Determinants of Selective Solidarity Across Borders

Abstract. This paper analyses how the characteristics of the recipient country shapes individual support for financial help across borders. Existing literature has shown that individuals are more likely to show solidarity with their co-nationals than for individuals in other countries. However, people might show different levels of solidarity towards different foreign countries depending on their geographical or cultural proximity, their economic conditions or political ties. We make use of a survey experiment asking respondents in 14 European countries whether they think their country should provide financial help to 35 foreign countries in the event of a major crisis to assess different heuristics of international solidarity (need; reciprocity; identity; attitude). We show that shared borders, a common language, geographical proximity and common membership in the European Union are associated with a higher probability of solidarity. We find that ideology has a substantial moderating effect: left-wing and right-wing individuals differ substantially in how they support solidarity with other countries: the solidarity of right-wing individuals across borders is much more conditional (on EU membership, geographical proximity, trade ties) than the solidarity of left-wing individuals.