number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

Allegiance – The Past and the Future 15
lute number of emigrants from Europe, and not only because of emigration from
Ireland. The failure of so many emigrants to take up the formal citizenship of a
non-European country suggests that allegiance was not especially valued, but
regarded by large numbers as something to avoid in all but the most formal sense.
This impression is greatly strengthened when it is remembered that the number of
emigrants from European states to Europe was much greater over the same period
than thirty-four million.
A large body of historical work has concerned itself with the question of how
nineteenth-century European states used a mixture of policy, political symbolism,
and institutions such as primary education and a conscript army to instil the concept
of allegiance to a central national state into their 'subjects'. Although the general
relevance of this sort of work to post-1945 European societies is evident, its
specific methodological value as an explanatory historical tool in the post-war
period is very limited, because of the marked change in the nature of democratic
party politics, and in their relationship, of a type, scope and scale utterly different
from earlier periods, to newspapers, radio and television. Its relevance is however
diminished above all by the much greater complexity of the mutual demands made
on each other by government and voters in post-1945 democracies. Some elements
of this analysis of nineteenth century practice are still valuable, of course. Until the
last ten years the publicly-owned media and the measure of public control over private
media meant that government still carried on the national educational role of
the nineteenth century state. But the choice of models and images of education for
the nation grew so rapidly after 1950 that to study the role of single institutions
over the long term in shaping national allegiance – as historians of the nineteenth
century have done – would be methodologically unrewarding.
It is a reasonable assumption that allegiance still remains partly determined by
the ability of national institutions to protect the citizen, whether from internal or
external threats. But all post-1945 historical study shows that what the citizen has
demanded as 'security' from the state has widened in range and complexity to the
point where protection in the sense of physical safety has rarely been that definition
of security which had the highest priority at critical moments of political choice. In
short, allegiance since 1945 is given, sold or bought within a complex pattern of
relationships between individuals, families and government which would require a
wholly different analysis from that used for earlier periods. The fundamental
questions for the history of European integration are why allegiance to the Communities
grew, and whether the present allegiance to the institutions of the European
Union is permanently subsidiary to, and dependent on, or will eventually
replace, that tendered to national or regional government.
A pragmatic analysis of that question should probably first concentrate on those
issues which have been shown to mainly influence voters' choices in general and
European elections in all member-states. Except in moments of perceived danger,
or when issues relating to one dominant personality have emerged, personal and
family income and the perspective of future income through the life-cycle have
been the major determinants of voting. This may mean that they are also major
determinants of allegiance. Since 1945 it has been increasingly difficult to separate