Members apart: a mass-elite comparison of mutual perceptions and support for the European Union in Germany and Italy

ABSTRACT

The multiple crises faced by the European Union – economic stagnation, geopolitical insecurity, refugee and migration flows – and some side-effects of the integration process (e.g. fiscal austerity, transnational redistribution, borders protection) seem not only to have exacerbated the public-elite divide in almost all member states, but also re-vitalised the North-South rift. If public support and trust in the capacity of EU institutions to resolve problems have seriously declined over the last few years, mutual prejudices between Northern and Southern countries have been reinforced by recent developments within the EU. The article uses the cases of Germany and Italy as illustrative examples of this ‘within’ and ‘cross-country’ malaise. By using a longitudinal and cross-sectional approach, it systematically explores the changing orientations of public opinion and political leaders with regard to the European integration project, supranational cohesion, and, last but not least, the perceived image of the other member state in the last four decades. The article moves forward the theoretical discussion on the state of intra-European relations by offering a unique source of data to study how attitudes towards the EU have been shaped by domestic and external conditions and how, in turn, these attitudes have impacted on the reciprocal views of Italians and Germans.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• mutual perceptions
• elite
• mass public
• Germany
• Italy

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Simona Piattoni, Luca Verzichelli, Claudius Wahemann, the participants in the workshop “Populism, Prejudices and Perspectives in Italy and Germany” held at the University of Frankfurt in November 2016 and two anonymous reviewers for their precious comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, Italy’s public debt has steadily increased, reaching the non-sustainable level of 133% of GDP in 2016, i.e., the second highest value in the EU after Greece (179%) (source: Eurostat 2017). Besides standing as the world’s second largest creditor nation (China Loses World 2016), Germany is the main contributor to the Greek bailout and has the highest net credit with the European Central Bank (€814 billion) (Italy’s debt, Germany’s credit 2017).

2. See Dinger (2013) for an incisive and accurate analysis of those political events that can be considered as illustrative examples of the process of ‘gradual estrangement’ between Germany and Italy.

3. Data and documentation available at www.resceu.eu.

4. For question wording and information on different sources, see the Online Appendix.

5. For a detailed explanation of the dyad ratios algorithm see Stimson (1999: 133–137; 2012), and Bellucci and Pellegata (2017).

6. For question wording and information on different sources, see the Online Appendix.

7. As an alternative control variable, we have also tested the effect of partisan cues, measured through the vote choices made by Italian citizens in the last national elections. Regression analyses have not shown any significant association between partisan cues and respondents’ feelings towards Germany. For the sake of parsimony and ease of representation of the results, we have decided to exclude this control from main regression models.

8. The three variables used to operationalise support for the EU are alternatively included in our regression models. Only in 2012 are two of them – ‘unfavourable opinion of the EU’ and ‘perception of Eurozone membership as a bad thing for the country’ – simultaneously available and used in the regression analysis. Multicollinearity diagnostics were examined to exclude high correlation between these two variables (Pearson’s r = 0.224***).

Additional information

Funding

Francesco Olmastroni received financial support from the project ‘The Italian Foreign Policy in front of the new challenges of the international system: actors, institutions and policies’ [Grant no. 201032T8ZE] funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). Alessandro Pellegata acknowledges the financial support of the project ‘Reconciling Economic and Social Europe: The Role of Values, Ideas and Politics (REScEU)’, funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council [Grant no. 340534, P.I: Maurizio Ferrera].

Notes on contributors

Francesco Olmastroni

Francesco Olmastroni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, and field and data manager for the Laboratory for Political and Social Analysis (LAPS), the Survey Research Centre of the University of Siena. His recent publications include: ‘The alleged consensus: Italian elites and publics on foreign policy’, Italian Political Science Review 47 (2): 149-82, 2017; ‘Foreign Posture in a Comparative Perspective: A Quantitative and Qualitative Appraisal of Italian Foreign and Defence Policy during the Renzi Government’ (with A. Dessì), Contemporary Italian Politics 9 (2): 201-18, 2017; Framing War: Public Opinion and Decision-Making in Comparative Perspective, New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016 (paperback edition).

Alessandro Pellegata

Alessandro Pellegata is a research fellow at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan (Italy) in which he is currently involved in the REScEU research project (www.resceu.eu). His main research interests are in the fields of comparative institutional analysis and comparative public opinion. He has published articles in several academic journals, such as Contemporary Italian Politics, Democratization, European Political Science Review, International Journal of Public Opinion research, International Political Science Review, Italian Political Science Review and Social Indicators Research.