‘Second-order’ institutions: national institutional quality as a yardstick for EU evaluation

Abstract

The extent to which democracy functions successfully in the European Union is a hotly debated issue. Some citizens feel that EU democracy functions well as it is, whereas others perceive a democratic deficit. Which factors contribute to this variation in opinion? In this paper, we focus on the effect that the quality of national institutions has on citizens' perceptions of the democratic performance of the EU. From voter survey data from 21 EU member states (N ¼ 32410), we find that better quality national institutions correlate to lower rates of satisfaction with the EU's democratic performance. In addition, this effect is stronger amongst citizens who are more knowledgeable about national politics. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for our research field in particular and for society in general.

Cross Road Elections: Change in EU Performance Evaluations during the European Parliament Elections 2014

“…In line with Rohrschneider (2002), Scheuer (2005), and Boomgaarden et al (2011), Desmet et al (2012 found that citizens do not per se connect their evaluations of the EU's democratic performance with their political support for further integration, i.e. these are relatively independent attitude dimensions.…”

“…As a general antecedent of EU performance evaluations we know that economic considerations and government approval matter (the so-called national yardstick, see Boomgaarden et al, 2011;Desmet et al, 2012;Hobolt, 2012). However, since we, in this study, are concerned with changes in performance evaluations, we focus in particular on one of the key antecedents for changing opinions, the role of information as provided by the media.…”

“…As convincingly pointed out by Hobolt (2012), though there is a rich academic literature on how EU institutions function and how they could be designed to alleviate the alleged 'democratic deficit' in the EU, we still have only limited knowledge about how citizens view European democracy. Previous research has demonstrated that there is a lot of cross-national and individual level variation in citizens' evaluations of the democratic performance of the EU (e.g., Desmet, van Spanje, & de Vreese, 2012). In a general sense, Alvarez and Franklin (1994) argued that how people see the performance of a regime depends on the cost-benefit assessments people make.…”

“Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union”. Any support from the citizens?

“…12 As a matter of fact, the countries in this quadrant by and large fit the characteristics favouring further integration vis-à-vis home country dissatisfaction found by Rose and Borz (2016) and Desmet et al (2012). It is worth noting that, as also reported by Guiso et al (2016), this was the prevalent attitude in several old accession countries (like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) before they joined the EZ, and that have now moved to the EU-W/H-W quadrant.…”

“…These countries have in common a relatively recent conquest of democracy, some internal reform and modernisation processes still incomplete, and active participation in the EU regional structural funds and policies, which overall may create a mix of 'honeymoon' and 'comparative yardstick' effects (e.g. Desmet et al 2012) that account for their EU-R/H-W attitude. The EU-R/H-R quadrant displays countries with 'global satisfaction', where the majority of respondents Table 2. appear supportive of the current state of affairs both at the EU and the national level.…”