Exploring eurovisions: awareness and knowledge of the European Union in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The European Union embodies a new tier of governance at the European level and one that increasingly impacts upon many issues of contemporary public policy. Yet are people aware, can they identify with the EU and its activities? Do they know why and which policy areas are regulated at the European level, how decisions are made in Brussels, or do they simply feel alienated from the EU? The links between the individual citizen and the EU integration process actually matter more now than at any time in the EU's short history as public opinion has emerged, as seen through a number of referendums, as a potential constraint to the project of ‘ever closer union’. The issue of public attitudes towards the EU is an increasingly salient concern for member state governments given the pending referenda in at least nine EU member states on the ‘Constitution for Europe’. Yet, the public seem disengaged and the lowest ever turnout (45 per cent) at the European elections in 2004 illustrates a further example of this malaise. This article examines specifically public knowledge of and attitudes towards European integration in Northern Ireland. It reveals a considerable ‘information deficit’ on all things EU related which manifests itself in high levels of alienation, ignorance and uninterest after some 30 years of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to pay particular thanks to the ESRC without whose financial support, award No. RES 000 22 0017, Attitudes towards and Knowledge of the European Union in Northern Ireland, this project could not have been realised. The authors also express particular thanks to Paula Devine, Lizanne Dowds, Gillian Robinson and Dirk Schubotz for their invaluable assistance in preparing the questionnaires, conducting the interviews and correlating the data.

Notes

The Eurobarometer surveys are based on samples of 1,000 approximately in each of the member states. Although extremely welcome these reports have focused on the member states with only the occasional incursion into the issue of public opinion in the regions. The small size (some 300) of the Northern Ireland element precludes meaningful analysis and led the authors to conduct a much wider survey that interviewed some 1,800 people in the autumn of 2002 to investigate specifically knowledge and attitudes towards the EU in Northern Ireland. These, in turn, can be compared and contrasted where appropriately against the indicators for the UK as a whole.

See Committee of the Centre Enquiry on European Union, Northern Ireland Assembly, April 2002.

Research design and data collection: two sets of data were used for this study, the Northern Ireland Life and Times data which and four recent Eurobarometer surveys. The Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) Survey uses a simple random sample of addresses selected from the Postcode Address File (PAF), stratified by the three broad geographic areas of Belfast/East/West. On first contact, interviewers select one adult for interview at each address using a Kish grid method. Face to face interviews were carried out using computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), and there is a further self‐completion questionnaire which respondents are asked to fill in. The total achieved sample was 1,800 interviews, though for some modules (not this one) a sample of 900 is deemed sufficient and the sample is split with each half being asked a different module. Where analysis of small groups or rare groups is not central to the purpose behind gathering the data the 900 sample is more cost‐effective. In this case much of the analysis focused on age group, education and the political affiliation of respondents – hence we required the larger sample.

Two studies, namely the 1991 British Social Attitudes survey and the 1993 Northern Ireland Social Attitudes survey, illustrate broad similarities in trends in attitudes to the EU in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Full details of the research questionnaire used, the complete results and the statistical breakdowns are available on the Life and Times website run by ARK (Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive), which makes political and social information on Northern Ireland widely accessible (⟨ http://www.ark.ac.uk ⟩). Tables of results for every question broken down by age, sex and religion ⟨ http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/results/europe.html ⟩. The questionnaire is available in PDF format at ⟨ http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2002/quest02.html ⟩.

This question was deliberately false. In retrospect, were we to ask such a question again, the authors would opt for the correct time period and see how many agreed with it as this may have been a fairer question. In other words, the statement would read ‘elections to the European parliament take place every five years’.

LEE McGOWAN is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Studies, Queen's University, Belfast. His research interests focus on the European Union, specifically with regard to competition policy and Northern Ireland in the EU as well as political extremism in Germany. He has published widely in many journals, including the Journal of Common Market Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, Public Administration and Regional and Federal Studies, and written books on EU competition policy and more recently the radical right in Germany (Longman, 2003).

JULIA S. O'CONNOR is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Ulster. Her main area of research is welfare states in comparative perspective. Current research projects include a study of convergence in social policy in the EU. Her work has been published in journals such as British Journal of Sociology, the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, the Canadian Review of Higher Education, Current Sociology, Policy and Politics and Research in Political Sociology. She is co‐author of States, Markets, Families Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).