![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
The study of citizens’ attitudes to the EU is in danger of splintering, with context‐specific transition‐based models being applied in the former communist countries, models that — at face value — have no applicability in the Western states. Using data from the 2004 European Election Study, we test a model of attitude generation that is applicable to the universe of member states but which allows for the strength of attitude determinants to vary across the Eastern and Western contexts. Based on the literature, we suspect that the economic and democratic aspects of the ‘transition’ in eastern Europe will be particularly important in shaping views on the EU in that context. Specifically, we test the following hypotheses: (1) positive retrospective economic evaluations are a stronger determinant of support for integration in the East than in the West, and (2) a positive evaluation of EU democracy relative to one’s own country’s democracy is a stronger determinant of support for integration in the East than in the West. We find strong support for the first hypothesis, but no support for the second.
Notes
1. See also the discussion in Moravcsik and Vachudova (Citation2003) about membership ‘locking in’ the former communist states into the EU and global economic order.
2. We should note that not all analysts rely on citizens’ economic perceptions. For example, Caplanova, Marta, and Hudson (Citation2004) use socio‐demographic proxies such as education and income, positing that higher earners and the higher educated will have benefited more from free market reforms and will thus tend to be supportive of EU integration. None the less the standard operationalization is through economic perceptions.
3. See, for example, Gabel (Citation1998), Gabel and Whitten (Citation1997) Anderson and Reichart (Citation1996).
4. It should be emphasized that our analysis does not exhaust the range of possible East–West differences in attitude formation. Most notably, we have not directly addressed — due to data limitations — the argument of Rohrschneider and Whitefield (Citation2006) that the impact of political values and ideology on attitudes to EU integration may vary in strength across the eastern and western contexts. We plan to address this explicitly in future work.
5. Full details of the surveys are available at www.europeanelectionstudies.net.
6. Some authors have used prospective rather than retrospective economic perceptions (Hooghe and Marks Citation2004, Citation2005). It is retrospective evaluations that are more theoretically relevant here, however.
7. Cyprus and Malta also joined the EU in 2004 together with the eight post‐communist states. Malta is not in our dataset unfortunately, but it is worth noting that the inclusion or exclusion of Cyprus as part of the ‘Western’ group of countries makes no substantive difference to our results.
8. The class measure is based on self‐reported perceived social class, rather than occupational status. The full question asks people to place themselves into one of the following categories: working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, upper class, or other. We have combined the fourth and fifth categories to give a five‐category variable, with working class as the reference category.
9. This measures years of full‐time education after age fourteen. This means respondents that stated they finished education up to fourteen are coded as 0. All education‐finishing ages after age twenty‐five are combined, meaning the variable runs from 0 to 11.
10. These transfer figures are from the European Commission (Citation2006) and include a simple adjustment for administrative expenditure in Belgium and Luxembourg. For these two countries we include the average of payments with and without administrative expenditure, without this adjustment Luxembourg appears to be a net contributor despite being the highest recipient once administrative expenditure is included. These adjustments do not affect our main substantive conclusions, but we think it is the most appropriate way of dealing with administrative expenditure.