A history of threat in Europe and Belgium (1920-1993)

Abstract

A general index of social, economic, and political threat in Europe and Belgium was developed for the years 1920 to 1993. We asked 91 Belgian historians, experts in contemporary history, to rate, on 7-point intensity scales, the extent to which each year, between 1920 to 1993, the security and existence of either Europe or Belgium was threatened. In making their judgments, the historians must integrate most of the information contained in objective data known to them as causes of fear (crime, unemployment, apprehension at starting a family, buying a car, or starting a new business, etc.). The present threat index rests on a synthetic judgment because many official objective data available to historians either are incomplete or lack conceptual coherence. The index obtained has then been compared to known objective indicators of social, economic, or political threat. We obtained Cronbach's α coefficients of 0.99 for Belgian historians. Corrected for serial dependency, the threat index for Belgium is found to depend on a 5-variable subset composed of: suicide, unemployment, and balance of trade, for the positive associations; and GNP and car registrations, for the negative associations. The Pearson correlation between the threat index for Europe and Belgium is 0.95 (N = 74, p < 0.001). Just as McCann and Stewin (1990) had developed a similar tool for North America, the aim of this multi-purpose tool was to monitor the mood of Europe and Belgium over time based on evaluations made by professional historians. McCann and Stewin's (1990) threat index for the US has a Pearson correlation of 0.65 (N = 67, p < 0.001) with the European threat index. The article concludes with a discussion first on the question of the role of threat producing discourses in the perception of threat, and second, on the question of Europe as a concept.