Europeans and the European Community: the dynamics of public support for European integration

Abstract

Europeans evaluate the European Community (EC) according to its economic performance, political salience, and role in international relations. During the last two decades their measured attitudes toward European integration warmed especially when inflation rates fell, as the EC share of the country's trade expanded, when EC elections and referenda increased attention to the community, and to some extend during periods when East-West relations were relaxed. Europeans did not vary their support according to their countries' shares of the Brussels budget. Thus, notwithstanding Denmark's 1992 rejection of the Maastricht treaty and the end of the cold war, recent EC reforms that increase monetary stability, intra-European trade and political attention are all likely to maintain or increase citizen support for the EC. These findings result from a model that blends comparative political economy with international relations in one of the first applications of pooled cross-sectional and time-series analysis to the comparative study of public opinion.

Euroskepticism, Income Inequality and Financial Expectations

“…Sociotropic utilitarianism regards national economic performance measured in GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, intra-EU trade or country net benefits from EU membership as decisive in shaping attitudes toward the EU (Anderson and Reichert 1995;Anderson and Kaltenthaler 1996;Eichenberg and Dalton 1993). Egocentric utilitarianism considers the individual socio-economic position measured by age, education level, and occupation as pivotal for the decision, because these characteristics are considered to be essential for being an economic winner or loser from EU integration (Gabel 1998a(Gabel , 1998bGabel and Palmer 1995;Gabel and Whitten 1997).…”

Waiting for a European Identity … Reflections on the Process of Identification with Europe

“…For decades, the study of the relationship between European citizens and the European political system, has primarily focused on the support (or lack thereof) for the integration process (Janssen 1991;Eichenberg & Dalton 1993;Franklin, Marsh & McLaren 1994;Bréchon, Cautrès & Denni 1994;Niedermayer & Sinnott 1994). Typically empirical indicators distinguish between the different components of the European system, such as the "community" and the different attitudes held towards the EU; be they cognitive, evaluative or affective (Niedermayer & Westle 1994).…”

Public perceptions of the EU as a system of governance

“…Given the EU's origin as an economic organization intending to bring economic efficiency and affluence among European states, support for the continuation of this project has often been understood in economic terms (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993;Anderson and Kaltenthaler 1996;Duch and Taylor 1997). However, which economic factors are the most relevant continued to be a matter of debate.…”

“…However, which economic factors are the most relevant continued to be a matter of debate. Early work tended to cite national economic performance in the form of rates of growth, inflation and unemployment (Anderson and Kaltenthaler 1996), country net benefits from EU (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993;Anderson and Reichert 1996;Carrubba 1997;Gabel 1998a), and more general 'economic perceptions' (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993) as key economic variables that influenced citizens' perceptions about the EU.…”

“…Appealing to the outright 'costs of non-Europe', many found favorable national-level economic evaluations to be the source (Anderson and Kaltenthaler 1996;Eichenberg and Dalton 1993) and others addressed regional and sectoral economic variation (Smith and Wanke 1993).…”