Does participation in national commemorations increase national attachment?: A study of Dutch Liberation Festivals

Abstract

It is generally assumed that national commemorations have the power to increase national attachment. This is because such ceremonies highlight shared history, communicate core values, and have the potential to decrease conflicts in societies, while celebrating and mourning together enhances attachment to the group. Remarkably, only a limited number of studies have empirically studied the relation between participation in national commemorations and feelings of national attachment. Studies that have addressed this question focused mainly on the intentions of the organizing elite, employed qualitative research designs, or suffered from methodological problems such as causality. In this study, we examined participation in Dutch liberation festivals by means of survey data. We compared people's feelings of national attachment before they visited the liberation festival with people's feelings of national attachment after they visited the festival, but no evidence was found for the integrative role of national ceremonies. In the concluding section, we discuss potential reasons why the expected positive relation was not found and formulate suggestions for future research.