National Identity and Support for the Welfare State

Richard Johnston, Keith Banting (), Will Kymlicka and Stuart Soroka
Additional contact information
Richard Johnston: University of British Columbia
Keith Banting: Queen's University
Will Kymlicka: Queen's University
Stuart Soroka: McGill University

No 2010:11, SULCIS Working Papers from Stockholm University, Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS

Abstract: This paper examines the role of national identity in sustaining public support for the welfare state. Liberal nationalist theorists argue that social justice will always be easier to achieve in states with strong national identities which, they contend, can both mitigate opposition to redistribution among high-income earners and reduce any corroding effects of ethnic diversity resulting from immigration. We test these propositions with Canadian data from the Equality, Security and Community survey. We conclude that national identity does increase support for the welfare state among affluent majority Canadians, and that it helps to protect the welfare state from toxic effects of cultural suspicion. However, we also find that identity plays a narrower role than existing theories of liberal nationalism suggest, and that the mechanisms through which it works are different. This leads us to suggest an alternative theory of the relationship between national identity and the welfare state, one that suggests that the relationship is highly contingent, reflecting distinctive features of the history and national narratives of each country. National identity may not have any general tendency to strengthen support for redistribution, but it may do so for those aspects of the welfare state seen as having played a particularly important role in building the nation, or in enabling it to overcome particular challenges or crises.

Keywords: ethnic diversity; national identity; redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 I30 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2010-08-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published in Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2010, pages 349-377.

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