The Utility of Identity: Explaining Support for the EU after the Crash

Abstract

The sweeping victories of Euroskeptic and far right parties in the 2014 European Parliament elections reflect public discontent with the European Union that has been growing since the beginning of the great recession. Using data from Eurobarometer 71.3 (Summer 2009), which were collected soon after the onset of the economic crisis, we test a conditional hypothesis derived from a combination of utilitarian theories of political support and social-identity theory. Specifically, we examine the extent to which the effects of individuals' economic perceptions on their support for the EU are conditioned by the way they conceive of their national and EU identities. The analysis reveals that sociotropic rather than egocentric economic evaluations tend to drive EU support among people with stronger attachments to the nation.Headlines on May 26, 2014 reflected widespread surprise as Euroskeptic and far right parties scored major victories in European Parliament elections. As a result of these successes, the total number of Euroskeptic members in the European Parliament nearly doubled, with an estimated 122 members from rightist parties and 53 from the far left. Although the traditional, centrist political parties still control a majority of the seats in the European Parliament, the new anti-EU members are expected to play a bigger role in the decisionmaking process. This will likely complicate the passage of legislation on issues where the mainstream parties are divided. More importantly, from a symbolic standpoint, the sweeping victories of Euroskeptic and far right parties reflect the growing public discontent with the European Union. Indeed,The authors wish to thank Ben Bowyer, Liesbet Hooghe, John Sides, Boyka Stefanova, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of Polity for their helpful suggestions and comments.

European identity and citizens' support for the EU: Testing the utilitarian approach

“…Knowledge and information are two important factors. Levy and Phan () show that citizens tend to be generally uninformed about EU policies and the real economy, which makes it unlikely that an individual's support be determined on the basis of objective economic measures. As a consequence, any utilitarian consideration will be made on the basis of citizens' perception of the surrounding world.…”

Sharing the burden in a free riders’ land: The EU migration and asylum policy in the views of public opinion and politicians

“…A second group of research, on the other hand, focuses on the impact of identity on the support for the EU and its policies. In this respect, a negative relationship between national attachment and support for European integration (Hooghe & Marks , ; McLaren ; Levy & Phan ) would be paralleled by a positive association between European identity and preferences for EU‐level policies, both at the elite and the mass level (Westle & Segatti ; Westle ). By combining these two groups of studies, we posit that exclusively national identities are negatively related with the approval of burden‐sharing measures imposed by the EU ( H4a : ‘national identity hypothesis’).…”

Euroskepticism, Income Inequality and Financial Expectations

“…In addition to this, Serricchio, Tsakatika, and Quaglia (2013) consider exclusive national identity as decisive for Euroskepticism. Levy and Phan (2014) take a more integrative point of view by stating that the sociotropic assessment of the national economic situation drives EU attitudes, particularly among those with an exclusive national identity. They conclude that if the economic crisis produces a resurgence of nationalism, the national economic situation becomes even more important to assure the project of European integration.…”