Political Culture and National Identity

Abstract

There are several reasons why it is appropriate at this point to shift attention to the topic of national identity. The most important of these is that doing so provides a test of the usefulness of the phenomenological perspective developed in the preceding chapter — indeed, as will become apparent, a particularly severe test. The nature of the test will be to see in what way a phenomenological perspective contributes to the theory of nationalism, which has recently been an arena of lively debate. Before that, however, some other reasons for turning to the investigation of national identity may be mentioned. The most obvious of these is that, since The Civic Culture, national identity has been seen as a central component of political culture. The unreflective way in which it was invoked by Almond and Verba has also been characteristic of later research. For instance, Brian Girvin proposes that political culture be split into three levels: the ‘macrolevel’, consisting of a ‘core’ of national identity and rarely questioned ‘absolute presuppositions’; the ‘meso-level’, consisting of long-term but nevertheless contested political ‘rules of the game’ (such as ‘Thatcherism’); and the ‘micro-level’, at which ‘normal political activity’, such as elections, occurs.’ The theory which he develops from this basis relates the three levels, but it is noteworthy that national identity is explained only by reference to the supposed necessity of a ‘sense of belonging’. More than this, we might suspect, needs to be said about the ‘core’ of political culture.