Beyond the Civic-Ethnic Dichotomy: the Structure of Citizenship Concepts in 13 OECD Countries

The distinction between civic and ethnic nationhood and citizenship was already established several decades ago, and it continues to dominate the study of citizenship, nationalism and identity. In recent years, various authors have questioned the dichotomous character of these concepts. In this article, we investigate the empirical validity of this dichotomy, based on analysis of survey data from 13 OECD countries in the 1995 (n = 16,644) and the 2003 (n = 14,846) waves of the ISSP survey. The analysis demonstrates that this dichotomous structure indeed can be detected by means of confirmatory factor analysis. We can also observe, however, that both concepts can be defined in a negative manner: for the ethnic concept of citizenship, obeying the laws of the country clearly is not a sufficient condition; while for the civic concept there is no need to be born in the country. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, including the criterion of ancestry does not lead to a stable dichotomy. Moreover, further analysis reveals that the measurement of both concepts is not equivalent cross-culturally, so that findings on civic and ethnic citizenship should not be directly compared across societies.status: publishe