europe, nation states and sub-national regions – arise and how these identifications are causally related. The propositions are tested with a two-wave panel study carried out in 2000 and 2002 in East Germany. In contrast to the previous argument, we found positive correlations between the three identifications. Furthermore, European identification has positive causal effects on sub-national and national identifications, and sub-national identification has positive causal effects on national and European identification.