The proposed paper is concerned with citizens’ national identities, specifically chauvinism, in a comparative perspective. While previous research has mostly conceived of chauvinism, i.e. a sense of superiority of one’s own nation, as a correlate of a specific set of (right-wing) political beliefs, we argue that this disposition may also come in tandem with other political views, including civic norms and inclusive definitions of the in-group. Since the (elite) political culture and historical background of a country should determine the (relative) frequency of different types of chauvinists, we expect to find considerable heterogeneity in the configuration of citizens’ national identities across Europe. To tackle these hypotheses empirically, we will use ISSP data to analyze the extent to which citizens with a civic, cultural, and ethnic conception of the nation also exhibit chauvinism. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis will be used to establish whether measurement invariance exists and (if so) whether this relationship varies across countries.
