The National Contexts of Post-national Citizenship

Abstract

The article contributes to the literature on the changing concept of citizenship in the process of globalisation. It sets out from the thesis that the classic concepts of citizenship, which are linked to the nation state, are slowly but steadily losing their monopoly on explaining the relationship between individuals, the political community and government. Based on a theoretical discussion of the new models of citizenship, the authors seek to identify the elements of 'post-national' citizenship. The main research goal of the analysis is to discover the conditions in which elements of post-national citizenship are most likely to occur. The analysis is based on aggregated individual (survey) data (from the ESS 2008 and the EVS 2008) and macro contextual data on European Union countries. On the macro (country) level, the authors conduct a hierarchical cluster analysis and crisp set QCA and make the following fi ndings. First, two groups of countries are formed: (a) a fairly homogeneous group of six 'post-national' citizenship countries; and (b) a more heterogeneous group of classic citizenship countries. Second, 'post-national' citizenship is to be expected in countries in which the following conditions are combined: on the one hand, secularised and post-industrial societies with less emphasis on a knowledge society, and on the other hand, societies with a stable national status where knowledge is important.

The Catholic Church and Refugees in Slovenia

“…After the first decade of the declaration of the independent state, Slovenia, which was socially distancing itself from foreigners, also distanced itself from Western Europe and aligned closer to the most intolerant post-socialist states. According to the international European Social Survey (Hafner-Fink 2004;Jowell 2003), typically, the evaluation of the immigration conditions for foreigners was very high (=strict) in Slovenian public opinion and, according to this criterion, Slovenia was placed together with Poland at the very top in terms of the extent of social distance (among the 13 European states in which the survey took place; see Hafner-Fink 2004); only Hungary advocated for even stricter immigration conditions. The mentioned immigration conditions included in the ESS that the respondents were asked to choose from included the following:…”