Britain has never been united by ethnicity. We are four nations in one state. And, always pragmatic, we have never shouted from the rooftops about the shared ideas that bind us together in the manner of America (land of liberty and opportunity) or France (liberté, égalité, fraternité).

Instead, Britain has its institutions — from the monarchy and the army to the House of Commons and the BBC — none of which now appear able to generate enough Scottish pride in the union to secure a decisive “no” vote. To many, the United Kingdom today looks as if it is “united” in name only.

But delve deeper, and the United Kingdom does indeed have a basis for partnership in the values that underpin our unique National Health Service and welfare state. It is the idea that by pooling and sharing resources across four nations we guarantee Scots, English, Welsh and Northern Irish rights to health care, education, welfare and minimum standards in the workplace, irrespective of their nationality.

Americans may share equal civil and political rights, and the European Union may share a common market, but Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have gone much further by sharing the same social and economic rights.

The impact of the United Kingdom’s achievement is striking. The median income of a family in Mississippi is around 60 percent that of a family in New Hampshire. The average income in Bulgaria, the poorest member of the European Union, is about 9 percent of that of Luxembourg, the richest. Yet the income of a typical Scot is now on a par with that of his English neighbor.

So the United Kingdom rose to the 20th-century challenge of spreading the benefits of cooperation across a multinational state while upholding the cultural traditions of each of its nations. Globalization creates a complex 21st-century challenge. How can nations successfully maintain their distinctiveness in an interconnected world where goods and services are no longer sourced locally, but globally, and where capital flows across national borders? There is a fear that if you integrate you may lose your identity, and yet also an ancillary fear that clinging to your identity may cut you off from the world’s opportunities.

Proud of their enduring cultural distinctiveness and yet also well aware of the advantages of cooperation, Scots may offer an answer. They have already insisted that the United Kingdom change from the old unitary state of the classic constitutional textbooks, based on an indivisible Westminster sovereignty centered in England.

With Scotland as the pacemaker for the transfer of power from London to its devolved representative assemblies across the country, the United Kingdom is moving as close to a federal state as is possible in a country where 85 percent of its population comes from only one of its four parts: England. Next it has to prove that the union is the best platform upon which Scots can successfully engage with the wider world.