Nationalism has been criticised as an irrational doctrine associated with some of the most violent right-wing movements of the 20th century. Because it tends to be understood in terms of ethnic exclusion, nationalism is considered a prerogative of radical right-wing parties. This view, however, is based on the problematic assumption that nationalism is always extreme. Observing the current economic crisis, we discern the rise of nationalism as a broader phenomenon cutting across party lines and spatial boundaries, suggesting that economic crises need not necessarily generate a radical right-wing variety of nationalism, but rather a nationalism that can also be found in the mainstream. This paper hypothesizes that the current economic crisis has triggered nationalist rhetoric among European political elites aimed at facilitating solidarity within each country but not across the EU. Mainstream parties have capitalised on the issue of who should be entitled to the collective goods of the state, thus linking the economic crisis with the immigration issue: what we term ‘welfare nationalism’. To empirically test this argument, we examine whether increased nationalist rhetoric from political parties has contributed to a rise in nationalist attitudes across the EU. We also examine party supporters’ responsiveness to such nationalist signals. To capture effects before and after the onset of the crisis in 2008, we construct individual and aggregate measures of nationalist attitudes using European Social Survey data between 2004-2010. The measures of saliency of nationalism in party rhetoric derive from the 2004 and 2009 Euromanifesto projects. We analyse the data using multi-level modelling techniques.
