There is no simple relationship between national and European identity. Identifications fluctuate over the course of time as well as between individuals and sub-groups within the same nation – elements which are too often hidden by figures aggregated at the country level. A historical review of French conceptions of national identity confirms that the often encountered description of France as a political type of nation is an oversimplification: in addition of the politically based conception, specific groups always defended a more culturally based conception of nation. However, the empirical analyses of the ISSP 2003 national identity survey indicate that the political definition of nation has indeed a much wider reception in France than the cultural definition. Another French specificity consists in the highly disseminated distribution of respondents as to the type of national identity. Linear regressions establish that only the cultural type of national identity tends to be negatively associated with a European identity. The fact that only a minority of French citizens appear to uphold a cultural national identity suggests that national identity alone cannot be held accountable for Euroscepticism in France.

The aim of this article is to assess the importance of a life event perspective on poverty in relation to the traditional social stratification approach. Lately, poverty has often been seen as a life course risk associated with certain life events and less influenced by characteristics of social position. The empirical part of this article explores the importance of the life course perspective as well as the social stratification framework for the understanding of the poverty risk. The question asked is whether risky life events have the same poverty-triggering effect for all social stratification groups or whether processes of cumulative disadvantage prevail at crucial life transitions. The findings, based on random effects event history analyses of the European Community Household Panel Survey, show that structural and biographical explanations of poverty do not present themselves as opposites, but they rather complement each other and their interactions provide interesting insights. The results show that the most vulnerable social groups are more affected by the poverty-triggering effect of a life stage like childbirth. On the other hand, job loss is a more general poverty trigger, substantially increasing everyone's poverty entry risk. Also partnership dissolution has a poverty triggering effect for people of all educational levels and all social classes. In line with previous research, we found that partnership dissolution affects the poverty entry risk of women more strongly.

This contribution explores whether and under what conditions functional sectoral cooperation between the EU and the countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) promotes democratic governance. In an analysis of four countries (Jordan, Moldova, Morocco, and Ukraine) and three fields of cooperation (competition, environment, and migration policy), we show that country properties such as the degree of political liberalization, membership aspirations, and geographic region do not explain differences in democratic governance. Rather, sectoral conditions such as the codification of democratic governance rules, the institutionalization of functional cooperation, interdependence, and adoption costs matter most for the success of democratic governance promotion. We further reveal a notable discrepancy between adoption and application of democratic governance in the selected ENP countries that has not been remedied in the first five years of the ENP.