Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

increased trust in and therefore identification with public and political institutions
among broad sections of the population. We further suggested that the same change
might happen in East European countries, provided they succeed in developing
stable democracies and prosperous economies. If such a change happened in the
East, differences between East and West in the qualitative nature of national
identifications might disappear altogether.

A change denoting an increased importance of political markers would strongly
support the argument developed by Kuzio that states become more civic in outlook
as they grow older and develop stable democracies. On close inspection, one could
argue that his argument is in fact quite compatible with Kohn’s ethnic-civic model,
although Kuzio would probably strongly deny this himself. Kuzio’s model does not
rule out the possibility that at some stage in the past ethnic sentiments were
stronger among Eastern than Western nations. To the knowledge of the author
Kohn never asked himself what would happen to national identifications in a given
nation after that nation had come to define itself ethnically. As Kohn was a
historian who argued that civic nationalism was a new ideology that arose from the
middle classes at the end of the 18^th century, it is hard to imagine him contending
that ethnic identities once established would be cast in concrete and thus be
resistant to change. If Kohn were in a position to agree with the argument that
ethnic national identities can gradually adopt more civic/political features within
the framework of an independent democratic state, then the opinions of both
scholars would not differ.

This study has to end with a sobering note. Despite the ongoing academic debate
on the ethnic-civic framework and the widely shared concern that ethnic
nationalism fuels xenophobia and racism, we have not found the type of national

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