The Perception of the European Union by Political and Economic Elites in Spain

Abstract

Elite perceptions about Europe are very important in understanding the current trajectory of the European integration process, as well as the future perspectives for the continent. In this article, we present the main descriptive results of an empirical analysis looking at the attitudes of Spanish political and economic elites along the three dimensions of the IntUne project: representation, identity, and scope of governance. We examine the set of explanatory factors that may account for such attitudes. These factors are also tested through multivariate analyses. The 2007 IntUne project survey is used as the main database.

Keywords:

• European integration
• Spanish Elites
• Identity
• Representation
• Scope of Governance, IntUne Survey

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a grant from the IntUne project (Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe) financed by the Sixth Framework Programme of the EU, Priority 7, Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society (CIT3-CT-2005-513421). We are very grateful to Francisco Javier Alarcón González for processing the data and for his assistance during field research.

Notes

[1] In the case of Spain, a total of 149 interviews were carried out with members of the political and economic elite. Political elite interviewees (n = 94) were members of the Congreso de los Diputados, Spain's lower house of parliament, selected proportionally according to party, gender, and type of political experience quotas (newcomers, frontbenchers and the rest). Concerning economic elites, the sample was constituted by 55 interviews among presidents, vice-presidents and general managers of major corporations, members of the board of the CEOE (Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales, the Spanish Peak Business Association) and presidents of the most significant chambers of commerce.

[2] Method of extraction: principal axis factoring; oblimin rotation. Kayser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) = 0.571, p = 0.000; Percentage of variance explained = 58.2. Separate factor analyses for political and economic elite subsamples were not possible due to the small size of N.

[3] This is confirmed by an exploratory factor analysis. Just one dimension appears, explaining 60.5 per cent of variance (principal axis factoring extraction, oblimin rotation; KMO = 0.685, p = 0.000).

[4] It would have been more informative to build separate models for each type of elite. However, this was not feasible due to the small N of the subsamples (particularly for economic elites).

[5] Actually, Pearson's correlation coefficient between the degree of attachment to Spain and the degree of attachment to Europe is 0.476.

[6] Dependent variables for ‘ascribed’ and ‘voluntaristic’ dimensions of identity are operationalised as the average of the variables that showed higher loadings in the corresponding factors (‘having European parents’ and ‘being born in Europe’ for the ‘ascribed’ dimension; and ‘feeling European’ and ‘sharing cultural values’ for the voluntaristic one).

[7] Unfortunately, the IntUne elite survey does not include any question that could be used to test the interpersonal trust hypothesis.

[8] Remember that these variables collapsed into a single dimension, according to exploratory factor analysis.