Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

from 1 - „agree strongly’ to 5 - „disagree strongly’ on a five-point scale; the values
of statements 1 and 3 were reversed to ensure that they go in the same direction).
He found East European states (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and
Slovenia) to exhibit higher xenophobia levels than West European states (Austria,
Britain, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands). However, correlations with the
political and cultural dimensions of national pride were weak in both regions, with
many countries not showing statistically significant results (ibid, pp. 420, 421).
Although the correlations with the political dimension did go in the expected
direction (negative - indicating that the more importance assigned to political items
of national pride the lower the level of xenophobia), the correlations with the
cultural dimension were negative in two of the East European states (not in line
with expectation) and positive in four of the five West European states. The first
result is in concordance with our finding that correlations between the three
dimensions of nationhood and feelings of closeness to Jews and Gypsies are
negligible. The last result moreover matches our observation that the correlations
between ethnicity and feelings of closeness towards Jews show contrasting
directions in Eastern and Western Europe.

Remarkably, Hjerm did find a relation between xenophobia and national
sentiment, a composite variable he constructed from items referring to feelings of
national superiority, unconditional support for one’s country and pride in national
achievements. ¹¹ Having first established that differences between Eastern and
Western countries in the levels of national sentiment are small, he then shows that
national sentiment is positively correlated to xenophobia in both regions (i.e. the
stronger one’s national sentiment the higher one’s level of xenophobia). However,
the correlations between national sentiment and xenophobia are much stronger in

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