Public support for European integration in eight member states: a battle for the hearts as well as the minds of Europe's citizens

Abstract

In this thesis the author aims to make a contribution to our understanding o f mass attitudes towards European integration. The initial theoretical backdrop is the field of regional integration, where mass attitudes are generally specified to play a minimal role in integrative developments. I criticise this viewpoint, and in particular the Permissive Consensus approach of Lindberg and Scheingold (1970), from an empirical and theoretical stance, arguing instead that public support for European integration is capable o f fulfilling an important legitimising function. Amongst other researchers that view public opinion as worthy of study, the consensus is that mass support for integration is largely a function o f utilitarian calculations. My starting points are the large, unexplained differences in support by country that remain in many utilitarian studies. I hypothesise that explanations o f mass support for integration are complemented by the inclusion o f variables that account for so-called ‘affective* attitudes. Specifically, I construct variables measuring national pride, European identity, nationalism and racism for European Union respondents surveyed in the International Social Survey Programme 1995 National Identity dataset. Here, as elsewhere in the thesis, I use commonly applied social sciences methodologies to test my hypotheses both at aggregate and country level. Essentially, I show that higher levels of pride and European identity are positively related to support, while nationalism and racism are negatively related. A second empirical section to the thesis addresses how the four affective concepts interrelate with one another in the data. Although I do not formulate specific hypotheses in this case, I am, however, informed by the socio-psychological literature concerning social identity. In a final empirical section, I use Eurobarometer data to attempt an explanation o f non-attitudes towards European integration, shown to be ubiquitous in both surveys. Here, the explanatory focus is on education, knowledge and interest in politics rather than affective variables.