How can we explain the decline in support for the European Union (EU) and the idea of European integration after the onset of the great recession in the fall of 2007? Did the economic crisis and the austerity policies that the EU imposed-in tandem with the IMF-on several member countries help cause this drop? While there is some evidence for this direct effect of EU policies, we find that the most significant determinant of trust and support for the EU remains the level of trust in national governments. Based on cue theory and using concepts of diffuse and specific support, we find that support for the EU is derived from evaluations of national politics and policy, which Europeans know far better than the remote political system of the EU. This effect, however, is somewhat muted for those sophisticated Europeans that are more knowledgeable about the EU and are able to form opinions about it independently of the national contexts in which they live. We also find that the recent economic crisis has led to a discernible increase in the number of those who are disillusioned with politics both at the national and the supranational level. We analyze 133 national surveys from 27 EU countries by estimating a series of cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models.

This book sets out a measure of authority for seventy-six major international organizations (IOs) from 1950 to 2010 in an effort to provide systematic comparative information on international governance. On the premise that transparency is key in the production of data, the authors chart a path in laying out the assumptions that underpin the measure. Successive chapters detail the authors’ theoretical, conceptual, and coding decisions. In order to assess their authority, the authors model the composition of IO bodies, their roles in decision making, the bindingness of IO decisions, and the mechanisms through which they seek to settle disputes. Profiles of regional, cross-regional, and global IOs explain how they are composed and how they make decisions. A distinctive feature of the measure is that it breaks down the concept of international authority into discrete dimensions. The Measure of International Authority (MIA) is built up from coherent ingredients—the composition and role of individual IO bodies at each stage in policy making, constitutional reform, the budget, financial compliance, membership accession, and the suspension of members. These observations can be assembled—like Lego blocks—in diverse ways for diverse purposes. This produces a flexible tool for investigating international governance and testing theory.

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In this study, we investigate how socioeconomic status is related to people's commitment to liberal democracy. Based on sociological and psychological theories of social conflict and dominance, we argue that those who enjoy a more privileged position in the social hierarchy tend to develop stronger preferences for the existing social and political order. Conversely, people in underprivileged positions tend to be less supportive of that order. Hence, we expect the relationship between socioeconomic status and commitment to liberal democracy to be context-specific: positive in liberal democracies but negative in autocracies. Furthermore, we argue that income inequality amplifies these dynamics, widening the gap between low and high status individuals. We test our hypotheses using the fifth wave of the World Value Surveys.

The inclusion of 11 new member states from the former Eastern bloc constitutes a significant challenge to the European Union in various respects. Many worry that whatever tenuous ‘European identity’ existed prior to the eastern enlargement, it has now become so diluted that no meaningful European political community can form. We provide an empirical account of the state of European identity after the eastern enlargement through a comparative analysis of affective and cognitive European identity in the old and the new Central and Eastern European member states. Our empirical analyses indicate that while the overall levels of cognitive European identification in the East are indeed lower than in the West, citizens from new member states are just as attached to Europe as citizens from old member states. Most importantly, not only is there no discernable difference in cognitive identification among young Europeans in East and West, but the youngest in the East seem to be even more strongly attached to Europe than their peers in the West.