The Past Matters. Nationalism, Elections and the European Integration Process. a Complex Relationship

Nationalism and differentiation are two of the hottest topics in the current European politics context but is there a connection between them? Based on the existing literature, this article seeks to establish what relationship exists between these two phenomena by assessing them from two perspectives: the political science one and the historical one. Regarding this, the paper will focus on two aspects. On the one hand, it will address the continuity of some features of the European contemporary states' institutional structures, which appeared during the XIX Century as a consequence of nationalism influence on the nation building process (basically the electoral mechanisms, which allowed connecting the inhabitants of a concrete territory with the state ruling that territory). On the other hand, it will tackle the way in which the survival of those characteristics has determined the European integration process. Thus, the paper will show how the European integration process has not been able to remove the mechanisms inherited from historical processes which took place during XIX Century and that still nowadays make European states work as independent political units and jealous guardians of their autonomy. The main conclusion of this paper is that the influence of nationalism in the setting of the institutional framework of the European states is a key element to explain the appearance of the differentiation in the current European political reality and, therefore, in the shaping the EU as a "system of differentiated integration”.