A common political culture in Western Europe?

So much literature has been written to demonstrate either that the Europeans feel part of a common Western political culture or, on the contrary, that there are vast differences between the various segments of the European population on the subject of the political culture that it seems almost preposterous to attempt to clarify the matter. There is something bordering on schizophrenia in the reactions of Europeans on this question, or, at any rate, of the members of the elite, European or even non-European, who write on the subject. How many times has one pointed out that the British often relish to say that they ‘go to Europe’ when they cross the Channel? How many times has one pointed out that ‘Northerners’ – Scandinavians, Dutch, British of course – either make fun or show deep worry about the attitudes of the ‘Latins’? Thus, in a referendum which took place at the end of the 1990s in Denmark, a ‘no’ vote was advocated by some on the grounds that the condition of women was simply too ‘old-fashioned’ in Italy or elsewhere in the South to be acceptable to the ‘modern’ Danes: the majority of Danish voters were not swayed, but the fact that the point was made suggests that the question of a ‘common political culture’ is wide open across Western Europe, without going as far as extending the frame of reference to Western culture in general.