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Public opinion and the crisis: The dynamics of support for the euro
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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.
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... 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.
... 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). ...
... 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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.