Attitudes to European Integration: Investigating East-West Heterogeneity

摘要

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.