A missing link? Maintaining support for the European polity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Truchlewski, Zbigniew; Oană, Ioana-Elena; Moise, Alexandru D.

doi:10.1080/13501763.2023.2218419

Cited by 14 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The war in Ukraine has resulted in high approval for centralisation of foreign and security policy at the EU level. Nonetheless, the ideological divisions seen in this policy field, as well as in approval over sanctions (Truchlewski et al, 2023 ) and energy and climate policy (Natili & Visconti, 2023 ), mean that the EU needs to proceed carefully. Increased politicisation of these differences has the potential to stall the demand side of polity building.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our findings therefore lend support to the theory that ‘bellicist’ collective security of war is a causal impetus for EU polity building from the demand side (Kelemen & McNamara, 2022 ). Europeans do not want Europe to remain as a ‘political dwarf and a military worm’ any longer, and the war in Ukraine indeed created a potential ‘Tillian’ moment for European polity building (Truchlewski, Ioana-Elena, & Moise, 2023 ; Tilly, 1992 ). Whether this public opinion potentiality gets translated into actual further integration remains to be seen.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A unified autonomous Europe? Public opinion of the EU's foreign and security policy

Wang

Moise

2023

Journal of European Public Policy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU into a new phase where both the political elites and the public start to rethink its foreign and security policies. This paper uses a unique survey in seven European countries in the wake of the war to examine European public opinion on how the EU's foreign and security policies should be made and how autonomous they should be. We find that Europeans not only favour increasing military capacity at the national or NATO level but also prefer increasing military capacity at the EU level, though to a lesser degree. We also show that perceptions of both short-term and long-term threats, European identification and mainstream left-wing ideology lead Europeans to favour a more militarily powerful, unified and autonomous EU.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified autonomous Europe? Public opinion of the EU's foreign and security policy

Wang

Moise

2023

Journal of European Public Policy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Instances of Parallelization in the Russia-Ukraine War

Boman

2023

SpringerBriefs in Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tilly versus Milward: Experimental Evidence of Public Preferences for European Defense Amidst the Russian Threat

Moise,

Truchlewski,

Oana

2024

Polit Behav

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Following the “bellicist” school of state formation, the external threat of war is expected to spur polity formation by centralizing military capacity (Tilly, in Coercion, Capital, and European States, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990). It has been argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could provide such an impetus for centralization in the EU polity (Kelemen & McNamara, Comparative Political Studies, 55(6):18–34, 2022). We adapt the Tillian argument to the era of mass democracy, where governments need citizen support. Public support is crucial because it can constrain governments in times of crisis, especially regarding salient policies. We do not yet understand what degree of centralization the European public supports and under which conditions it can increase. We conduct an experiment where we vary both the Russian (escalation from presence in Ukraine to the invasion of Moldova or Lithuania) and the American responses (continuation of support vs. withdrawal) and see how European preferences vary for polity building in defense. We field our experiment in 7 countries (Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Poland, and Hungary) with different sensitivities and exposures to the war in Ukraine. We propose an alternative argument to the Tillian approach based on the seminal Milwardian argument according to which polity coordination of national capacities is preferred (Milward, in The European Rescue of the Nation State, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992). We show theoretically and empirically that external threats can actually hamper polity centralization, at least in the short term. Rather, they strengthen the subunits of a polity through coordination.

show abstract

A missing link? Maintaining support for the European polity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Cited by 14 publications

References 20 publications

A unified autonomous Europe? Public opinion of the EU's foreign and security policy

A unified autonomous Europe? Public opinion of the EU's foreign and security policy

Instances of Parallelization in the Russia-Ukraine War

Tilly versus Milward: Experimental Evidence of Public Preferences for European Defense Amidst the Russian Threat

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About