These past decennia, the social science literature on identities saw a consensus growing on the fact that identities are not a fixed, static, essentialist reality but have developed in specific historical and socio-economic contexts. They are, in other words, socially constructed (Gellner 1983, Hobsbawm 1990, Anderson 1983). Therefore it is difficult to measure national identities as an empirical reality. What can be measured though is the extent to which people identify with such a social construct. It is not because they are socially constructed that (national) identities do not exist and even are in fact important for many people. However, when measuring these identifications, one has to take into account their fundamental complexity. Particularly in federal, multilingual states identity feelings can be very complex and ambiguous. Even if identities are often used in absolute and exclusive terms in the political debate, citizens often have multi-layered identities. Some will be more activated in certain circumstances than in others. Abroad, people from Switzerland will present themselves as Swiss while in their own country they can also emphasize the canton or the village in which they live. In such multilingual states, sometimes also labelled as multi-national, multi-layered and mixed identities are generally not politically neutral. When such states are characterised by debates on the extent to which autonomy should be attributed to substate levels, feelings of regional or national identity easily acquire a political meaning and can be interpreted as political stands. This is in part because the strength of (sub)national identities is considered as one of the possible drivers and legitimizers of the demands for the territorial reorganisation or breaking up of national states. Regionalist political entrepreneurs have crafted narratives in which specific regional economic strengths and cultural traditions are combined to mobilize for territorial autonomy (Keating 1996). The causal relation can however also be ...