Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

The studies of both Jones & Smith and Shulman suggest that there are no
substantial differences between regions in the strength of civic/voluntaristic or
ethnocultural/ascriptive identities. Thus, the East-West component of the ethnic-
civic framework seems to be absent in popular conceptions of nationhood. Yet, as
we have seen, Hjerm’s findings on national pride do seem to support the East-West
divide. This apparent contradiction makes sense if we take a closer look at the
items clustering on Hjerm’s political dimension. Three of these items (the way
democracy works, economic achievements, social security) refer to achievements
Western nations can obviously take much greater pride in than Eastern states
simply because the latter have just begun developing their democracies and
recovering from the post-communist socio-economic crisis.

The Eurobarometer 2002 survey: non-competitive notions of nationhood

Valuable as the ISSP survey has been in uncovering popular conceptions of
nationhood, it nonetheless had two major drawbacks. First, as pointed out by Jones
& Smith, a number of items, notably born and language, could have been
interpreted differently by the respondents, which makes it difficult to assign
meaning to underlying dimensions in the data. Second, the survey did not contain
the crucial criterion of genealogical descent, a fact much deplored by Shulman.
Because of this, the ethnic category of the ethnic-civic framework could not be
tested to the fullest extent. Moreover, as descent is unequivocally an ascriptive
characteristic (Zimmer 2003), it could have greatly bolstered Jones & Smith’s
dimensions if it had been included. The Eurobarometer survey on national identity
compensates for the imperfections of the ISSP survey as it does include the item of

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