Conferences

Support for European integration – in line with Easton’s concept of political support – is generally considered to depend on two classes of determinants: utilitarian evaluations (costs and benefits of European integration) and expressive evaluations (affective attachment to the European Union and the nation state) of the European Union.

The study of support for European integration differs fundamentally from studies of nation states. The member-states of the European Union posses their own historically grown political regimes and differ considerably with respect to their economic development. Consequently, they occupy different positions within the systems of solidarity and competition between European countries. Some countries, for example, are net-contributors to the budget while others are net-receivers. For this reason, research on support for European integration cannot pass over the impact that the national contexts have for evaluations of the European Union. Do the differences in national contexts explain the differences in support for European integration across countries?

Particularly, utilitarian evaluations of the European Union are expected to be affected by economic differences: (1) wealthier countries bear most of the direct costs of integration. Citizens might blame the EU for these transfers towards less wealthy countries and this could reduce the support for European integration (level-effect). (2) The costs of integration are also expected to decrease the effect that positive evaluations of EU’s performance have on support for European integration (slope-effect) because evaluation takes place in an overall more skeptical context.
Expressive evaluations of the European Union, in contrast, are expected not to be systematically related to the economic context of evaluation.
The results from the hierarchical regression model reveal that the context of evaluation does indeed matter for support for European integration. Higher levels of social expenditure decrease support for European integration in the realm of welfare and education policies but – contrary to the expectations – contributor countries show higher level of support for European regulation policies. Even more: the effect of positive evaluations of EU’s performance on support for political integration is stronger in net-contributor countries than in net-receiver countries. Hence, there are no traces for strong national egoisms.