Nationhood across Europe: The Civic–Ethnic Framework and the Distinction between Western and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This paper examines whether the civic–ethnic framework is indeed relevant for the distinction between Western and Eastern Europe from institutional and public opinion perspectives. Multilevel analysis of data from the last wave of the European Value Study across 45 countries shows that there are indeed dissimilar conceptions of nationhood in the West and in the East. In Eastern Europe there is higher support for the ethnic component than the civic component and there are stronger relations between national identification and the ethnic component. The results indicate that, despite critiques of the civic–ethnic framework, to a certain extent, it reflects a distinction between Western and Eastern Europe.

Key Words:

• National identity
• ethnic identity
• civic identity
• citizenship policy
• Western Europe
• Eastern Europe
• cross-national comparison

Notes

  ¹ Naturally, the complexity of social identity theory cannot be addressed in this paper. For a review see Brown (2000) and Reicher and Hopkins (2001).

  ² For further details about the research project see http://www.mipex.eu/.

  ³ European Values Study 2008: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2008) ZA 4800.

  ⁴ For further details see: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/surveys/survey-2008.html.

  ⁵ The identification of non-immigrants was based on respondents who held citizenship and who were born in the country, as both of their parents had been, in order to distinguish between them and immigrants or former immigrants (3.3 per cent of the pooled sample were excluded). It is important to emphasize that the lack of variables about ethnic groups in the EVS means that this distinction is very limited in its ability to capture the differences between the majority and minorities.

  ⁶ The other three items were: ‘To have been born in [country]’, ‘To be able to speak [the national language]’ and ‘To have lived for a long time in [country]’.

  ⁷ They were: locality or town where you live, region of country where you live, Europe or the world as a whole.

  ⁸ Age was measured with V303, gender was measured with V302, education with V336, income with V353 and religiosity with V109.

  ⁹ For details about the Gastil Index see http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world .

¹⁰ To formally examine the differences between West and East, a T-test was conducted and revealed significant differences.

¹¹ The formal model is: Y(outcome variable)=G00 + G01*(East Europe) + B1*(gender) + B2*(age) + B3*(education) + B4*(income) + B5*(religiosity) + B6*(national identification) + G61*(East Europe)*(national identification) + u0 + r.