Why support International redistribution? Corruption and public support for aid in the eurozone

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the article Bauhr M, Charron N. Why support International redistribution? Corruption and public support for aid in the eurozone.

The EU as a savior and a saint? Corruption and public support for redistribution

“…Having a university education or above is consistently associated with higher levels of support for Cohesion Policy but is negligible in terms of intensity. Respondents who identify the strongest with their home country (in Europe or their region) are significantly less likely to support Cohesion Policy, similar to previous studies of EU economic governance and EU economic transfers during crises (Bauhr and Charron 2018;Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014). Respondents who support domestic redistribution are also more likely support the idea of inter-EU redistribution, yet consistent with the findings of Hooghe et al (2002), the gal-tan dimension has a greater marginal effect on the outcome variables.…”

“…We suggest that, while utilitarian, identity driven and ideological explanations all contribute towards explaining public support for redistribution within the EU, institutional benchmarking is key to understanding preferences for international redistribution. Building on recent work on the importance of institutions in explaining public support for redistribution (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln 2007;Bauhr and Charron 2018;Birchfield and Crepaz 1998;Jaeger 2013), we suggest that the influence of perceptions of corruption on public support for international redistribution is highly contingent on the performance of domestic institutions, and in particular their perceived relative performance compared to the EU.…”

“…However, the vast majority of studies on public support for the EU do not focus directly on economic redistribution. Factors explaining general levels of support for or trust in the EU may be different from the factors explaining public support for specific policy transfers to the EU, such as intra EU financial assistance, bailouts or Cohesion Policy (Bauhr and Charron 2018;Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014). These policies often come with a more concrete price tag, and economic redistribution within the EU can be perceived to be fundamentally different from the market liberalization often associated with EU integration efforts (Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014).…”

“…At the aggregate level, studies show that low levels of corruption are correlated with less economic inequality, since low corrupt institutions ensure better accountability and thereby that tax money benefits many as opposed to a few. At the individual level, perceptions of corruption have been shown to undermine the willingness to pay tax in part because high levels of corruption lead citizens to expect that resources will be wasted or used for personal enrichment rather than the public good (Bauhr and Charron 2018;Brautigam et al 2008;Rothstein and Uslaner 2005).…”

“…Empirically, we introduce the most comprehensive survey of public support for Cohesion Policy to date, carried out by the authors. While there is an emerging literature on support for European economic integration (Bauhr and Charron 2018;Bechtel et al 2014;Daniele and Geys 2015;Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014), none of these employ survey data that have focused directly on public attitudes regarding the EU's main redistributive policy. The data build on 17,147 interviews in 15 EU Member States, a sample that represents over 85% of the EU population.…”