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Public opinion and the crisis: The dynamics of support for the euro
Abstract
Further integration in the European Union (EU) increasingly depends on public legitimacy. The global financial crisis and the subsequent euro area crisis have amplified both the salience and the redistributive consequences of decisions taken in Brussels, raising the question of how this has influenced public support for European integration. In this contribution, we examine how public opinion has responded to the crisis, focusing on support for monetary integration. Interestingly, our results show that support for the euro has remained high within the euro area; however, attitudes are increasingly driven by utilitarian considerations, whereas identity concerns have become less important. While the crisis has been seen to deepen divisions within Europe, our findings suggest that it has also encouraged citizens in the euro area to form opinions on the euro on the basis of a cost–benefit analysis of European economic governance, rather than relying primarily on national attachments.
... In particular, scholars have focused on identifying the determinants of public support for transnational redistribution. Previous research has found that a range of personal, economic, and cultural factors can explain the variation in citizens' support for international redistribution (Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Verhaegen, 2018;Stoeckel & Kuhn, 2018;Kuhn et al., 2018). These factors include individuals' economic status and macroeconomic context, as well as their identity, cosmopolitanism, and egalitarianism. ...
... Despite previous research identifying a plethora of factors that influence individuals' sup-port for international redistribution within the EU, there remains much to be understood about how major crises affect public attitudes towards redistribution over time. In particular, existing research has predominantly adopted a static approach, failing to account for the dynamic nature of public opinion and the ways in which crises affect support for solidarity over time (but see Hobolt & Wratil (2015) for an exception). As such, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the dynamics of public opinion on EU solidarity, particularly in the wake of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
... The first strand of literature is rooted in psychological research and provides valuable insights into how negative information can impact citizens' perceptions (Lau, 1985;Rozin & Royzman, 2001;Soroka, 2006), and how individual attitudes can shape responses to the pandemic (Greenwald, 1968). The second strand of literature is focused on fiscal redistribution within the EU, and provides important context for understanding the most significant personal attitudes that are likely to shape responses to the pandemic (Bechtel et al., 2014;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Kleider & Stoeckel, 2019). ...
The present study seeks to assess the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on public support for fiscal redistribution in Europe. By analyzing voter responses in ten European member states, this paper aims to explore the extent to which pre-existing attitudes shape reactions to the crisis. Three key determinants are considered: economic calculations , identity concerns, and attitudes towards national institutions. The hypothesis posits that the crisis amplified the rift between losers and winners, nationalists and Europeanists, and those who are dissatisfied or satisfied with national institutions. As a result, the long-standing preferences and views of citizens will play a critical role in shaping the responses to the pandemic. The findings suggest that respondents' reactions to the pandemic are indeed influenced by their prior attitudes. However, the study also reveals a prevalent negative bias, characterized by a reduction in support for European solidarity. This research contributes to our understanding of the impact of major crises on public support for solidarity and highlights the significance of prior attitudes in determining individuals' responses to the crisis.
... Whereas extant survey research has successfully uncovered multiple dimensions of EU attitudes among the public-at-large (see, e.g. Boomgaarden et al., 2011;De Vreese et al., 2019;De Vries and Steenbergen, 2013;Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Lubbers, 2008), research on EU attitudes is thus far less sensitive to the possibility that different groups of citizens might have different understandings of what the EU entails, and therefore differ in which dimensions are salient to them, and in how their positions on those dimensions interrelate. Whereas research into the multidimensionality of EU attitudes has provided important insights into the complexity of views on the EU on an aggregate level, whether different segments of the public ascribe different meanings to the EU remains an open question. ...
... Survey research on the multidimensionality of EU attitudes predominantly focuses on the population-at-large, for instance by distinguishing economic/utilitarian, political/democratic, national identity, sovereignty-related dimensions, and identifying which of these are most pertinent to citizens in general (e.g. De Vreese et al., 2019;Hobolt and Wratil, 2015). Similarly, research into the antecedents of EU attitudes also focuses on the population-at-large, for example, by staging a 'battle of explanations' (Lubbers, 2008: 74) trying to determine which factorsidentity, utilitarian or politicalare most relevant, or in concluding that EU support is determined 'by attributes of the individual and the national political environment' (De Vries and Steenbergen, 2013: 137). ...
... Our analysis complements studies analysing EU attitudes' multidimensionality (e.g. Boomgaarden et al., 2011;De Vreese et al., 2019;Hobolt and Wratil, 2015) and antecedents (e.g. Boomgaarden et al., 2011;Carey, 2002;De Vries and Steenbergen, 2013;Hooghe and Marks, 2005;Lubbers, 2008) among citizens in general. ...
While ample research has scrutinised the causes and consequences of support for the European Union, a pressing question remains: what do people actually mean when they express support for, or opposition to, their country’s membership of the institution? We use Correlational Class Analysis to assess this. Our analysis of high-quality representative Dutch survey data ( n = 2053), including novel items informed by in-depth qualitative research, reveals that European Union support comes in three guises: federalist, non-federalist and instrumental-pragmatist Strikingly, many Europhiles are not federalists. In addition, we reveal that the social bases of the three types of support especially differ regarding political competence, political orientation, and media consumption. The implications for ongoing debates on European Union atttidues are discussed.
... With very few exceptions, every member state of the European Union has undertaken to join a single currency zone and exchange its national currency with the euro. Issues of public support towards the adoption of the euro are crucial for its successful adoption and operation, especially in challenging times (Hobolt & Wratil, 2015). As economic discourse become intertwined with identity politics, public perceptions become more pertinent, and likely, more volatile. ...
... A second set of results that shows the importance of the policy stance on euro perceptions fits neatly with Hobolt and Wratil's (2015) conclusions that part of the attitudes are driven by rational utilitarian cost-benefit analysis of the euro. It is thus hardly surprising that given the expected economic benefits of the euro, promarket participants approve of the new currency more. ...
Objectives: Perceptions towards euro adoption in the general public are very important for the successful introduction of the common currency into a given economy. Young consumers tend to have lower interest and political participation rates, but their acceptance of a new currency is crucial. This paper investigates a sample of Bulgarian students in order to measure and model the preferences of young consumers towards adopting a new national currency, and potentially glean insights that could be useful for the formulation of public policy.
Methods/Approach: We survey a total of 296 predominantly young participants asking them both traditional demographic questions as well as behavioral and political ones such as social network and online video usage as well as policy stance and trust in institutions. The variables are used as predictors in a regression modelling framework that investigates the drivers behind the dynamics of euro perceptions.
Results: We find a strong and robust effect of overall trust in institutions on perceptions towards the euro, as well as an expected effect of the policy preference. The higher trust in institutions leads to a more positive attitude towards the adoption of the common currency. Similarly, more right-leaning pro-market policy preferences are also associated with a more favorable view of the euro. While the consumption of online videos is unimportant, the overall time spent in social networks does have a statistically significant positive effect on preferences.
Conclusions: The results give some initial directions as to what policy should be undertaken to most effectively inform young consumers on the benefits of adopting the euro as a new currency, and how this demographic can be segmented to deliver information most efficiently.
... The few studies that systematically compare 'crisis times' and 'normal times' leave several open questions, and in fact examine different dependent variables than we do (although they are not completely unrelated to EU solidarity). Looking at the effects of the euro crisis on public support for economic integration, Hobolt and Wratil (2015) find that between two points in time, 2005 and 2013, support for economic integration decreased outside the euro area, but remained stable within it. They also show that the rationales driving people's opinions changed, with identity-based considerations giving way to utilitarian ones in the aftermath of the crisis. ...
... Yet, the scope of the offered explanations remains unclear. Hobolt and Wratil (2015) propose that an economic crisis made people more concerned with the economic benefits of EU integration, leading to a decrease in identity-based considerations and an increase in utilitarian thinking. The authors acknowledge the shortcomings of this argument, given the narrow focus on 'attitudes towards monetary integration, which arguably has clearer economic implications than other forms of integration', so that 'it is not certain that [their] findings can be generalized to all types of integration support' (Ibid., 253). ...
This article examines the trends and differences in predictors of public support for European Union (EU) fiscal solidarity using two individual surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020, before and during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, in six Western European countries. We focus on individual self-interest and European/national identification as the two major determinants of public preference formation. Empirical analyses show that, while the average level of public support for European fiscal solidarity did not change from 2019 to 2020, the negative associations between exclusive national identification and economic vulnerability, on the one hand, and EU fiscal solidarity on the other were weakened. Among both, the identitarian source retained substantive (although reduced) relevance in 2020, while utility did not. Country-level analyses reveal a more complex picture, but the overall pattern holds across the member states included in our sample. We argue that the reduced explanatory power of these typical heuristics that individuals use to shape their attitudes towards European solidarity is connected to the nature of the pandemic as an exogenous ‘common crisis’, affecting all member states in a supposedly symmetric manner, at least in the first phase, and inducing interdependencies among them.
... Debates about economic policies oftentimes relate to wider identity arguments about the nature of the envisaged polity (see Matthijs and McNamara 2015). The argument here, therefore, is about relative importance: by and large, the available data arguably suggest that the debates were still primarily about economic policies, even if they were secondarily informed by identity concerns (Börzel and Risse 2018;Hobolt and Wratil 2015). This focus on problem-solving certainly did not prevent massive conflicts among member states, but clashes were mostly about EU policies, not the EU as a polity. ...
... The lack of agency thus hints at the importance of structural factors to explain the politicisation of the Euro crisis. Indeed, Hobolt and Wratil (2015) propose that the economic crisis was a sufficient exogenous shock, which entailed tangible effects on personal circumstances and visible consequences for political systems to politicise the crisis (ibid. 241, 252). ...
Although European integration has become an increasingly salient and controversial topic in domestic politics, the consequences of this politicisation of the European Union for the integration process have not received adequate scholarly attention. To fill this lacuna, this article devises five hypotheses on the effects of politicisation for the integration process, which are subsequently tested against the evidence of the Euro and Schengen crises. Both crises had comparable origins, but the Euro crisis caused substantial deepening of integration, while the Schengen crisis has not engendered any meaningful reforming steps. The empirical analysis finds that politicisation assumed different forms across the two crises, which is shown to be one causal factor that explains the variation in crises outcomes. The article thereby contributes to a multifaceted understanding of the politicisation of international institutions, EU integration theory and the dynamics of the Euro and Refugee Crises.
... Three findings are particularly noteworthy. First, in line with the original findings (Jonung et al., 2012;Roth et al., 2011Roth et al., , 2012aRoth et al., , 2012b and similar findings (Debomy, 2013;Guiso et al., 2014;Hobolt & Le Blond, 2014;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015), Table 5.7 highlights that public support for the euro in all three country samples remained stable throughout the crisis. Second, as already elaborated above and shown in Table 5.7, this is in sharp contrast to net trust in the ECB, which suffered the greatest decline in trust among the three European institutions. ...
... For a range of analyses whose results differ from those ofRoth et al. 2012 (a), see among others,Debomy, 2013;Guiso et al., 2014;Hobolt & Le Blond, 2014;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;and Clements et al., 2014 for the Greek case. ...
This contribution revisits the empirical evidence of a decline in citizens’ systemic trust in times of crisis for a 12-country sample of the euro area (EA12) from 1999 to 2014. The findings affirm a pronounced decline in trust in the periphery countries of the EA12, leading to particularly low levels in the national government and parliament in Spain and Greece. The consequences of this decline for the political economy of Economic and Monetary Union are examined, corroborating the strong and negative association between unemployment and trust. The author provides evidence of the increase in unemployment in Spain and examines policy measures at the national and EU level to tackle unemployment. Finally, he revisits the evidence of the enduring support for the euro and discusses its relevance to crisis management, elaborating upon the question of how to restore systemic trust both without and with treaty change.KeywordsFinancial crisiseuro area crisisSystemic trustUnemploymentpolitical economyEconomic, and Monetary UnionSupport for the euroJEL ClassificationC23D72E24E42E65F50G01J0O4O52Z13
... In the same vein, the economic literature has also suggested that citizens' support for institutions also depends on 'utilitarian' reasons; that is, support for the EU is strictly linked to individual advantages that can be derived from the birth of this institution. In other words, the support for the EU will be greater among individuals who think they can obtain economic benefits from this project (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993;Gärtner1997;Gabel 1998;Hobolt and Wratil 2015). Therefore, support for the EU would not be based on an ideological view but only on a simple cost-benefit Source: Authors' calculation on Eurobarometer data. ...
The signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the subsequent adoption of the single currency form the basis of the current European Union (EU) project, which, in the expectations of its founding fathers, should have brought about convergence of the macroeconomic fundamentals of a large part of the European continent. However, it seems that, over the last 20 years, enthusiasm for the EU has declined and this could have serious consequences for the success of the EU project in the future. This paper claims that one of the most important factors that have caused the growing disaffection towards the EU has been the implementation of austerity measures in the eurozone. Using data from between 1999 and 2019 from the ‘original’ 12 countries that joined the eurozone, the results show that the change in the primary balance has had a strong and negative impact on net trust in the EU.
... Institutional trust is trust in state's institutions and organizations and includes trust towards international and intergovernmental organizations such as the UN or the EU (inter alia: Arpino & Obydenkova, 2020;Brosius et al., 2019;Harteveld et al., 2013;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015). As noted by Ervasti et al. (2019), trust in institutions is an essential component that contributes to the smooth functioning of a country and facilitates interactions between citizens and governmental institutions. ...
Exogenous events have the potential to affect citizens’ risk-perceptions, (in)security sentiments, electoral choices, policy preferences and institutional trust levels. It has been shown that migrant and refugee flows also affect citizens’ trust and policy preferences. The 2015 refugee crisis as it has come to be known, shook Europe’s cohesion and tested the existing immigration and asylum policies as well as acted as a further stimulus to populist/right wing Eurosceptic parties with an agenda of anti-immigrant restrictive policies. Expectedly, it has attracted considerable attention in the relevant literature. Building on existing studies that examine various aspects associated with the 2015 refugee crisis, the present paper examines its effect on institutional trust levels in Europe. Specifically, it focuses on trust towards the national government, the EU and the two state security services the police and the armed forces. To this effect, the study draws data from successive Eurobarometer surveys before and after the crisis. Employing segmented-type regression models as well as Oaxaca decomposition models it probes into the 2015 refugee crisis’ impact on the levels of institutional trust using over 400,000 responses to the relevant Eurobarometer questions. The results reported herein suggest the presence of “a rally around the flag effect”. Nonetheless, macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth and unemployment as well as differences in behavioural responses also explain a large part of the observed gap in trust before and after the 2015 refugee crisis.
... While there is an established literature examining European areas in economic decline and the mitigating cohesion and regeneration policies at the regional and local levels (Blom-Hansen, 2005;Charasz & Vogler, 2021;Dellmuth & Stoffel, 2012;Dellmuth, 2021) and literature on electoral outcomes and attitudes, including populism, Euroscepticism and the Brexit vote (Colantone and Stanig, 2018a; Daniele & Geys, 2014;Hobolt, 2016;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Hobolt & de Vries, 2016;Vasilopoulou, 2016;Ejrnaes & Jensen, 2019, we have limited knowledge about how precisely the subnational context influences political attitudes and behaviour in relation to institutions, electoral outcomes and political preferences (MacKinnon et al., 2021;McKay et al., 2021;Steiner & Harms, 2023). ...
... The emotions, the nativism, and the narrative embedded in the national identities represent a constraint for the power of the national and European political elites (Hoffmann, 1966). In addition, as part of the demand-supply scheme introduced by the liberal intergovernmentalism theory, public opinion influences the behavior of national politicians, contributing to creating a conflictual environment in intergovernmental negotiations (Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Schneider & Slantchev, 2018). Restricting the focus on the politicization of European identity, both classic and liberal intergovernmentalism theories have consistently rejected the need (and the existence) of a common European identity. ...
The Maastricht Treaty remains a crossroad in the history of European integration. Since its ratification, policy areas at the core of the national sovereignties have been included in the Brussels agenda, the power balance between the European institutions has started to mutate, and the European Union affairs have progressively become a controversial issue in the public debate. The goal of the book is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the politicization of European affairs. The final aim is to assess the institutional and socio-political impact of EU politicization, detecting how the European elites could exploit the saliency gained by European affairs to enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of the European institutions.
... I also control for ideology, age and, gender. These are predictors of support for integration (see for example Carrubba and Singh (2004); Hobolt and Wratil (2015); Hooghe and Marks (2005); and Schoen (2008)). I operationalize ideology through a scale where 0 represents far-left and 7 far-right positions. ...
Asymmetries in the formal obligations and rights afforded to sub-units are mainstays of many federations that have been extensively studied from many angles. However, we know relatively little about how these asymmetries shape views on federalism in the future. By leveraging data on differentiated integration in the European Union (EU), conceptually very similar to asymmetrical federalism, and survey data on attitudes toward the optimal future of it, I show that historical exposure to differentiated integration resulting from a bottom-up process of demands for sub-unit autonomy correlates to increased support for permanent differentiation in the future, especially among those critical of the EU. However, the opposite applies to differentiation imposed by the EU. A legacy of asymmetric federalism may thus breed opposition or support for unitary European federalism, depending on both the mode of past asymmetry that citizens have been exposed to and their views of the EU.
... As for parties, we expect different parties to have different interests, and thus place different emphasis on certain topics. Note also that these positions are not necessarily stable, but can change over time-for example when new parties enter the scene (Hobolt and Wratil 2015;Meyer and Wagner 2020). In our case, there were nine parties, five of which existed over the whole period and four formed during it (see Appendix A for an overview). ...
The current increase in the number of large, open sets of unstructured textual data has created both opportunities and challenges for social scientists. Here, we explore if and how we can use such data by looking at a dataset of over 144,000 documents used by parliamentary committees in Sweden. Of these, we aim to understand: (a) the topical content of these motions, (b) how these topics have changed over time, and (c) how these topics differ across political parties. To do so, we use a Structural Topic Model, which allows us to not only find the topics using the textual data itself, but also to include the documents’ metadata, such as authorship and date of publication. Doing so, we find 30 topics, which we combine into 9 broader themes. We find that these themes often rise and fall in popularity in line with historical events, and relate to the various political parties as we would expect. Throughout our analysis, we provide a step-by-step overview of how to use structural topic models in practice and also how to handle the type of dataset we use here.
... As mentioned above, the other frame the Hungarian government constructed regarding its stances on the Russia-Ukraine War was its depiction of itself as defending the Hungarian economic interests. In a relevant study, Hobolt and Wratil (2015) argue that national utility-based considerations, such as higher economic growth and prosperity of the member states derived from their membership in the EU, result in high levels of attachment to the EU. National elites play a crucial role in framing the formation of such interests concerning their country's institutions and political culture, which directly influence foreign policy preferences and implementation. ...
... In contrast, recent studies on the Eurozone have shown a shift towards a more utilitarian approach in public opinion, where the economic cost-benefit has become a more important factor in determining support fort the EU (Hobolt and Wratil 2015). Other scholars have highlighted the role of economic conditions in shaping citizens' attitudes towards EU institutions during the Great Recession (Gomez 2015). ...
The European Union (EU) is a unique international alliance project, successful in maintaining political stability through its institutional model and decision-making procedures. However, recent economic and border crises, and COVID-19, have shown the institution's fragility and undermined citizens' trust. The UK's 2016 vote to exit the EU demonstrated this. Indeed, Brexit was the first real example of the consequences of intensifying Eurosceptic sentiments. Since then, the fear of a likely 'contagion' in other countries has persistently spread. This paper investigates whether and how the Brexit issue impacts on EU citizens. In particular, it aims to understand how European citizens would react to a hypothetical referendum, along UK lines, on exiting the EU. Analysing the European Election Studies (EES) Voter Study 2019, this article tries to identify clusters of European citizens according to their attitudes to European policies, their trust in the EU, and their thoughts on an exit referendum.
... Research on public support for the euro and EMU neatly follows a timeline. It encompasses studies of public support in the years before the introduction of the common currency (Gärtner, 1997;Kaltenthaler and Anderson, 2001;Banducci et al., 2003), during the pre-crisis period from 1999 to 2008 (Banducci et al., 2009;Deroose et al., 2007), during the crisis from 2008 to 2013 (Hobolt and Leblond, 2014;Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Roth et al., 2016) and during the economic recovery from 2013 onwards (Roth et al., 2019). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects on health and economic activity worldwide, including in the Euro Area. The application of mandatory lockdowns contributed to a sharp fall in production and a rise in unemployment, inducing an expansionary fiscal and monetary response. Using a uniquely large macro database, this paper examines the effects of the pandemic and the ensuing economic policies on public support for the common currency, the euro, as measured by the Eurobarometer survey. It finds that public support for the euro increased in a majority of the 19 Euro Area member states and reached historically high levels in the midst of the pandemic. This finding suggests that the expansionary fiscal policies initiated at the EU level significantly contributed to this outcome, while the monetary measures taken by the European Central Bank did not have a similar effect.
... Even though there are some studies argue that the crises of the European states have caused the electoral gains of the Eurosceptic parties (Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Hobolt and de Vries, 2016;Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel, 2018;Braun and Tausendpfund, 2020), the changing of the European crises and the discourses of these parties make it difficult to support this claim. That is true that they improved their arguments by using the dissatisfaction of citizens with the crises, but it should not be denied that they always increased their votes in the EP elections. ...
This article provides an overview of Euroscepticism at the domestic and European levels. The study also aims to explain how the concept of Euroscepticism finds its response in the European parliamentary elections. It aims to make a two-fold contribution to the study of Euroscepticism. First, within the scope of party-based Euroscepticism, the relationship between loyalty to the national party and loyalty to party groups after being elected as a Member of the European Parliament will be examined. Second, these loyalties will be analyzed within the framework of Eurosceptic policy issues. Thus, the stance of Eurosceptic parliamentarians in the roll call votes will be investigated from the perspectives of the arguments of both their national parties and the European Party Groups (EPG). In the study, the voting tendencies of Eurosceptic parliamentarians on issues focusing on Euroscepticism were analyzed. Thus, the level of loyalty of Eurosceptic parliamentarians at the national or European level in the European Parliamentary elections will be examined and tried to be revealed.
... Even though there are some studies argue that the crises of the European states have caused the electoral gains of the Eurosceptic parties (Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Hobolt and de Vries, 2016;Pirro, Taggart and van Kessel, 2018;Braun and Tausendpfund, 2020), the changing of the European crises and the discourses of these parties make it difficult to support this claim. That is true that they improved their arguments by using the dissatisfaction of citizens with the crises, but it should not be denied that they always increased their votes in the EP elections. ...
This article provides an overview of Euroscepticism at the domestic
and European levels. The study also aims to explain how the concept
of Euroscepticism finds its response in the European parliamentary
elections. It aims to make a two-fold contribution to the study of
Euroscepticism. First, within the scope of party-based
Euroscepticism, the relationship between loyalty to the national party
and loyalty to party groups after being elected as a Member of the
European Parliament will be examined. Second, these loyalties will be
analyzed within the framework of Eurosceptic policy issues. Thus, the
stance of Eurosceptic parliamentarians in the roll call votes will be
investigated from the perspectives of the arguments of both their
national parties and the European Party Groups (EPG). In the study,
the voting tendencies of Eurosceptic parliamentarians on issues
focusing on Euroscepticism were analyzed. Thus, the level of loyalty
of Eurosceptic parliamentarians at the national or European level in
the European Parliamentary elections will be examined and tried to
be revealed.
... (1) utilitarian explanations contend that individuals support or oppose the EU based on rational cost-benefit analysis. Individuals benefiting from the freedoms established by the EU, especially the more mobile and highly educated, are more inclined to favor the EU (Anderson & Reichert, 1995;Brinegar & Jolly, 2005;Gabel & Palmer, 1995;Garry & Tilley, 2009, 2015Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Tucker et al., 2002). (2) identitarian accounts, in contrast, emphasize the role of identity -more precisely exclusive national identity-in fueling people's Euroscepticism (Carey, 2002;Hooghe & Marks, 2004McLaren, 2002). ...
What explains the variation in public support for European integration? While the existing literature has predominantly focused on economic, cultural, and political factors, the influence of geography has been largely overlooked. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by examining the impact of residing in EU border regions on voters' perceptions and attitudes toward the EU. Contrary to previous research, our study reveals a remarkable pattern, indicating that individuals living in border regions exhibit a higher propensity to vote for Eurosceptic parties and hold negative views on the EU. Through the utilization of both behavioral and attitudinal indicators in years ranging between 1999 and 2021 and employing statistical matching, our analysis robustly supports this finding. Moreover, we delve into the underlying mechanisms driving these negative attitudes in border regions, highlighting the significance of institutional factors. A mediation analysis reveals an interesting and previously unexplored theoretical twist: We find that residing in a border region is associated with lower trust in national political institutions, which translates into distrust in the EU. These findings suggest that it might be policymakers residing in the capital of the country rather than people on the other side of the border that make borderland inhabitants' attitudes distinctly negative.
... For example, during the eurozone crisis, integration at the supranational level was reinforced by establishing a Banking Union or European Stability Mechanism [Spijkerboer, 2016]. Hobolt and Wratil [2015] argue that the reason for that was the utilitarian considerations and relative benefits of preserving the Euro. However, the same empowerment of the EU institutions was not achieved during the refugee crisis of 2015, because of the governance failures in crisis management, which have aggravated politicization at the European level. ...
By taking the main aspirations of the minilateralism as a theoretical framework, this research aims to investigate the origins and prospects of the Slavkov Triangle, which was initiated as a new regional platform between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia in 2015. The main motivation of the grouping has been to enhance the cooperation of these States in various areas ranging from energy security, transport infrastructure, youth employment, cross-border relations, to the social dimension of European integration. The regional platform was regarded as problematic for and as an alternative to the Visegrad cooperation since it would imply the isolation of Hungary and Poland. As forming a response to these inquiries, this article aims to find out whether the Slavkov Triangle presents a new sustainable alternative central European format. In this respect, the focal point of the research is to answer whether Slavkov Triangle fits theoretically to the traditional ‘minilateral’ grouping definition within the European Union (EU). To reveal whether the members of the Triangle have adopted a concrete joint position in EU decision-making, this paper examines the voting patterns of the members of the Triangle by conducting a quantitative analysis of the voting record of the members of the Triangle in the Council of the EU. The empirical analysis will show the degree to which these countries vote together as a minilateral group. The time frame is designated as two-time spans. The first-time span focuses on between 2010 and 2015 while the second time span covers voting records from 2015 i.e., the beginning of the initiative till 2022 November i.e., the very recent date of the voting data publicly available. That would help grasp the comparative case basis of voting records of these member states before and after the Triangle. In this way, the current study empirically contributes to the burgeoning scholarly literature on regional groupings within the EU.
... This, on the one hand, does not allow for considering preferences as fixed or stable, and on the other, blurs the distinction between economic and identity-based preferences. Utilitarian concerns about the EU's institutional effectiveness and benefits of integration, including financial issues as well as economic solidarity, have increased amongst the general public, as Hobolt and Wratil (2015), Hobolt and Tilley (2014), and Kriesi and Grande (2015), have shown (see also Saurugger, 2016). ...
... Though these are not likely to interact with perceptions of Brexit, they could be underpinned by national differences. Given clear country divides through the EU's recent crises, it is reasonable to assume a link between country and crisis response (Hobolt and Wratil 2015;Taggart and Szczerbiak 2018), and there is evidence that populations at the country level have divergent views on EU expansion (Toshkov et al. 2014). All of the aforementioned model assumptions are collated with citations in Table A5 -online appendix. ...
Public opinion scholarship suggests that Europeans broadly interpret Brexit as a cautionary fable rather than an encouraging blueprint to follow. Yet, Brexit singularly demonstrates the possibility of European disintegration, and is but one of multiple recent crises that have brought the potential for member state departures into focus. Drawing on new survey data from 16 countries and using logistic regressions, this article charts Europeans’ perceptions of the likelihood future EU exits over the next decade. It finds evidence of asymmetric motivated reasoning: Euroscepticism and pro-Brexit views strongly associate with perceiving exits likely, while among Europhiles this association is only ameliorated, not reversed. This reveals two gaps with repercussions for understanding EU public opinion dynamics. First, between Eurosceptic policy elites’ softened policy stances on exit and their supporters’ steadfast sense that further departures remain likely. Second, between Europhiles’ scepticism of Brexit and a residual lack of confidence in EU cohesion.
... Research on public support for the euro and EMU neatly follows a timeline. It encompasses studies of public support in the years before the introduction of the common currency (Gärtner, 1997;Kalthenthaler and Anderson, 2001;Banducci et al., 2003), during the pre-crisis period from 1999 to 2008 (Banducci et al., 2009;Deroose et al., 2007), during the crisis from 2008 to 2013 (Hobolt and Leblond, 2014;Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Roth et al., 2016) and during the economic recovery from 2013 onwards (Roth et al., 2019). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects on health and economic activity worldwide, including in the Euro Area. The application of mandatory lockdowns contributed to a sharp fall
in production and a rise in unemployment, inducing an expansionary fiscal and monetary response. Using a uniquely large macro database, this paper examines the effects of the
pandemic and the ensuing economic policies on public support for the common currency, the euro, as measured by the Eurobarometersurvey. It findsthat public support for the euro reached historically high levels in a majority of the 19 Euro Area member states in the midst of the pandemic. This finding suggests that the expansionary fiscal policies initiated at the EU level significantly contributed to this outcome, while the monetary measures taken by the European Central Bank did not have a similar effect.
... More recent studies (Clark and Rohrschneider 2019;Carl 2017) have shown that the link between a sense of European identity and the evaluation of how the European Union is performing has become stronger today compared to the 1990s for ideologically moderate citizens as well. Interestingly though, and despite the effects of the Eurozone crisis particularly on southern European countries , research has also shown that support for the common European currency is positively correlated with feelings of European identity (Hobolt 2014, Hobolt andWratil 2015). These studies suggest that European identity includes an important socio-economic dimension without necessarily being instrumental in nature. ...
... The prolonged eurozone crisis substantially increased dissatisfaction with the EU (de Vries, 2018;Guiso et al., 2016;Hobolt & de Vries, 2016). Remarkably, however, support for the euro remained high (Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Roth et al., 2016;Walter et al., 2018). Even in the crisis-ridden south, a majority of citizens still supported the euro despite austerity and a prolonged recession. ...
Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the burden of adjustment. However, this literature neglects that preferences are strategically interdependent across countries and are affected by the type of information processed by individuals. Based on two linked survey experiments in Germany and Italy, conducted at a crucial moment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Germans respond to information that highlights the possibility of a break-up of the euro as a result of Italexit by increasing their support for debt mutualization. In contrast, Italians are more affected by information about the costs of remaining in the euro than of exiting it and drastically reduce their support for the euro if they are told that austerity and structural reforms are required to remain in it. Our results help to explain why German politicians relaxed their hostility to joint debt and agreed to the introduction of the EU’s pandemic recovery fund in 2020.
... In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which developed into a sovereign debt crisis and led to bailouts of heavily indebted member states such as Greece and Portugal, research on the determinants of European economic and financial governance emerged. The underlying idea was that the EU's response to the crisis raised the stakes of integration by making its distributive consequences more visible and therefore salient in the eyes of the public (Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Kuhn and Stoeckel, 2014). ...
To mitigate the enormous and asymmetric economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU has adopted an unprecedented €750 billion fiscal transfer programme, financed by joint member state liabilities. The highly contested decision pitted ‘frugal’ northern member states against ‘profligate’ southern member states. However, do citizens from northern countries view EU transfers as unfavourably as their governmental positions suggest? This article focuses on the crucial case of the Netherlands, whose government has become the assertive leader of the ‘frugal’ coalition. We test COVID-19 specific explanations based on a large-scale survey conducted at the height of the pandemic. Our analysis suggests that citizens who experience the non-material health and social effects of the pandemic more directly are more supportive of fiscal transfers than those to whom the pandemic is more abstract, whereas those who experience negative financial effects and those who believe that COVID-19 is a conspiracy are less supportive.
... Groups were therefore selected on sociological characteristics established in the literature as explaining variation in attitudes to European integration. National context (Hooghe and Marks, 2004;Kritzinger, 2003;Kuhn and Stoeckel, 2014), individuals' economic situations (Hobolt and Wratil, 2015;Foster and Frieden, 2021) and education (Hakhverdian et al., 2013) have been established as the most determinant factors of support for Europe. Therefore, groups vary according to location, employment status (unemployed, employed, retired) and levels of education (no university degree/undergraduate degree/ graduate degree/undergraduate students). ...
Changes in public opinion and civil society over the last decade have shown that citizens, particularly in old EU Member States, have developed more complex attitudes towards European integration. While the European project was previously generally described as a teleological depoliticized project, aiming at building peace and comforting growth, different competing visions of the European project are nowadays acknowledged and surface among the public on occasions, like referendums or treaty negotiations. While EU official narratives are documented by studies on the European institutions or the visions of leaders and parties, their empirical analysis at the citizens' level is still fragmented. Using focus group data in four countries (France, Portugal, Italy and Belgium) and three social groups (21 group interviews), we provide a comparative qualitative answer to how citizens envision European integration. Our results show that, first, official narratives do not fail to reach citizens, but they are also loosened, contested, and do not systematically produce a sense of common belonging. Second, they highlight the importance of socio‐economic contexts, as well as national and personal experience in the re‐appropriation of these narratives.
... Some researchers show that EU trust declined during the economic crisis (e.g., Armingeon & Ceka, 2014;Dotti Sani & Magistro, 2016;Drakos et al., 2019), especially in countries that received bailout packages. Hobolt and Wratil (2015) show on the other hand that support for the euro remained high during the crisis, also in the bailout countries. Kuhn and Stoeckel (2014) present similar findings for support for European economic governance. ...
Austerity policies tend to be generally unpopular and national governments have been found to lose support when they implement such policies. However, during the sovereign debt crisis, governments of ‘bailout countries’ were pressured by European Union (EU) institutions to implement austerity measures. Did austerity measures affect trust in the EU? We investigate the impact of fiscal austerity on EU trust and how perceptions of responsibility and political ideology moderate this relationship. We apply multilevel models to Eurobarometer surveys and data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to analyze changes in trust in the EU in 27 EU-countries (2013–2015). Our results indicate that austerity has a negative effect on trust in the EU, but only among those who hold the EU responsible for austerity policies. We find no significant moderating effect of ideology. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
... Marc Hooghe and Soetkin Verhaegen (2017) emphasize domestic-level differences in public opinion about social welfare and inequality as a cause of European stagnation in social policy integration, alongside individual material situations. In addition, several studies seek to explain country-level variation in support for European common currency ( Kaltenthaler and Anderson 2001 ;Banducci, Karp, and Loedel 2003 ;Hobolt and Wratil 2015 ). ...
Studies of public opinion toward regionalism tend to rely on questions regarding trade integration and specific regional organizations. This narrow focus overlooks dimensions of regionalism that sit at the heart of international relations research on regions today. Instead, we argue that research should explore public preferences with respect to regional cooperation in different issue-areas. We find that people's views of regional cooperation in North America diverge from their attitudes toward trade integration alone. Using data from Rethinking North America, an untapped public opinion survey conducted in Mexico, Canada, and the United States in 2013, we show that although country-level attitudes toward trade integration in North America were similar, preferences for regional cooperation varied by country depending on the issue at hand. We propose that attitudes are shaped by citizens’ perceptions of the asymmetric patterns of national-level benefits and vulnerabilities created by regional cooperation. Generally, respondents favor cooperation where their state stands to gain greater capacity benefits and oppose it where cooperation imposes greater costs on national autonomy. For policymakers, this multifaceted approach to regionalism sheds light on areas where public preferences for regional cooperation might converge. Future research that disaggregates various aspects of support for regional cooperation should help integrate the study of public opinion with “new” and comparative regional approaches that emphasize the aspects of regionalism beyond trade and formal institutions.
... Ever since the plans for a European Monetary Union and a single European currency were announced, social scientists have explored the determinants of public attitudes towards the new currency (see e.g., Banducci et al., 2003Banducci et al., , 2009Brettschneider et al., 2003;Deroose et al., 2007;Gärtner, 1997;Guiso et al., 2014;Hobolt & Leblond, 2009, 2014Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Kaltenthaler & Anderson, 2001). This study falls into this area of research by analysing the longest time series collected to date for public support for the single currency, covering the period 1990-2014 for a 12-country sample of the euro area (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spainthe EA-12). ...
This contribution analyses the evolution of public support for the single European currency, the euro, from 1990 to 2014 for a 12-country sample of the euro area (EA-12), focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, starting in 2008. We find that citizens’ support for the euro on average was marginally reduced during the first six years of the crisis, and that support has remained at high levels. While the pronounced increase in unemployment in the EA-12 throughout the crisis has led to a marked decline in trust in the European Central Bank (ECB), it is only weakly related to support for the euro.Key wordsSupport for the euroEuro area crisisUnemploymentEconomic and Monetary Union (EMU)Trust in the ECBPanel time series estimation
... This contribution explores the evolution and determinants of public support for the euro, using the largest up-to-date database on public opinion of the euro since its inception, available from March-April 1999 (EB 51) to November 2017 (EB88). It falls within the tradition of studies of the determinants of public support for the euro that have sprung up in recent decades (as a prominent example, see Banducci et al., 2009, Deroose et al., 2007, Hobolt & Leblond, 2014, and Hobolt & Wratil, 2015. This debate is about whether and under which circumstances the euro has been supported by citizens, in particular on the macroeconomic and microeconomic impact on public support. ...
This contribution explores the evolution and determinants of public support for the euro since its creation in 1999 until the end of 2017, thereby covering the pre-crisis experience of the euro, the crisis years and the recent recovery. Using uniquely large macro and micro databases and applying up-to-date econometric techniques, the authors revisit the growing literature on public support for the euro. First, we find that a majority of citizens support the euro in nearly all 19 euro area member states. Second, we offer fresh evidence that economic factors are important determinants of change in the level of support for the euro: Crisis reduces support while periods of recovery from unemployment bode well for public support. This result holds for both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Turning to a broad set of socioeconomic variables, we find clear differences in support due to education and perceptions of economic status.KeywordsPublic support for the euroEuro area crisisEuro area recoveryUnemploymentEconomic and Monetary Union
... 1. Studies of public support for a common currency in the years before the introduction of the euro, that is from 1990 until 1999, e.g. Kaltenthaler and Anderson (2001) and Banducci et al. (2003); 2. Analyses of public support for the euro in the pre-crisis period from 1999 to 2008, such as Banducci et al. (2009) and Deroose et al. (2007); 3. Contributions dealing with the crisis phase from 2008 to 2013, including Hobolt and Leblond (2014), Hobolt and Wratil (2015), and Roth et al. (2016); and 4. Recent papers focusing on the impact of the recovery from the crisis from 2013 onwards, for example Roth et al. (2019). ...
This contribution examines the evolution of public support for the euro since its introduction as a virtual currency in 1999, using a unique set of data not available for any other currency. We focus on the role of economic factors in determining the popularity of the euro. We find that a majority of citizens support the euro in each individual member country of the euro area (EA). The economic crisis in the EA provoked by the Great Recession led to a slight decline in public support, but the recent economic recovery has strengthened that support, which is now approaching historically high levels after two decades of existence. A similar, but less pronounced upturn in trust in the ECB can also be detected during the recovery. Our econometric work demonstrates that unemployment is a key driver of support behind the euro. Given these developments, we discuss whether the large and persistent majority support enjoyed by the euro equips the currency to weather populist challenges during its third decade.Key wordsEuroPublic supportTrustUnemploymentOptimum currency areaMonetary unionECBEU
... A common assumption in the extant research on IO legitimacy is that most citizens do not know much about the IOs they are to evaluate and often have limited information about what precisely the IO is or its work (Dellmuth, 2016). While this is plausible as long as IOs are only marginally politicized -that is, citizens perceiving IOs as not particularly important (Wlezien, 2005) -this may change if IOs become suddenly more contested, increasing public salience and -in consequence -citizens' awareness (see for similar arguments, De Vries et al., 2021;Hobolt & Wratil, 2015;Arceneaux, 2008). However, little to no research on this topic has considered the dimension of global crises which provide such a sudden boost in IO salience and increase elite communication about the IO. ...
What effects do international crises have on the public legitimacy of International Organizations (IOs)? Deviating from previous research, we argue that such crises make those international organizations more salient that are mandated to solve the respective crisis. This results in two main effects. First, the public legitimacy of those IOs becomes more dependent on citizens' crisis-induced worries, leading to a more positive view of those IOs. Second, as the higher salience also leads to higher levels of elite communication regarding IOs, elite blaming of the IOs during crises results in direct negative effects on public legitimacy beliefs on IOs. Finally, both the valence and content of the elite discourse additionally moderate the positive effects of crisis-induced worries. Implementing survey experiments on public legitimacy beliefs on the WHO during the COVID-19 crisis with about 4400 respondents in Austria, Germany and Turkey, we find preliminary evidence for the expectations derived from our salience argument. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for future research on IO legitimacy and IO legitimation.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-021-09452-y.
... In the dichotomy between debtor and creditor countries, EMU governance became linked to politically sensitive questions about redistribution and solidarity (Borger 2013;Chalmers 2012). Despite initial attempts at depoliticising the EU response to the crisis, the outcome was an increase in the salience of EMU decisionmaking in public debates at the domestic level (Hobolt and Wratil 2015;Kriesi and Grande 2016;Statham and Trenz 2015). ...
This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament's powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU) political system, focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament's possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012 to 2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. This title is Open Access.
This article analyses whether and how fairness considerations affect citizens’ support of European Union (EU) policies and integration. While past literature has revealed that perceptions of procedural and substantive fairness impact on public opinion at the level of the nation state, we know less about the fairness‐support nexus when it comes to international cooperation. We here make use of the case of differentiated integration (DI) to experimentally dissect normative and utility‐oriented considerations in the evaluation of EU policies. DI as an instrument to overcome heterogeneity‐induced gridlock has been linked to both autonomy and dominance, and it can generate winners and losers in the EU. Our experiments reveal that citizens largely support DI. However, they are opposed to forms of DI which impose negative externalities on a subgroup of EU member states. This holds irrespective of the affectedness of citizens’ own member states. We take these findings as a first experimental confirmation that citizens, indeed, care about the fairness of the EU and its policies.
Το άρθρο εξετάζει τον ρόλο της Ευρωπαϊκής Κεντρικής Τράπεζας (ΕΚΤ) στην πανδημία COVID-19 και διερευνά τις βασικές πτυχές της πολιτικής που εφάρμοσε στην κρίση. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, εστιάζει στα νομισματικά εργαλεία που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν από την ΕΚΤ και ιδίως στην υλοποίηση του έκτακτου προγράμματος αγοράς στοιχείων ενεργητικού λόγω πανδημίας (PEPP), καθώςκαι στην σύγκριση μεταξύ του PEPP και των άμεσων νομισματικών συναλλαγών (OMT). Το κείμενο διερευνά, επίσης, τους λόγους για τους οποίους οι OMT δεν χρησιμοποιήθηκαν στην περίπτωση της COVID-19 και εξετάζει κατά πόσον οι αλλαγές στην πολιτική της ΕΚΤ κατά την πανδημία, συνιστούν αλλαγή παραδείγματος (paradigm shift) στην ευρωπαϊκή νομισματική ολοκλήρωση.
We know relatively little about democratic responsiveness on fiscal policy, an area in which both bond markets and European Union (EU) rules constrain European governments' freedom of action. Has their adoption of fiscal responsibility laws (FRLs)—a politically appealing mechanism to restrain deficit spending—in recent decades been the result of their heeding public opinion or ignoring it? Our analysis finds a mixed picture: the strengthening of FRLs generally occurred in the presence of public support for debt reduction, but this public opinion effect is stronger in countries with more majoritarian electoral systems than those with more proportional systems. And although elections induce attentiveness to public attitudes, election proximity did not have a meaningful effect on governments' responsiveness to the public's fiscal preferences. Our explanation for this finding emphasizes the durability of support for debt reduction and political parties' greater sensitivity to median voter positions in more majoritarian electoral systems. These findings deepen our understanding of both austerity politics and democratic performance in Europe, affirming a degree of responsiveness that would be tested in the event of a future debt crisis.
Cet article examine la littérature existante sur la perception et les mobilisations sub-étatiques de la politique régionale européenne – la politique la plus importante de l’Union européenne en matière de developpement régional. Se focalisant sur les partis régionalistes, les administrations régionales et le public régional, cet article propose une lecture récapitulative et structurée des connaissances empiriques et théoriques existantes sur la façon dont la politique régionale affecte les attitudes de ces acteurs vis-à-vis de l'Union européenne. Pour combler les lacunes identifiées, sans omettre de considérer les défis de recherche actuels liés aux évolutions en cours d’une Union européenne en crise, plusieurs axes de recherche appuyés sur un nouveau cadre analytique sont proposés.
An extensive literature investigates individual support for European integration. However, support for differentiated integration has only recently become an important topic of study for public opinion scholars. Previous literature on this issue has not probed how differentiated integration is shaped by exclusively national identities and whether the effect varies by how differentiation has been framed. Using survey data from 2020 to 2021, I show that exclusively national citizens are most likely to support differentiated integration that allows for greater national autonomy and may oppose differentiation whose primary goal is to facilitate further integration. However, I find no clear link between elite framing of differentiated integration and popular support for it. This raises important questions both about what kind of differentiated integration will enjoy public legitimacy and how cues shape support for European Union (EU) differentiation.
This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament's powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU) political system, focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament's possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012 to 2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. This title is Open Access.
The aim of this study is to investigate whether the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Bishkek uses social media effectively in the context of digital public diplomacy activities. The posts and contents of the official Facebook account of the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Bishkek between January 1, 2019 and February 21, 2020 were collected and analyzed in the context of digital public diplomacy. Accordingly, the posts made on the official Facebook account of the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Bishkek were analyzed by content analysis method in categories such as daily, monthly, posts by subject (bilateral relations, economy, trade, culture, education, health, activities, etc.), likes, comments, number of shares, etc. As a result of the research, it was observed that the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Bishkek does not use Facebook effectively.
Internet technologies and digitalization have led to obvious changes in all areas of life. The main issues of international politics have started to transform around these concepts. Crisis management is one of them. In this study, it will be examined how crisis management actors keep up with new trends depending on the transformations in the crises and the expectations of the masses affected by the crisis due to international policy. In this context, the main claim of the study is that digital public diplomacy is included in the crisis management processes and this leads to differences in traditional methods. It has been tried to explain how the relationship between the motivations of the states and the expectations of the public, which are accepted as the basic characteristics of this process, is constructed. In this context, it is analyzed that social media has a transformative effect, and therefore, it is used in crisis management. In addition, the study will be completed with the determination that this transformation provides both advantages and disadvantages in crisis management.
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU). As the consequences of Brexit unfold, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a “softer” or “harder” direction. To determine the potential medium-term direction of the EU–UK relationship, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical package deals. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall mostly support a softer relationship in which the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the single market. However, Leave voters most often support a much harder trade-off of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports.
Public opinion regarding EU integration has become increasingly important in light of both increasing public scepticism to integration and the EU’s gradual shift towards integration of core state powers (CSPs). This article contributes to an emerging literature studying support for integration of core state powers by investigating whether such integration, given its greater potential for polarisation and activation of nationalist identities, is more likely to be opposed than regulatory integration. The results show that some CSP integration may meet greater support than regulatory integration. They also show that a larger number of exclusively national citizens support externally, rather than internally, oriented CSP integration. This suggests that what policy area a policy belongs to may be more important for predicting contestation of its integration than whether it is a core state or regulatory power.
Avrupa Birliği (AB) siyasi sahnesi, kimlik inşasının siyasi partiler için siyasi bir meşrutiyet kazanma aracı haline geldiği söylemsel bir alan sunmaktadır. Avrupa yanlısı partiler, Avrupa kimliğinin grup içi anlatılarını kullanırken Avrupa şüpheci partiler, siyasi gerçekliği yeniden şekillendirmek için gruplar arası farklılaşma anlatılarını kullanarak “biz” ve “onlar” arasındaki grup ayrımını sorunsallaştırır. Literatür çoğunlukla, söylemsel sosyo-politik dışlama yoluyla grup içi ulus kimliği inşa eden Avrupa şüpheci popülist söylem ve sağcı retoriğe odaklanır. Bu makale, farklı bir duruş benimseyerek 2019 Avrupa Parlamentosu seçim kampanyaları süresince Avrupa yanlısı siyasi partilerin başvurduğu söylemsel stratejileri söylem-tarihsel yaklaşım yöntemiyle ele almayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalkantılı Avrupa siyaset sahnesindeki Avrupa yanlısı söylemi araştırmak bu partilerin grup içi kimlik bölünmesine ilişkin duruşunu ortaya koymakta kritik bir öneme sahiptir.
Although citizens' attitudes towards the European Union (EU) have been examined extensively, there is a dearth of studies on what the EU actually means to them. Inspired by observations suggesting that the EU means different things to different people, this research aimed to uncover these views using an inductive approach: 13 group interviews with a heterogenous set of homogenous groups. 45 Dutch citizens, strategically selected from various social backgrounds, were interviewed in‐depth. Four discourses on the EU were identified: pragmatic, federalist, anti‐establishment and disengaged. We also demonstrated that these discourses go hand‐in‐hand with: 1) specific evaluations of the EU beyond the conventional ‘Europhilia‐Euroscepticism’ dimension; and 2) similar criticisms regarding themes emphasised by interviewees themselves – wasting of money and a lack of transparency and democracy – but for very different, sometimes even counterposing, reasons. The wider implications of our findings and possible venues for further research are also discussed.
A key component of democratic accountability is that citizens understand 'who is to blame'. Nonetheless, little is known about how citizens attribute responsibility in the European Union or how those perceptions of responsibility matter. This book presents the first comprehensive account of how citizens assign blame to the EU, how politicians and the media attempt to shift blame and finally, how it matters for electoral democracy. Based on rich and unique data sources, Blaming Europe? sheds light on all three aspects of responsibility in the EU. First, it shows that while institutional differences between countries shape citizen judgements of EU responsibility, those judgements are also highly determined by pre-existing attitudes towards the EU. Second, it demonstrates that neither politicians nor the media assign much blame to the EU. Third, it establishes that regardless of whether voters are capable of accurately assigning responsibility, they are not able to hold their EU representatives to account via the ballot box in European elections due to the lack of an identifiable 'European government' to reward or punish. As a consequence, when citizens hold the EU responsible for poor performance, but are unable to sanction an EU incumbent, they lose trust in the EU as a whole instead. In conclusion, it argues that this 'accountability deficit' has significant implications for the future of the European Union.
This is the introduction to a special collection of contributions that analyse the financial and economic crisis through various theoretical lenses. Accordingly, it does four things. First, it describes the EU's institutional response to the crisis in order to provide a reference point for the contributions. Second, it summarizes the contributions. Third, it compares them in order to develop a theoretical dialogue. Finally, it answers the fundamental question at the heart of the crisis and this special collection: why did Economic and Monetary Union become deeper and more integrated when many feared for its survival?
Multiplicative interaction models are common in the quantitative political science literature. This is so for good reason.
Institutional arguments frequently imply that the relationship between political inputs and outcomes varies depending on the
institutional context. Models of strategic interaction typically produce conditional hypotheses as well. Although conditional
hypotheses are ubiquitous in political science and multiplicative interaction models have been found to capture their intuition
quite well, a survey of the top three political science journals from 1998 to 2002 suggests that the execution of these models
is often flawed and inferential errors are common. We believe that considerable progress in our understanding of the political
world can occur if scholars follow the simple checklist of dos and don'ts for using multiplicative interaction models presented
in this article. Only 10% of the articles in our survey followed the checklist.
This article analyses whether and how public opinion towards the European Union (EU) in Greece has changed in the context of the current Eurozone crisis. It provides the first detailed treatment of how the crisis has affected citizens’ views in a traditionally pro-European member state. It examines whether public opinion has become more Eurosceptic and which societal groups have changed their views and in what direction. It uses data from Eurobarometer surveys conducted before and during the current crisis. Unsurprisingly, the findings show that negative sentiment towards the EU has increased across all social groups in recent years. However, we find a paradox of a decline in general support for the EU and an increase in support for the Euro. In a country seen as traditionally pro-European, Greek public opinion has fallen out of love with the EU, but it clearly does not want to leave the Eurozone or renounce membership altogether.
This article analyses preferences for European economic governance in the European sovereign debt crisis. We assess citizens' opinions on increased intergovernmental co-operation and supranational governance in the economic sphere. We argue that current efforts to tackle the euro crisis do not benefit the typical ‘winners of European integration’. Moreover, European economic governance constitutes an even greater perceived threat to national identity, especially in the member states that fare well economically. Hypotheses are tested using multilevel analysis of Eurobarometer survey wave EB 75.3 (2011).
This article summarizes and extends the main lines of theorizing on public opinion on European integration. We test theories of economic calculus and communal identity in a multi-level analysis of Eurobarometer data. Both economic calculus and communal identity are influential, but the latter is stronger than the former. We theorize how the political consequences of identity are contested and shaped - that is to say, politically cued - in national contexts. The more national elites are divided, the more citizens are cued to oppose European integration, and this effect is particularly pronounced among citizens who see themselves as exclusively national. A model that synthesizes economic, identity, and cue theory explains around one-quarter of variation at the individual level and the bulk of variation at the national and party levels.
How do citizens respond to the reallocation of authority across levels of government? This article investigates the relative importance of economic versus identity bases of citizen support for the most far-reaching example of authority migration—European integration.
In Exp I, 183 undergraduates read a persuasive message from a likable or unlikable communicator who presented 6 or 2 arguments on 1 of 2 topics. High involvement (HI) Ss anticipated discussing the message topic at a future experimental session, whereas low-involvement (LI) Ss anticipated discussing a different topic. For HI Ss, opinion change was significantly greater given 6 arguments but was unaffected by communicator likability. For LI Ss, opinion change was significantly greater given a likable communicator but was unaffected by the argument's manipulation. In Exp II with 80 similar Ss, HI Ss showed slightly greater opinion change when exposed to 5 arguments from an unlikable (vs 1 argument from a likable) communicator, whereas LI Ss exhibited significantly greater persuasion in response to 1 argument from a likable (vs 5 arguments from an unlikable) communicator. Findings support the idea that HI leads message recipients to employ a systematic information processing strategy in which message-based cognitions mediate persuasion, whereas LI leads recipients to use a heuristic processing strategy in which simple decision rules mediate persuasion. Support was also obtained for the hypothesis that content- vs source-mediated opinion change would result in greater persistence. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Although economic theories have been advanced to explain public support for the common currency, we know very little about how public support for the euro has been affected by its economic impact. We hypothesize that concern about rising prices following the introduction of the euro may have dam-pened enthusiasm for the project. We use Eurobarometer data from 2000 – 2007 to examine how rising prices and other economic factors have shaped support for the euro. We find that while inflation has had a negative impact on support for the euro, this is offset by the positive effect of diffuse support for the European Union. This support, along with the impact of a strong currency, has led most (approximately two-thirds) of Europeans to be generally positive about the euro.
Preferences over jurisdictional architecture are the product of three irreducible
logics: efficiency, distribution and identity. This article substantiates the
following claims: (a) European integration has become politicized in elections
and referendums; (b) as a result, the preferences of the general public and of
national political parties have become decisive for jurisdictional outcomes; (c)
identity is critical in shaping contestation on Europe.
We agree with Hooghe and Marks that the politicization of European integration, which started with the Maastricht Treaties but has gathered speed ever since, is here to stay. 1 It has changed both the content and the process of policy making. This is a significant insight which challenges the conventional wisdom about the European Union (EU). The contemporary debate about politicization is still framed in more or less normative terms. The discussion is largely about whether or not politicization is a good thing and whether or not one should promote it. 2 In sharp contrast, Hooghe and Marks argue forcefully and convincingly that the genie is out of the bottle and that politicization cannot be reversed. Their claim has significant implications for both the theory and the politics of European integration. With regard to theory, politicization poses a double challenge to the two major approaches to European integration. 3 On the one hand, both liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism conceive of European integration as a process driven by the quest for effectively solving socio-economic problems. 4 According to liberal intergovernmentalism, national governments pool their national sovereignty rights to achieve more efficient policy outcomes that satisfy their domestic (mostly economic) constituencies. 5 According to neofunctionalism, strategic coalitions between transnational and supranational actors push and pull national governments into transferring sovereignty rights to the European level in order maintain and enhance economic benefits achieved * Freie Universitat, Berlin (email: risse@zedat.fu-berlin.de and boerzel@zedat.fu-berlin.de).. 2 For opposing views see Andrew Moravcsik, Anne Faber and Wolfgang Wessels, 'Strategien und institutionelle Perspektiven nach der Verfassungskrise: ''Funktionalistische'' und ''institutionalistische'' Wege zu einem neuen europaïschen Verhandlungspaket', Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 47 (2006), 252–63; Andreas Follesdal and Simon Hix, 'Why There Is a ''Democratic Deficit'' in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik', Journal of Common Market Studies, 44 (2006), 533–62; Michael Zun, 'Zur Politisierung der Europaïschen Union', Vierteljahresschrift, 47 (2006), 242–51. 3 While the field of theories of European integration has multiplied and diversified, Liberal inter-governmentalism and neofunctionalism in their rationalist and constructivist varieties still dominate. 4 See Hooghe and Marks, 'A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration'.
Support for a common currency and the European Monetary Union signifies that European citizens are willing to transfer power from the nation-state to the European Union. This willingness to give up sovereignty has important implications for the further integration and development of the EU. We examine how support for the euro reflects a multi-level governance perspective of European integration. Are citizens less likely to support a common currency when their own national currency is strong? Our findings suggest that to some extent the effects of the multi-level governance perspective are conditioned by general attitudes toward the European integration and that other economic interests are also conditioned by factors such as occupational status.
This paper examines the politicization of European integration. We begin by asking how neofunctionalism and its precursor, functionalism, conceive the politics of regional integration. Then we turn to the evidence of the past two decades and ask how politicization has, in fact, shaped the level, scope, and character of European integration.
Integration in Europe has been a slow incremental process focusing largely on economic matters. Policy makers have tried to develop greater support for the European Union by such steps as creating pan-European political institutions. Yet significant opposition remains to policies such as the creation of a single currency. What explains continued support for the European Union as well as opposition among some to the loss of national control on some questions? Has the incremental process of integration and the development of institutions and symbols of a united Europe transformed public attitudes towards the European Union? In this book, Matthew Gabel probes the attitudes of the citizens of Europe toward the European Union. He argues that differences in attitudes toward integration are grounded in the different perceptions of how economic integration will affect individuals’ economic welfare and how perceptions of economic welfare effect political attitudes. Basing his argument on Easton’s idea that where affective support for institutions is low, citizens will base their support for institutions on their utilitarian appraisal of how well the institutions work for them, Gabel contends that in the European Union, citizens’ appraisal of the impact of the Union on their individual welfare is crucial because their affective support is quite low. This book will be of interest to scholars studying European integration as well as scholars interested in the impact of public opinion on economic policymaking.
Comprehensive comparative analysis of EU referendums from 1972 to 2008
Variety of sources used including survey data, content analysis of media coverage, experimental studies, and elite interviews not found elsewhere in the literature
How do voters decide in referendums on European integration? Direct democracy has become an increasingly common feature of European politics with important implications for policy-making in the European Union. Attempts to reform the EU treaties have been stalled, and even abandoned, due to no-votes in referendums. Europe in Question sheds new light on the pivotal issue of electoral behaviour in referendums and provides a major contribution to the study of democracy in the European Union and voting behaviour more generally.
Hobolt develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding voting behaviour in referendums and presents a comparative analysis of EU referendums from 1972 to 2008. To examine why people vote the way they do, the role of political elites and the impact of the campaign dynamics, this books relies on a variety of sources including survey data, content analysis of media coverage, survey experiments, and elite interviews. The book illustrates the importance of campaign dynamics and elite endorsements in shaping public opinion, electoral mobilization and vote choices. Referendums are often criticized for presenting citizens with choices that are too complex and thereby generating outcomes that have little or no connection with the ballot proposal. Importantly this book shows that voters are smarter than they are often given credit for. They may not be fully informed about European politics, but they do consider the issues at stake before they go to the ballot box and they make use of the information provided by parties and the campaign environment.
Readership: Scholars and students of political science, especially those interested in political behaviour, political parties, and European studies.
This study examines the relationship between educational attainment and euroscepticism from 1973 to 2010. Existing research has shown that, driven by utilitarian considerations, political cues and questions of collective identity, education and euroscepticism are negatively related. However, as the process of European unification has progressed, all three factors have become more salient, so we expect an increasing effect of education on euroscepticism over time. Using 81 waves of the Eurobarometer survey in 12 European Union (EU) member states, our results show that the impact of education on euroscepticism has indeed increased, particularly after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty.
This article posits that national identity is an important element in explaining attitudes towards the European Union. A model of support for European integration is developed that suggests that feelings of national identity are highly important in an individual's choice to support the EU. The impacts of three alternative conceptualizations of national identity are tested. These relate to national identity as an intensity of feelings towards one's country, the level of attachment to the nation and other territorial entities, and the fear of other identities and cultures encroaching on the dominant national culture. The results of ordered logit analyses confirm that stronger feelings of national identity lead to lower levels of support for the EU.
Scholars have developed a large body of knowledge on the domestic underpinnings and effects of European integration. Students of the European Union (EU) have devoted considerable attention to the sources of citizen and party support for EU membership. This attention would suggest the presence of a dynamic process in which parties compete for votes by adopting stances on the EU, and citizens vote on the European issue. Evidence from the three new member states—Austria, Finland, and Sweden—shows that citizen attitudes about the EU affected vote choice in national elections in all three states before and after accession. This finding suggests the existence of an electoral dynamic between voters and parties over European integration, with mass publics having an important role in constraining future efforts at integration. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Factors relating to identity and to economics have been shown to be important predictors of attitudes towards the European Union (EU). In this article, we show that the impact of identity is conditional on economic context. First, living in a member state that receives relatively high levels of EU funding acts as a ‘buffer’, diluting the impact of an exclusive national identity on Euroscepticism. Second, living in a relatively wealthy member state, with its associated attractiveness for economic migrants, increases the salience of economic xenophobia as a driver of sceptical attitudes. These results highlight the importance of seeing theories of attitude formation (such as economic and identity theories) not as competitors but rather as complementary, with the predictive strength of one theoretical approach (identity) being a function of system-level variation in factors relating to the other theoretical approach (macro-level economic conditions).
Do attitudes towards European integration influence vote choice in national elections — a phenomenon I refer to as European Union (EU) issue voting? Evidence concerning EU issue voting is thus far mixed. Some scholars conclude that an electoral connection exists between European and national politics, whereas others claim that European integration has had very few observable effects on national elections. A resolution emerges when the conditional nature of EU issue voting is acknowledged. Specifically, EU issue voting is more likely to occur in elections in which both the extent of partisan conflict over European integration and the degree of EU issue salience among voters are high. Using a conditional logit model, I illustrate the conditional nature of EU issue voting by comparing UK, Danish, Dutch and German elections between 1992 and 2002.
and Steve Voss for methodological advice. 2 A common approach to the study of international political economy and, in particular, the study of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the European Union (EU) is to use the distributional consequences of international economic policies to account for the pattern of political conflict over these policies. Baldwin (1989) refers to this as the "economic self-interest approach"--the basic tenet being that individuals favor or oppose particular international economic policies depending on whether the policy increases or decreases the person's real income. Eichengreen (1998) describes the "interest group " models of international political economy along the same lines. In this paper, I will address several issues relevant to the application of these models to the politics of EMU. In particular, I will examine empirically whether these IPE models can account for variation in mass support for EMU. The economic self-interest models have two important theoretical components: a theory of the distributional consequences of international economic policies and a political theory of how the distributional consequences relate to policy-making via
Much of the research on the European Community focuses on elites and institutions and as a result downplays the importance of the mass public in determining the direction of European integration. A common justification for this viewpoint is that members of the public provide a stable reservoir of strong support for European integration. Recent political events, however, raise doubts about this depiction of a ‘passive public’. Consequently, there is a need for a fuller understanding of European attitudes. We specify a number of hypotheses dealing with the effects of international trade interests, security concerns, and demographic characteristics on cross-national and cross-sectional variations in public support for European integration. Using Eurobarometer surveys and OECD data on EC trade from 1973–1989, we investigate these hypotheses in a pooled cross-sectional model. Our statistical results reveal that an individual's level of support is positively related to her nation's security and trade interests in EC membership and her personal potential to benefit from liberalized markets for goods, labour, and money.
This paper analyses the evolution of public support for the euro from 1990 to 2011, using a popularity function approach, focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis. Exploring a huge database of close to half a million observations covering the 12 original euro area member countries, we find that the ongoing crisis has only marginally reduced citizens’ support for the euro – at least so far. This result is in stark contrast to the sharp fall in public trust in the European Central Bank. We conclude that the crisis has hardly dented popular support for the euro while the central bank supplying the single currency has lost sharply in public trust. Thus, the euro appears to have established a credibility of its own – separate from the institutional framework behind the euro.
Theories of issue evolution and issue manipulation suggest that ‘political losers’ in the party system can advance their position by introducing a new issue dimension. According to these theories, this strategy of issue entrepreneurship, i.e. the attempt to restructure political competition by mobilizing a previously non-salient issue dimension, allows political losers to attract new voters and reap electoral gains. In this study, we examine the extent to which these expectations hold by exploring issue entrepreneurial strategies by political parties when applied to the issue of European integration. Using multilevel modelling to analyse European Election Study data, we firstly show that voters are more likely to cast their ballot for parties which are losers on the extant dimension based on concerns related to European integration. Secondly, a time-series cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that parties which employ an issue entrepreneurial strategy are more successful electorally. In other words, voters are responsive to the issue entrepreneurial strategies of parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition and electoral behaviour in multiparty systems.
Using public opinion surveys conducted in the member states of the European Union, this paper seeks to provide a systematic understanding of public support for the EMU project and European–level monetary policy authority. We develop models of support for EU monetary policy that incorporate a utilitarian component and elements of multilevel governance that is emerging within the EU. These models are tested at the aggregate level of survey respondents. The results show that variations in attitudes to the common currency are driven by collectively–based considerations of the costs and benefits associated with the common currency project as well as the interaction of European–level politics and the domestic politics of the member states.
Support for a common currency and the European Monetary Union signifies that European citizens are willing to transfer power from the nation-state to the European Union (EU). Given the symbolic importance of national currencies, this willingness to give up sovereignty over currency has important implications for the further integration and development of the European Union. Drawing on a multi-level governance perspective and past research into public support for European integration, we examine how economic factors such as the value of the national currency and individual factors such as diffuse support for the EU and education condition support for the euro. We hypothesize that citizens will be less likely to support a common currency when they lack diffuse support for the EU, when their own national currency is strong or when their country's domestic agenda is squeezed by austerity measures. Using pooled Euro Barometer data from 1992 to 2000, we find support for these hypotheses indicating that citizens take into account domestic economic performance when evaluating EU institutions, but we also find that individual attitudes toward the EU play a role in support for the euro.
In an earlier article published in this journal Ernst Haas and this author suggested a set of strategic “background conditions,” “conditions at the time of initiation,” and “process conditions” intended (hypothetically) to assess the political consequences of an initial agreement to lower or remove mutual barriers to the movement of productive factors.
Integration in Europe has been a slow incremental process focusing largely on economic matters. Policy makers have tried to develop greater support for the European Union by such steps as creating pan-European political institutions. Yet significant opposition remains to policies such as the creation of a single currency. What explains continued support for the European Union as well as opposition among some to the loss of national control on some questions? Has the incremental process of integration and the development of institutions and symbols of a united Europe transformed public attitudes towards the European Union? In this book, Matthew Gabel probes the attitudes of the citizens of Europe toward the European Union. He argues that differences in attitudes toward integration are grounded in the different perceptions of how economic integration will affect individuals' economic welfare and how perceptions of economic welfare effect political attitudes. Basing his argument on Easton's idea that where affective support for institutions is low, citizens will base their support for institutions on their utilitarian appraisal of how well the institutions work for them, Gabel contends that in the European Union, citizens' appraisal of the impact of the Union on their individual welfare is crucial because their affective support is quite low. This book will be of interest to scholars studying European integration as well as scholars interested in the impact of public opinion on economic policymaking. Matthew Gabel is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.
The No to the euro in referendums in Denmark and Sweden has been characterized as
a public rebellion against an elite project and a sign of a general Euroscepticism
among the citizens. However, it is often ignored that support for the euro fluctuates
significantly over time in these countries, and hence analysing referendum outcomes
simply in terms on static factors will provide only part of the explanation. In contrast
to existing studies, this paper provides an analysis of the short-term dynamics in
public support for the euro in the period leading up to the referendums. We thus
address the question of why public attitudes towards monetary integration vary over
time. We argue that at least part of the answer can be found in exchange rate
fluctuations. Existing studies have neglected the fact that the national currency is not
only a purely monetary indicator, but also carries symbolic weight. The public is
therefore less likely to surrender their national currency when it is strong than when it
is weak. They are also less willing to accept a replacement currency (e.g. the euro)
when it is seen as weak vis-à-vis other world currencies. Our analysis of the two euro
campaigns lends credence to our proposition that exchange rates matter. Moreover,
we test impact of exchange rate changes on support of the euro using time series
analysis. We find that the rapid fall in the value of the euro vis-à-vis the dollar
contributed to the Danish rejection of the euro, whereas the strength of the Swedish
currency made the Swedes more reluctant to relinquish their crown.
Referendum votes on adoption of the euro in Denmark (2000) and Sweden (2003) provide unprecedented natural experiments through which to study the political economy of money. Using exit polling data and multinomial logit statistical models that allow us to separate preferences for the euro from preferences for the European Union (EU), we test economic calculation and political community as determinants of individual-level preferences over adoption of the euro. We find that calculation operates most clearly where, as in Sweden, the choice of a fixed versus a floating exchange rate regime is at stake, while community exerts strong effects across the two cases.We would like to thank Krister Andersson, Jerry Cohen, Robert Fishman, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jeff Frieden, Eric Helleiner, Jacques Hymans, Lars Jonung, Kate McNamara, Jennifer Wolak, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, and Helga Sverrisdottir for outstanding research assistance. We are grateful to Jens Wagner of the Danish Data Archive and Torbj rn Berglund of the Swedish Social Science Dataservice for providing the data used in this note. Neither these individuals nor their respective agencies are responsible for the interpretations contained herein.
Analysis of decision making under risk has been dominated by expected utility theory, which generally accounts for people's actions. Presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and argues that common forms of utility theory are not adequate, and proposes an alternative theory of choice under risk called prospect theory. In expected utility theory, utilities of outcomes are weighted by their probabilities. Considers results of responses to various hypothetical decision situations under risk and shows results that violate the tenets of expected utility theory. People overweight outcomes considered certain, relative to outcomes that are merely probable, a situation called the "certainty effect." This effect contributes to risk aversion in choices involving sure gains, and to risk seeking in choices involving sure losses. In choices where gains are replaced by losses, the pattern is called the "reflection effect." People discard components shared by all prospects under consideration, a tendency called the "isolation effect." Also shows that in choice situations, preferences may be altered by different representations of probabilities. Develops an alternative theory of individual decision making under risk, called prospect theory, developed for simple prospects with monetary outcomes and stated probabilities, in which value is given to gains and losses (i.e., changes in wealth or welfare) rather than to final assets, and probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The theory has two phases. The editing phase organizes and reformulates the options to simplify later evaluation and choice. The edited prospects are evaluated and the highest value prospect chosen. Discusses and models this theory, and offers directions for extending prospect theory are offered. (TNM)
There has been much public debate about whether a referendum on British membership of the European single currency could be won despite opinion polls showing a widening gap between those opposed to membership and those in favour. However, academic research provides little insight into why British attitudes towards the Euro vary at an individual level, and hence what factors might be crucial in a referendum campaign. Existing studies suggest, among other things, that British political parties can shape voters’ preferences on important public policy issues. We explore this and other explanations using data from recent Eurobarometer and British Elections Study surveys. We find that general evaluations of the EU, British national identity and concerns over the democratic character of EU governance are stronger predictors of support for the single currency than which party a person supports. However, we also find that the influence of these factors varies with a citizen's level of information about the Euro, which suggests that the supply and use of information might be crucial in a referendum campaign.
Democratic Politics in a European Union under StressSleeping giant: fact or fairytale? How European integration affects national elections
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Economic insecurity and public support for the euro before and during the financial crisis
- S B Hobolt
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European integration and the crisis: practice and theoryVoting for change: calculation, community, and euro referendums
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Political debate in a polarizing Union
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