Do Praguers differ from Czechs? Selected topics of recent intergroup antagonism attempts

Meisel's (1993, 4) abovementioned argument about the reflection of a country's values in the capital is contested by a body of research on the connection between the values and characteristics of urban and rural settings. Generally speaking, people in the countryside are supposed to be more collectivist (Jha and Singh 2011) than those in the city. Higher individualism is expected to be linked with higher economic development (gross domestic product (GDP) per capita) (see Hofstede 2001, 252–3), but also with more urbanized societies (Greenfield 2009; Raeff, Greenfield and Quiroz 2000). Therefore, due to the fact that Prague is the capital, it has the highest GDP per capita within the country (Czech Statistical Office 2020) and also the highest level of education among the Czech regions (Czech Statistical Office 2014). This makes Prague, in combination with its international status with high exposure of its people to cultural diversity (Triandis 2018, 66), a place where it makes sense to expect to be driven by individualistic values. On top of that, conservative values are often linked to the Czech countryside rather than big cities, which are supposed to be more liberal (e.g., Šmídová Matoušková and Markvartová 2011).

Human values play a role in social interactions (Feather 1980), which makes sense given that attitudes and behavior are dependent on human values (e.g., Rokeach 1973; Schwartz 2012). Values serve as a source of motivation (Fulton et al. 1996). For a long time, there was no widely acknowledged set of human values comparable among different societies which allowed the use of the term with various meanings and references (see Williams (1979, 16) or compare Albert (1956) and Schwartz (2012)). Shalom H. Schwartz, therefore, came up with a set of human values that can be compared cross-culturally.

Schwartz (2012) has identified 10 basic human values: self-direction (SD), stimulation (ST), hedonism (HE), achievement (AC), power (PO), security (SE), conformity (CO), tradition (TR), benevolence (BE), and universalism (UN). These values may be aggregated into four dimensions as openness to change (SD, ST, partially HE) and conservation (SE, CO, TR); self-enhancement (AC, PO, partially HE) and self-transcendence (BE, UN), where both pairs of dimensions are contradictory (see Figure 1). For the purpose of this study, self-enhancement was renamed as individualism and self-transcendence as collectivism, only because these names are more understandable, they follow the logic behind the original terms, and it is easier to link them in the text with the abovementioned expectations.

Fig. 1

The first dimension contrasts values as order, self-restriction, resistance to change and preservation of the past with values of feelings and readiness for change, independence of thought, and action. In the second dimension, welfare and interest for others are contradictory to the values of success, dominance, and pursuit of one's own interest (Schwartz 2012, 8–9). These values may serve as sources for understanding the attitudes and behaviors of people (Schwartz 2012).

In addition, Schwartz's theory says that there is a sort of dynamic relationship between these values, which means that some values are related, while some of them are rather contradictory (Schwartz 2012). Such a perception of the structure of values differs from the multiple-value approach by the different arrangement of the values and their hierarchies (compare with Rokeach 1973). In other words, some values in Schwartz's model motivate different actions that can be expected to contradict other values. Therefore, it makes sense to expect the pairs of values to be negatively correlated.

The national identity of Prague's inhabitants is not so easy to predict. On the one hand, they may be influenced by the fact that Prague has been important for the Czech nation as the site of old kings, the provincial government within the Habsburg Monarchy, and later, as the capital of the Czechoslovakia and Czech Republics. In fact, the events in Prague during the second half of the nineteenth century were crucial for both the stronger and faster emancipation of the Czech people within the Habsburg Empire and the Czech national identity when Prague opened its doors to countryside Czech peasants. This within-country migration shifted the balance between the Czech and German ethnicities/languages within the capital (Nolte 2007), which was important for Czech emancipation.

Since 1918, Prague has served as the capital of Czechoslovakia and later that of the Czech Republic. It has also served as the political, economic, and cultural center of the country. The main political, economic, and societal changes (both positive and negative) were mostly connected to Prague events (e.g., the Communist coup d‘état in 1948 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989). In other words, Prague has served as the center of the Czech country and nation. That is why it makes sense to expect that people in Prague are closer to what the idea of a nation is and they stand behind this idea compared with the people outside Prague.

Contrary to this theoretical expectation, it is possible to observe the recent attempts within Czech society to differentiate between Prague and the rest of the country. This may exploit stereotypes within the country wherein Prague and the countryside are approached as two counterpoints. Praguers may be perceived as those who think that people in the countryside are stupid. People in the countryside also label Praguers as people who have everything (while people in countryside have nothing), who work less for more money, and are boasters (see, for example, Fajkusová 2015, 34–5). Although similar stereotypes and prejudices had not been important for constructing a strong cleavage within Czechia (Hloušek and Kopeček 2008, 524 and 528), they can be catalyzed when they are successfully applied within a new content. For instance, wellbeing can be successfully linked to pro-European attitudes in public discourse and these attitudes can be proclaimed to oppose the country's interests (e.g., pejorative accusation of being pro-Bruselist—see above), etc. In other words, this approach toward the nation could be linked to stereotypes and prejudices. In this sense, Praguers may have not only different values (see above) but also different attitudes and feelings toward the Czech nation.

Various aspects of such attitudes and feelings are measured here. Common approaches to the topic are utilized so the main focus is given to the concepts of patriotism, nationalism, and sources of national pride when Praguers are compared with non-Praguers.

Patriotism and nationalism constitute parts (together with chauvinism) of what Bahna (2015, 4) identifies in the academic literature as national identity, which has its roots in the work of Adorno et al. (1950). However, an interplay between the three terms may be approached in many ways (see Coenders and Scheepers 2003). In this study nationalism and patriotism are analyzed separately, providing them with meanings that define patriotism with a positive attachment, emotions, and loyalty to the nation and/or country (see Kosterman and Feshbach 1989, 260; Kelman 1997, 166), while nationalism with both positive and rather negative (or comparative) aspects (in terms of national preference or superiority) (e.g., Dekker, Malová, and Hoogendoorn 2003, 347). Although it is also possible to define nationalism with clearly negative aspects (such as hate and xenophobia, see Minogue 1967), this strategy is not so important for addressing the comparison of group relationships to the country, even if there can be a connection to the less negative version of nationalism.

This is done for two reasons. First, it is due to the nature of the motivation for this study given by the specific situation of the recent Czech context and the character of the attempted division between Prague and the countryside. Second, there are evident differences in how various authors measure the two concepts (see Bahna 2019, 5–6). Defining the two terms in the proposed way, therefore, allows for easier differentiation between the two terms and provides an easily comprehensible picture of people's relationships to their country. In addition, the utilized data also enable the smooth differentiation between the two concepts.

The first results are based on the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP): National Identity III by the ISSP Research Group (ISSP 2015) and the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 8: Round 8 Data (2016). Although these two data sources do not cover all the topics covered in this study and they are not representative samples of Prague, they still provide more representative results than the results of the second (qualitative) study (see below). Both datasets represent the Czech population. Table 1 provides a basic description of the two samples within each of the two datasets. An interpretation of the findings based on the capital's inhabitants (as a subsample of the total samples) may not be representative for Prague. However, the two Czech samples are big enough to provide a relatively big number of Prague inhabitants (see Table 1).

Commonly used ISSP (2015) data from the module National Identity III are utilized here for the simplicity of measurements of the abovementioned concepts. The ISSP data allows us to measure nationalism by a battery of statements which stress the superiority of a nation/country above others while these items are internally consistent (see Bahna 2019, 5–6). The same items selected in Bahna's (2019) work are a part of Figure 9.

Patriotism as an emotional bond is measured in ISSP data (2015) by the question, “How proud are you of being Czech?” However, other measurements of patriotism based on this sort of emotional attachment are available as well. These are, “How emotionally attached do you feel to the Czech Republic?” (ESS 2016) and “How close do you feel to the Czech Republic?” (ISSP 2015). The indicators of pride to certain domains of the country's life are described based on ISSP (2015) data as well.

ESS (2016) provides data on basic human values. The four dimensions of human values are constructed by 10 basic human values (see above) which consist of a number of items, as specified in Appendix A.

The operationalization of regression models below (based on ESS (2016) data) is mostly evident from the respective Table 2 with results. The age is coded by the real age. A household's total net income was coded as 10 deciles from the lowest to the highest income. For more information on a household's income coding see ESS8 Appendix A2 at ESS Round 8: European Social Survey Round 8 Data (2016). To control for domicile, three items have been created based on the respective size reflecting the basic expectations, i.e., a big city and its suburbs or outskirts, town or a small city, and country village or farm/home in countryside. Education is analyzed here based on the highest education of the respondent on the level of basic school, high school without A-level exam, high school with A-level exam, and post A-level diploma or university education. Finally, the results are controlled for different regions in Czechia on the level of NUTS 3.

ISSP (2015) data are used in a similar fashion. The only difference is in the household's total net income, which is coded as a dummy variable with four categories based on the four quartiles of the original data distribution (first quartile: up to 17,500 CZK, second quartile: 17,501–25,000 CZK, third quartile: 25,001–35,000 CZK, and fourth quartile: over 35,000 CZK).

Two FGs were held on October 21 and 22, 2019.

The FGs were organized by Donath Business & Media in cooperation with the author of this study.

Although we attempted to balance the gender aspect within the FGs, only three out of eight women were present in the political FG, while there were only two women out of ten attendees in the expert FG.

The utilization of such FGs has some limitations. Although their participants are expected to reflect various dimensions and represent various kinds of Prague inhabitants, the participants are still people with pretty high cultural capital. That is also why ongoing findings are presented in the context of the quantitative results above.

The assessment of Praguers being open to changes or conserved depends on three to four main things which quantitative surveys are not able to capture. First, we would combine the two common answers which are based on (a) the issue under discussion and (b) the situation of the people with respect to the issue. One respondent described it very illustratively with his ambiguous answer:

I think that if they (Praguers) are open, there is something Czech in every Praguer that gets them to be not as open to these changes.

For instance, speaking about big issues (e.g., housing and immigration) resonating within the Czech society may lead to shared general feelings and attitudes toward these issues also in Prague. On the contrary, the current situation of Prague inhabitants and their experience evolve their values in two directions. Praguers are perceived to be more open to the opportunities to enlarge their living options. However, when these options can be a source of discomfort or danger then they tend to be conservative. In this sense, the NIMBY effect was often identified among the respondents, for instance:

Playgrounds are really nice unless they are built right next to my house because children would scream. Roads and bypasses are very important unless, in the words of the Mayor of Suchdol, they are routed through Suchdol. [...] The attitude – yes, but not in my backyard – is prevalent.

The situation can be also defined by other attributes, such as past experience, education of the respective person, his/her locality, neighborhood, etc. For instance:

I think it is different across social groups and depends on a person's education level. Prague has a huge number of educated people, and that is the reason why it is more open. Unfortunately, I have classmates from elementary school with a very low education level [...] Listening to what they say there, it is terrible, but in general, you would be tempted to say Prague residents are open. There is xenophobia. It is horrible.

Second, the ambiguity between conservation and openness can be explained by the size of change Praguers are willing to accept. Praguers are open to rather smaller and well-communicated changes. When changes are too big, they prefer to stay with the status quo rather than change their neighborhood rapidly. This may be linked to their negative past experiences with big projects within the city, disappointment, and a (comparative) lack of trust for politicians:

I would give one example that goes beyond our city quarter. Like how they wanted to build the Ferris wheel in Náplavka. Every metropolis of the world has something like that, so Prague would deserve it too. I think it gave rise to fundamental resistance. I think it is a conservative view that Prague is nice as it is and we should leave it alone. This may be a too broad example. I mean, the people do not want any fundamental changes.

The comparison of Prague with other capitals introduces the third reason for Prague's assessment, which is perspective, i.e., which entity is Prague being compared with. Comparison with other, especially Western, capitals might make Prague look less open:

In the context of the metropolises of the world, I think they are conservative, but in the context of Czech cities, Prague is absolutely progressive. We are leading the whole republic.

Based on the abovementioned quotes, it seems that the inhabitants of Prague are by nature conservative Czechs rather than open Praguers. Although it is a rather general perception that Praguers are more open to changes and progressive, based on the FGs it is possible to sum it up as follows: Prague, due to its position within and outside of Czechia, is under strong pressure to be progressive even though its inhabitants do not often share these values. In other words, Prague's inhabitants are rather compelled to be open and they are capable of adapting, even if their values are more conservative:

I think Praguers mind a lot of things, and they say out loud what they mind. It means they are often forced to change, that it is inevitable for them. I am almost inclined to say it seems as though they wanted to be conservative, but they are forced to change, that there simply is not another way, and, in the end, because they travel, they also see this is where it is heading.

The general picture of Praguers being more individualist is caused mainly by the NIMBY logic. People understand the needs of others, but they are not much willing to make a personal sacrifice for them:

I think, for example, in the case of construction or transport, this attitude of “not in my backyard” is extremely prevalent in Prague. We have to build new apartments so that the prices are not so high, but we are certainly not going to thicken our housing estates. A typical example of this is part of a ring road that a municipality of 1,500 inhabitants has been blocking for 20 years to the detriment of Prague as a whole. I think this syndrome. That yes, we are willing to give up comfort for the benefit of the community, but only if it does not directly affect us.

It may not be solely comfort which makes Praguers seem unwilling to sacrifice for others. Similarly, as in the previous section, the role of past experience and information seems to be crucial for explaining this Praguer image. They are often unwilling to step out of their comfort zones in practice because they do not believe that this will serve a greater good. There is a lack of trust in people toward politicians or big business:

Perhaps from my experience, I would say people would be willing to make concessions. But we have seen many times that something declared to be in general or public interest is actually in the interest of a partial group. And they were disappointed often that they were very distrustful and suspicious of things labelled as being in the general interest. They have experienced many disappointments over the past 30 years, so they are very cautious and distrustful.

Praguers in general feel the need of others; however, they are not so willing to put others in front of themselves. The main limitations for this attitude are lower trust and past negative experience with local politics and business, as well as an unwillingness to make personal sacrifices for others.

What is interesting and a quite important finding from the FGs, in the Czech context, is that when FG participants spoke about individual values (other or subordinated to those represented above; e.g., tolerance, freedom, achievement, openness), they often came to the conclusion that differences between Prague and the countryside are not much striking in the case of values as much as in lifestyles.