Public perceptions of the EU as a system of governance

Abstract

Since its inception, the European Union has stimulated many vigorous debates. This Living Review provides a state of the field perspective on the academic work that has been done to address the question of the perceptions of the European Union as a system of governance. It takes a broad scope in assessing the efforts of scholars and highlights significant theoretical and empirical contributions as well as identifying potential avenues for research. In order to understand perceptions of the EU, scholars have employed national-level frameworks of popular support, particularly partisanship and instrumental self-interest. As the number of members has increased, further research has taken a broader scope to include national identity, institutions, and attitudes regarding the normative and empirical function of both national and EU institutions. Additional works address political intermediaries such as parties, media, and elites. Finally, all of the works are fundamentally concerned with the supportive popular sentiment that underpins the EU's legitimacy as a political institution. While there are far more works that can be practically included in this review, we have attempted to construct an overview based on the dimensions that define this research as set out by significant contributions at the core of this literature.

Euroscepticism and the Global Financial Crisis*

“…The study of public opinion with regard to European integration has been a growing field of empirical research since the 1970s, drawing on the tools and methods of the comparative study of regime support at the national level (Loveless and Rohrschneider, 2011, p. 5). The concept of ‘Euroscepticism’, originally crafted to analyze the positions of political parties towards European integration (Taggart, 1998), was imported to this field of study in the last decade (Krouwel and Abts, 2007; Wessels, 2007; Leconte, 2010) and is now commonly used to refer to a subset of negative attitudes towards the European Union (EU) and/or European integration (Boomgaarden et al ., 2010).…”

“…McLaren (2006, p. 21) argues that the two are conceptually distinct but empirically closely connected; she expects that at the mass level, negative attitudes towards the EU partly reflect negative attitudes towards integration efforts. As Loveless and Rohrschneider (2011, p. 5) posit: ‘[I]f Europeans believe that EU institutions fail adequately to represent their interests and are no longer transparent, this undermines the core of the EU's raison d'être , certainly in the long run’. Wessels (2007, p. 290) makes a similar point when he argues that public Euroscepticism is cumulative.…”

“…The ‘deepening’ of the EU, resulting from the new competences acquired by the EU following the TEU (first and foremost, the project of economic and monetary union [EMU]) was combined with the ‘widening’ of the EU through enlargement to central and eastern European countries. These watershed events changed the public's cost–benefit calculations, bringing social and political variables, such as identity and political institutions, to the forefront in explaining public opinion support (or otherwise) for the EU (Eichenberg and Dalton, 2007; Loveless and Rohrschneider, 2011).…”

“…According to Anderson (1998), trust in domestic political institutions positively influences attitudes towards the EU. Hence a mechanism of institutional proxy is at work: national institutions provide citizens with a cognitive short cut towards trust in EU institutions (Loveless and Rohrschneider, 2011). By contrast, Sanchez‐Cuenca (2000) argues that low levels of trust in national political institutions result in stronger public support for the EU.…”

Tolerant, If Personal Goals Remain Unharmed: Explaining Supranational Bureaucrats' Attitudes to Organizational Change

“…Sociology and psychology view the formation of preferences as an endogenous process. The core assumption is that individuals develop preferences by internalizing norms and values from their social environment—often early on in their lives (Converse 1964; Johnston 2001; Loveless and Rohrschneider 2008; Rohrschneider 1994; Wildavsky 1987). The mechanism at work is usually conceived of as “socialization.” Socialization is frequently equated with “group dynamic” effects, that is, the way in which the norms and values of the in‐group are adopted by a (new) individual.…”