ABSTRACT
The idea for this book emerged at a conference on nationalism, ethnic conflict and conceptions of citizenship and democracy held in Utrecht, the Netherlands in 1995. The European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations organized and the European Science Foundation funded the conference. Scholars from the fields of ethnic relations, ethnic conflict, and nationalism from 20 West, Central, and East European countries discussed the possibility of producing such a comparative and cross-national survey. Its aim would be to determine factors which led to negative popular attitudes toward ethnic or national minorities, to popular nationalism and its projected political goals (which affects the popular evaluation of the democratic quality of the national political system), and to popular conceptions of who belongs to the state and nation in terms of citizenship. Unfortunately or not, this survey did not occur because of funding constraints. Consequently, we never had an opportunity to see if the technical problems in such a comparative research project were insurmountable. So, good and bad luck are relative in life as well as in social science. However, the conference still produced something valuable. As preparation for a comparative survey, all participants wrote a paper on their country, covering national historical ·development, political and economic systems, ethnic demography and tensions, and current nationalistic sentiments. These were to be used as background for concepts that were to be measured cross-nationally. Since these country papers had the same format, they were useful for a book, even more so than we realised in advance. Therefore, at the conference's end, the editors were appointed. Their joint task was to review and evaluate the papers so that appropriate revisions could satisfy the requirements for an interesting publication. So, this is that book.
