Support for state opting out and stateless national identity in the Basque Country

Preferences for state opting out are thought of as being the expression of underpinning conflicts of states national identity, empirical evidence on its underlying behavioural processes is scarce. This paper draws upon evidence form the Basque Country to examine the support for a hypothetical opting out from the Spanish State in the light of a reformulation of [Ackerlof, G.A., Kranton, R.E., 2000. Economics and Identity. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115, 715–753]. We use representative survey data from the Spanish Institute of Sociological Research for the Basque Country. To adjust our empirical specification to the prevalent hypothesis we employ a recursive seemingly unrelated probit approach. Our results suggest evidence for a simultaneous and endogenous influence of national identity on political preferences for the opting out of the Basque Country from Spain. We find evidence consistent with an instrumental conception of identity as motivating preferences for nation-state opting out, and status quo bias.