engleski

National pride as a predictor of support towards European integration

This paper examines if the openness of Croatian public towards joining the European Union, is – among other things – related to the degree of national pride. Authors define national pride as a component of national identity, reflected in cognitively-symbolical and emotional attachment of citizens towards their country, and their sense of belonging to one specific national group. Data were collected through a large-scale public opinion survey, in December 2002, on a representative, probabilistic sample of adult population of Croatia (N=3.508). Openness towards European integration was defined as a degree of desirability of Croatia entering important European associations and institutions, measured on a Likert-type scale. Degree of national pride was assessed by using two scales of 15 items in total. One of the scales measures "general national pride" as an expression of general national values related with patriotism, national superiority and allegiance. The other scale measures "national pride in specific achievements" through evaluation of national accomplishments on a culturally-historical (historical heritage, scientific, technological and artistic achievements) and socio-political level (socio-political system and institutions, economy, international prestige of the country). A large majority of interviewed Croatian citizens show high support towards joining the European Union while expressing at the same time relatively high degree of national pride. However, results of the analysis of variance and discriminative analysis show that, on the level of general values, people with high national identification show less support towards European integration than do those with lower "general national pride" . On the other hand, higher valuation of country’ s specific achievements (especially those on the political and economic level) is positively related with higher openness towards joining the European Union. This could mean that mere tendency of Croatia to join European processes is already regarded as a significant social accomplishment by a considerable part of the public.

Croatia; European integration; national pride

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