Diffuse support for the European Union: spillover effects of the politicization of the European integration process at the domestic level

The legitimacy and legitimation of international organizations: introduction and framework

“…Likewise, Nielson et al (2019) highlight the role of heuristics in the formation of legitimacy beliefs, including the familiarity of IOs due to earlier communication about these organizations. These results tie in well with other recent research underlining the importance of elite communication and heuristics in shaping citizens' legitimacy beliefs (Ares et al 2017;.…”

How Perceptions of Inequality Between Countries Diminish Trust in the European Union: Experimental and Observational Evidence

“…Following recent contributions on the determinants of trust in European institutions (Ares, Ceka, & Kriesi, ; Armingeon & Ceka, ; Harteveld, van der Meer, & de Vries, ), we adopt Easton’s () approach to political support, which conceives trust as a dimension of “diffuse support,” understood as citizens’ willingness to accept or tolerate the decisions taken by the political system beyond their agreement with them. Specifically, trust involves the “symbolic satisfaction with the process by which [a political system] is run,” and is expressed by the citizens’ feeling that their “own interests would be attended to even if the authorities were exposed to little supervision or scrutiny” (p. 447).…”

“…Because their level of knowledge of European affairs is generally lower, citizens use national cues to form perceptions about European institutions (Anderson, ; Harteveld et al, ; Hobolt, ; Kritzinger, ). Along these lines, recent studies conclude that “the EU continues to be evaluated from decidedly national vantage points” (Ares et al, , p. 1111) and that “citizens seem to trust or distrust the European Union for reasons that are largely distinct from the Union itself” (Harteveld et al, , p. 542; see also Armingeon & Ceka, ; Hobolt, ).…”

Domestic contestation of the European Union

“…European citizens have become more aware of the EU as both part of the problem and the solution when it comes to major public policy concerns (Hobolt and Tilley 2014). Transnational European issues also feature more prominently as determinants of electoral choice and party competition (van Spanje and de Vreese 2011; De Vries and Hobolt 2012; Hooghe and Marks 2018; Ares et al 2017;Hutter and Kriesi 2019).…”