Introduction: Regional Public Attitudes beyond Methodological Nationalism

Abstract

This book confronts one of the problematic features of postwar social science: its often unreflected choice of the nation-state as a unit of analysis. We do so by looking within the state, using a regional-scale unit of analysis. We explore the extent to which citizens define and pursue collective goals at regional scales and through regional institutions as well as at the scale of the nation-state. We do this on the basis of a unique dataset which records how citizens in 14 European regions balance opportunities to pursue those collective goals at state-wide and regional scales. That dataset is the product of a research project entitled Citizenship after the Nation-State (CANS), which was funded under the coordination of the European Science Foundation. This chapter sets out the research design of the CANS project and presents an initial overview of the data designed to put in context the chapters that follow. It starts with a methodological and theoretical discussion of why the research was necessary and why nothing like it has been done before.