Territorial Identity in Comparative Perspective

Territorial identity refers to the particular place identity of those belonging to institutionalized and geographically demarcated communities. As such, it speaks to the subjective effects of the institutionalization of borders on identity formation, and thus there are individual-level alternative territorial identities pertaining to lower or higher-level administrative subdivisions (local, regional, country, and even, supra-state level identities – most clearly, but not only, the case of the European Union). Despite the importance of self-categorization into these lower or higher order territorial units, we still know very little about the contextual and individual characteristics driving these identities, as well as about their prevalence. In this study, we leverage data from the latest wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), conducted between 2017 and 2022 across 66 countries. For the first time, the WVS consistently asked respondents about their feeling of closeness to local, regional, national, and world communities, allowing us to present novel descriptive findings on this subject. Additionally, given the time of the field of the survey in some countries, we examine how the COVID-19 pandemic—a significant external shock—may have affected these identities, particularly in the context of national lockdowns and the increased centralization of crisis management in some countries.