No abstract

Does criticism of the European Union (EU) by elites cultivate support for democratic values among ordinary citizens? All Eurosceptic messages are critical of European integration; they do not all vilify similar aspects of the European Union. This article proposes a framing model of the effects of Euroscepticism on citizens' domestic political attitudes. EU critiques that are framed in terms of ‘democratic deficit’ lead citizens to consider which political values are desirable in democratic society and may promote support for liberal democratic norms among citizens exposed to these messages. Eurosceptic rhetoric is built into framing experiments that vary the content of EU‐critical messages. Subjects in the United Kingdom and Bulgaria are randomly exposed to a ‘cultural threat’ or ‘democratic deficit’ criticism of the EU. Both Eurosceptic frames reduce support for integration, but subjects exposed to the ‘deficit frame’ more strongly embrace liberal democratic values. Under certain conditions, Euroscepticism may carry benefits for representative democracy.

This article presents a new survey of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) conducted during 2015, which adds to a time series of MEP surveys carried out by the European Parliament Research Group. The data allow for comparison of MEPs’ views with those of the EU public, European Parliament candidates, and members of national and regional parliaments in Europe. The survey includes questions on topical issues, such as intra-EU migration and the UK–EU relationship. The dataset can be used to address a range of research questions concerning MEPs’ preferences and representation. This article presents details of the 2015 MEP survey and uses the data to assess what explains MEPs’ attitudes to the question of whether all EP plenary sessions should be held in Brussels.

Does supranational identity have an independent effect on individuals’ beliefs about culturally contested issues in their national systems? This article demonstrates that self-categorization in the supranational realm – a seemingly unrelated category to domestic value cleavages – has implications for individuals’ views on cultural issues. Traditional theories of international norm diffusion focus almost exclusively on state-level interactions, but our findings provide further evidence to the existence of a more direct mechanism through which norms reach some citizens. A sense of identification with a supranational entity such as Europe makes citizens more likely to espouse the views and opinions promoted by supranational organizations. We use the European Values Study to examine whether supranational identity is associated with socially liberal preferences. Results from the multi-level models indicate that supranational identity exerts a systematic effect on attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and gender equality. Additionally, while these effects are more consistent in EU member states, supranational identity exhibits a similar impact on social attitudes in non-EU countries such as those in the former Soviet Union.