Conclusion: Citizenship After the Nation State: The 2009 Survey and Beyond

Abstract

We took a large step into the dark when we first sought to develop the Citizenship after the Nation-State (CANS) project. Multi-team comparative social science is a notoriously complex business — and while the collaborative design of a single survey research instrument to be fielded across linguistic and political borders was fascinating, it was also very demanding. The complexity of these challenges was increased because this kind of research had never before been attempted at the regional level. In attempting to do so, we had to challenge scepticism — or even hostility — of two intertwined kinds. The first is a species of normative hostility. Many commentators treat regions as atavistic, normatively dubious polítical throwbacks. So, for example, Ralf Dahrendorf called regionalism ‘the worst formula of all’ because ‘it takes us back to tribes on the one hand and forward to provisions without entitlements on the other’ (1994, p. 17). While making an important call for more empirical research, geographer Joe Painter echoed this normative anxiety when he referred to ‘ethnic regionalism of an essentialist or primordial type’ (2002, p. 109).