Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

intellectuals and politicians do consider ethnic and civic markers to be competing
visions of the nation, the tension between the two visions surfacing when
citizenship and immigration issues are debated in the media.

Partial support for the regional component of the ethnic-civic framework

Now that we have established that the markers associated with the ethnic-civic
framework cluster in three dimensions (political, cultural and ethnic), we can
examine differences between countries and between regions in importance assigned
to these dimensions. Table 2 presents the mean scores for each country and each
region (Western Europe, Eastern Europe) on the three dimensions.⁸ The lower the
score, the higher the level of agreement expressed with a particular dimension.
Scores higher than 2.5 indicate on average disagreement with a certain dimension
buttressing national identity. The mean scores on the dimensions were calculated
by (1) adding up the respondent scores of the items clustering in a dimension, (2)
dividing the resultant figure by the number of these items (producing the
respondent dimension scores), and (3) taking the average of the respondent
dimension scores. Appendix 2 shows the average scores on the individual items for
the ten countries and the two regions.

Table 2 about here

The average scores of Table 2 reveal that respondents express moderate to high
levels of agreement across the board. Not one country shows on average
disagreement with any of the three dimensions. This high level of consensus means

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