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At the outset of the European Union (EU) project, a ‘permissive consensus’ among Europeans emerged based on the widespread, popular belief that the reduction of barriers – both physical and financial – between states and adherence to the fundamentals of liberal market practices would cultivate a mutually prosperous economic community. This accommodating popular opinion provided elites with the freedom needed to organize and implement a Europe-wide economy over the past several decades. By the early 1990s, economic integration had largely been achieved in a majority of member states and had begun to give way to integration that increasingly focused on both enlarging the political and social policy responsibilities of the Union and developing a Europe-wide polity. This unprecedented development in supra-national governance has not only challenged Europeans’ long-held attitudes and orientations to the EU but the EU itself has come to recognize its reliance on them for continued legitimacy. For the EU exists on little more than the collective agreement among Europeans, making this ‘agreement’ important to understand.
This Living Review will provide a systematic overview of the literature on the popular perceptions of the EU as a system of governance. As the EU has expanded beyond its original economic realm, researchers have been asking whether popular consent is still aligned with the EU’s implicit or explicit guiding principles; whether the EU institutional structures are perceived as sufficient to bring about these goals; and whether these institutions have been able to achieve this in a fair, transparent, and relatively effective manner. Accordingly, this Living Review demarcates branches of the study of public opinion in regards to the principles of the EU and its institutional design and performance.
The EU continues to be a focus of study for several reasons. Foremost is the unique character of the EU. Unlike federal structures (e.g. the U.S.) or trans-national organizations (e.g. MERCOSUR or NAFTA), the EU experiment has transcended its original economic imperative and now exerts a role in the political and social realities of Europeans in 27 countries1 with expansion and deepening continuing questions. While some scholars have cited the inability of the EU to transform itself into a national-parliamentary or even federal type of democracy (Chryssochoou 1998; see also Decker 2002), other more enthusiastic ones are peering into the future through the lens of the EU as a pioneering model of supra-national institutional possibilities.
Second, as the former point makes clear, the EU’s current form depends on the popular support of
Europeans. That is, rather than a once-removed copy of national-level institutions with their enforcement
and accountability mechanisms, the EU is functionally weak and empowered only through second-order
European Parliamentary elections (van der Eijk and Franklin 1996
). As Caldeira and Gibson (1995) have
pointed out, with no means of law enforcement and mainly shame to force transgressors into compliance,
the European Union depends on supportive popular sentiment for its continued existence. Clearly, if
Europeans’ believe that EU institutions fail to adequately represent their interests and are no
longer transparent, this undermines the core of the EU’s raison d’être, certainly in the long
run
Popular support for the EU appends itself to the broader literature on regime support at the national level. However, growing evidence suggests that citizens of the European Union are not conceptually fungible with citizens of their respective nation-states, as the EU has come to represent a unique institutional experiment that has altered the meaning of citizenship in the EU context.
Specifically, in congruence with the national-level literature, support for EU integration and its continuity rest on popular perception of regime legitimacy and political representation. A political regime must not only be responsive and ideologically congruent to those it ostensibly represents, it must also function in a manner deemed appropriate to achieve its stated goals. However, it is at this juncture that an importance difference between the EU and national-level politics is laid bare.
The wellsprings of individuals’ national-level orientations are the kaleidoscope of national norms, values,
and tradition – that is, national culture. Inasmuch as a national culture is a pre-condition for a
well-functioning system, we note that for the EU, shared political values and norms have only begun to
emerge. From the beginning, this literature focused on the EU’s economic performance, which was logical
given its economic purpose. Evidence from the Eurobarometer surveys has demonstrated fluctuations of
support for the EU that have coincided with primarily economic crises. The Eurosclerosis of the 1970’s saw
popular support drain away but return in the 1980’s to previous levels as the EU began to find
its economic footing again. However, later downturns coincided with crises less economic in
nature. Popular sentiment in the 1990’s reflected the anticipation, and anxiety, of absorbing
the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and a growing sense of the complexities
of expansion (see Norris 1999). This shift has suggested a change in the criteria of citizens’
evaluations and Europeans have begun to identify themselves once again as stakeholders in a
common, pan-European undertaking. Yet, with weakly coagulated EU parties, cross-nationally
inconsistent issue concerns, and a shallow well of shared cultural norms (particularly following
the 2004 enlargement), we find few similarities across national political cultures, an absence
that marks the most distinctive divergence from the study of regime support at the national
level.2
To this point, scholarly examinations of the popular perceptions of the EU as a system of governance have taken several routes to discern the origins of these attitudes. The next sections will outline the work that has been done to this point. For the greater period of study, popular perception of the EU has been guided by national-level theories of popular support (see above). At the individual-level, European orientations (including systemic factors), instrumental self-interest and social background, and institutions have been the mainstay of this research. Theoretically separate but emerging in the EU institutions argument is the study of the perception that not only are institutions not performing as intended but also failing to operate in a transparent and fair manner (this is known as the ‘democratic deficit’). We then discuss the role of intermediaries such as parties, elites, and the media. Finally, given the recent expansion of the EU, a brief review of the Central and Eastern European literature is included.
Public perception of the European Union contains several dimensions and scholars have
suggested numerous typologies to conceptualize them. Expanding David Easton’s (1965; 1975)
concepts of specific and diffuse support, Norris (1999) asserts five objects of political support
(political community, regime principles, regime processes, regime institutions, and political
authorities). Fuchs and Klingemann (2002), in turn, operationalize a democratic political community
through culture, structure, and process. In this view, a democratic culture, for instance, generates
the collective values of rejecting an autocracy and a preference for freedom and equality (see
also Dahl 1989).3
We follow these general ideas by focusing our discussion on how citizens evaluate key dimensions of the EU:
principles and both institutions and their performance.
Conceptually, popular perception for the basic principles of the EU is a normative assessment of its ‘mission’; or in a broad sense, approval of the integration project. What has the EU been assembled to achieve? What are the underlying intentions? These assessments are typically measured by indicators that ask citizens to evaluate the desirability of European integration.
Citizens’ orientations to the EU also include the evaluations of the institutions of the EU. These
assessments tap approval for the design of the institutions of the EU, most commonly assessed by asking
respondents about their level of ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’ in various institutions. Using Schumpeter’s (1942)
procedural definition of democracy as a method for making political decisions, institutional design
and its popular approval is critical. Institutional trust, as one indicator of this, as is explicitly
linked to regime stability through the subjective probability of a citizen believing that the
political system will produce preferred outcome (Klingemann and Fuchs 1995; Mishler and
Rose 2001).
Finally, evaluations of the EU are also captured by evaluations of the performance of the EU. Performance evaluations are usually measured by respondents’ satisfaction with the EU and its institutions, and the approval or disapproval of outcomes of the policy processes (e.g., whether integration increases economic growth).
All in all, then, our Living Review is thus grounded in the tradition of a political culture approach which
assumes that a polity can function effectively in the long run only if publics support it. Without
such support, it is hard to imagine how a system can be considered legitimate (Schmitt and
Thomassen 1999). The dimensions of principles and both institutions and their performance flesh out
the concept of legitimacy. The idea is straightforward: the more citizens hold positive views
about these dimensions, the more the EU is considered legitimate from the perspective of mass
publics. If publics support the principles of a regime, endorse the institutions, and evaluate its
performance positively, a regime is in good shape. If publics reject the principles of a regime,
dislike its institutions, and are unhappy with outcomes, a regime is in dire conditions. Most
regimes fall between these two ideal-typical scenarios, based on publics’ actual views about
these three dimensions. This Living Review assesses where the EU falls on these dimensions of
support.
A note about the organization of this Living Review. Methodologically, the study of popular perceptions of the EU as a system of governance is made more problematic by the variety of measures used to assess popular support. For such a rich literature, this Living Review faces the difficult task of presenting this in a coherent order.
One could structure the Living Review by the dependent variable as it is operationalized; that is, by the choice of question to tap citizens’ attitudes regarding the EU in its many forms. However, we quickly recognize that researchers have used a number of survey questions to tap the same concepts. For example, the following represent only some of the survey questions meant to capture individuals’ support for the EU (see Marsh 1999: 94–95).
Adding to these variations of support questions, researchers have used a variety of data sources and even those who have used the same data sets have had to manage their increasing complexity. The Eurobarometer series serves as good example for this growing complexity. The earliest questionnaires included only a few questions regarding public opinion of the EU.4 In the early to mid-1980’s, the Eurobarometer series began to expand the number and diversity of questions regarding the EU to include citizens’ estimate of the European Parliament and its role in the EU as well as a general continuation of the EU support questions. In the 1990’s, the breadth of questions increased to include individuals’ satisfaction with democracy in the EU, satisfaction with democracy in their own country, the perceived and desired speeds of integration, the role of the EU’s institutions, and institutional trust. Further increasing the complexity, other questions were discontinued (e.g., several indicators about representation and a Europe-wide government dropped were almost completely eliminated after 1996).
In the hands of interested researchers, these expanding data sets5 were used to achieve greater analytical precision and more substantial empirical evidence (this as well correlates with the advent of individualized computing abilities in the social sciences). However in doing so, the variables of interest were adjusted to fit the needs of the analysis and the broadening of the theoretical approaches to these questions. The result has been increased complexity in the choice and use of indicators to capture these concepts and, for this Living Review, has created a conceptual grey area around those dependent variables that are unlikely to find easily agreed upon demarcations.
Therefore, as this Living Review attempts to summarize what we know about popular perceptions of the EU as a system of governance, we structure this Living Review around the different theoretical distinctions established by the sources of EU attitudes. We have structured the Living Review around four broad distinctions among analytical approaches.6 First, we discuss the literature based on economic self-interest. Second, we then discuss the role of social status, followed, thirdly, by the growing attention paid to social and national identities. Fourth, we discuss the role of intermediaries, in particular political parties.7 Finally, we briefly discuss what we know about publics in Central Eastern Europe.
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