Embracing Unity: A Journey Through Public Sentiment on European Integration
By Evan Flynn
Abstract
This review explores the predictors of public support for European integration. The literature highlights several predictors, including economic factors, issues of identity, elite cue-taking, and disenfranchisement. Overall, this review concludes that, according to the literature, economic factors hold the most predictive power.
What are the predictors of public support for European integration? Over the years, scholars have proposed several theories that help explain public support for European integration. These theories consider public support for European integration from the standpoint of economic factors, national identity, elite cue-taking, and issues of political representation. In sum, although all these factors can help explain public support for European integration, the cost-benefit/utilitarian theory has the strongest predicting power (Gabel, 1998).
Citizens will often consider the economic advantages or disadvantages of European integration when deciding whether to favor or oppose a closer union (Anderson & Reichert, 1995; Gabel, 1998; Gabel & Whitten, 1997). In many instances, citizens will support integration because they see economic benefit in a closer union. But what kinds of people would support integration because of economic incentives? Some citizens, for example, would support integration because they may indirectly benefit from it. For example, “individuals who would benefit indirectly from integration, such as the highly educated and wealthy, are generally more supportive of a country’s membership in the EU” (Anderson & Reichert, 1995, p. 245). Furthermore, it has been shown that individuals who live in countries that trade a lot with other EU states are more supportive of integration compared with citizens who live in countries that do not trade as much (Anderson & Reichert, 1995, p. 245).
On the other hand, citizens may support European integration because they are concerned with the economic situation in their home country or region. For instance, it has been shown that both inflation and regional unemployment are significant predictors of support for integration (Gabel & Whitten, 1997, p. 90). This finding suggests that citizens who lose confidence in their national or regional governments because of economic grievances are more likely to place their faith in a united European government instead. Thus, it would seem that both expected economic advantages arising from integration and current regional economic disadvantages can be antecedents of support for European integration.
A citizen’s opinion regarding their support for integration is also influenced by issues of national identity. Specifically, it is a negative predictor of support for European integration (Carey, 2002; McLaren, 2002). In other words, as feelings of national pride increase, support for further integration into the European Union decreases. Specifically, a citizen is “more than 30 percentage points less likely to support European integration if he/she has a strong feeling of national identity” (Carey, 2002, p. 397). This highlights how powerful of a predictor this is, showing how nationalism will get in the way of those who wish for a more unified Europe. In addition, it has been shown that as one’s animosity toward other cultures increases, their support for European integration decreases (McLaren, 2002). Similarly, others have shown that as one’s anti-immigration sentiment increases, one will be less likely to support integration (De Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2005). These ideas make sense, of course, because individuals who harbor feelings of cultural animosity are unwilling to integrate their nation with those of other cultures. Furthermore, it can be speculated that these individuals would be unwilling to integrate because of the EU’s open-border policy. For example, if the EU countries integrated even more, it would be much harder to control the flow of immigrants between EU nations, explaining why xenophobic feelings correspond with less support for integration.
On the other hand, individuals who subscribe to a supranational “European identity” are more likely to support European integration (Kiratli, 2015). Specifically, “those with higher levels of European identification… are more likely to support joint decision-making in both foreign policy and defense” (Kiratli, 2015, p. 15). Interestingly, individuals who have low levels of trust in the United States are also more likely to support joint decision-making regarding European foreign policy (Kiratli, 2015, p. 17). Both these facts suggest that when Europeans begin to identify with their continent rather than their country, they will favor integration more. Additionally, these ideas also show that the salience of the continuing decline of the United States on the world stage could facilitate a closer European Union. Overall, identification with one’s nation can be a negative predictor of support for integration while identification with Europe as a whole has the opposite effect.
Citizens also take cues from elites when deciding their stance on the issue of European integration. For example, it has been shown that supporters of a certain domestic political party will often take up the position of that party regarding EU integration (Ray, 2003). However, this factor has conditional predicting power. The individual’s propensity to take up the position of the party increases as the importance of integration in the party rises: the more unified the party is, the more diversity of positions taken on the issue by all political parties in a given country increases; the individual’s attachment to the political party increases, and one’s attunement to politics increases (Ray, 2003). Thus, it would seem that a political party’s ability to influence the opinions of its followers is limited. For the party to have influence over its partisans, at least one of the above conditions must be met.
Finally, when citizens have misgivings about their representation in the European Union, they are less likely to support European integration. Specifically, Europe’s integrationist ambitions will be hampered when Europeans “do not believe that the EU represents them” (Rohrschneider, 2002, p. 472). Moreover, “these perceptions not only increase dissatisfaction with the current EU-framework but also lower support for a future EU-wide government” (Rohrschneider, 2002, p. 472). Like strong feelings of national identity, feelings of disenfranchisement can clearly be used as a negative predictor of support for integration. Indeed, if the EU continues to neglect individuals who think this way it will have a much harder time selling the integration project to the public.
Of all these theories, the utilitarian/cost-benefit model has the most predicting power. According to Gabel (1998), this model is the strongest predictor of support for EU integration. Indeed, he shows that citizens are much more likely to attribute their support for integration to economic factors. Importantly, however, he also shows that certain theories (such as the national identity theory) also hold a significant amount of predictive power, just not as much as the cost-benefit model (Gabel, 1998).
In sum, there are several variables that contribute to one’s support for European integration. Ranging from economic considerations to elite cue-taking, each predicts support for integration to a certain extent. Overall, the literature shows that explaining support for European integration is a dynamic endeavor.
References
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