Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
(e.g. Ignatieff 1993; Snyder 1993).¹

The ethnic-civic dichotomy has also attracted a great deal of criticism. Still
relatively mild in his critique is A.D. Smith (1991). He agrees with Kohn that
Western and Eastern models of nationhood have different historical roots, but he
opposes a crude classification that assigns nations to mutually exclusive ethnic and
civic categories. Instead he contends that „Every nationalism contains civic and
ethnic elements in varying degrees and different forms. Sometimes civic and
territorial elements predominate; at other times it is the ethnic and vernacular
components that are emphasized’ (Smith 1991, p. 13). Thus, in Smith’s view, the
ethnic-civic framework would correspond more to an ideal type model resembling
a continuum with two poles than to a typology or classification (Kaufmann and
Zimmer 2004; see also Zubrzycki 2001). Every nation would be located
somewhere on this continuum with some occupying a position closer to the civic
end and some closer to the ethnic end.

Kymlicka (1999), Nielsen (1999) and Nieguth (1999) have been more
disapproving of the ethnic-civic dichotomy. They have argued that the ethnic
category, capturing both inclusive and exclusive concepts, should be decomposed
into a cultural dimension (language and religion) which is in principle open to
outsiders and an ascriptive one (kinship, ancestry and race) which is not. Moreover,
Nielsen (1999) objects to the term civic nationalism if this is taken to mean
liberalism, democracy and state-territorialism and seen as contrasting with an
intolerant antidemocratic ethnic nationalism. Pointing to the Latin American
countries and their experience with military dictatorships, he argues that non-ethnic,
territorial nationalisms can be quite antidemocratic. He therefore concludes: „Talk

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