Conferences

In this paper we look for patterns of the opinion about different policy levels –governance – for eight different topics, which are ‘protecting the environment’, ‘fighting against organized crime’, ‘defense’, ‘social welfare’, ‘aid to developing countries’, ‘immigration and refugees’, ‘interest rates’ and ‘agriculture’ that is already decided at European level. Our aim is to use the opinion patterns in order to create a score or index for the respondents. Mokken cumulative scale will be used because the policy levels (national or supranational) can be considered as ordinal from a higher to a lower level of governance. The consistency of the cumulative scale is measured by Loevinger’s H, which can be considered as a measure of quality. Data are concerning 22 European countries form the first round of the European Social Survey. Differences between European countries can be studied in order to check if exist different patterns of support in the different European countries. We will also relate the personal levels of support of European decision making with other personal characteristics of the respondents.

Keywords: subsidiarity, governance, legitimacy, cumulative scale, Mokken scale