The Myth of Postnational Identity: Popular Support for European Unification’, Social Forces 75(1

The study of popular support for unification of Europe raises issues about the role of identification with national interests versus support for postnational identity in determining attitudes across countries and over time. It also raises issues about the roles of traditional cleavages in class position and partisan ideological views versus differences in postmaterialist values in determining support for unification. Using data for individuals sampled within member-states of the European Community in 1982, 1986, 1989, and 1992, the analyses show persistent differences between countries in their support even after equalizing for national dffferences in sociodemographic, ideological, and value priority variables over the 1O-year time span of the study, which favors theoretical arguments for the continued importance of national identity. With the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by the member-states of the European Community in 1993, the countries of Europe have moved toward reshaping the design of Europe and, in an era of globalization, worldwide political and economic affairs. The effective realization of Europe's unification may create an unprecedented challenge, for citizens and scholars of Europe alike, to make sense of an expression that hitherto referred to a continent composed of nation-states that were geographically, economically, and to some extent politically connected but nonetheless sovereign. Europe's unification began with the Treaty of Rome in 1957, when Belgium