Nationality and the Preferences of the European Public toward EU Policy-Making
| Author | Konstantin Vössing |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116505057817 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Nationality and the
Preferences of the European
Public toward EU
Policy-Making
Konstantin Vössing
Ohio State University, USA
ABSTRACT
Analyses of covariance for Eurobarometer data from 1990
to 1994 demonstrate a significant effect of individuals’
nationalities on their preferences toward the
scope
and
content
of European Union policy-making, while controlling
for sociodemographic characteristics. The observed national
differences are more pronounced for the scope than for the
content dimension. An investigation of the causal mechan-
isms underpinning these effects concludes that it can be
either national identities or nation-specific constellations of
political conflict that mediate the effect of nationality for a
particular nation. These novel findings qualify the expec-
tations of the European political space approach concerning
the existence of an integrated and somewhat autonomous
space of political contestation toward the EU, but the
observed decline of cross-national differences over time
indicates that at least a trend in this direction exists.
445
European Union Politics
DOI: 10.1177/1465116505057817
Volume 6 (4): 445–467
Copyright© 2005
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
KEY WORDS
European Union
European political space
national identity
nationality
public opinion
Introduction
The goal of this article is to investigate national differences in citizens’ pref-
erences toward European Union (EU) policy-making; or, in other words, to
analyze the causal effect of nationality as an individual-level property on the
formation and expression of these preferences. To this end, I estimate the size
and the significance of such differences between European nations, and then
suggest a framework for explaining the causal mechanisms underpinning the
observed effects of nationality more comprehensively.
According to the contributions from the ‘European political space’
approach,1there are two major dimensions of conflict about EU policy-
making: the first one refers to the substantive content of European policies
and the second one to the scope of influence to be attributed to the EU vis-
à-vis the nation-states. In previous research, the effect of nationality on the
formation and expression of these preferences has not been studied yet. At
the same time, national differences have frequently been investigated with
respect to other aspects of EU politics – such as trust in European institutions
(Rohrschneider, 2002) or the implications of national variations in democratic
attitudes for the prospects of European integration (Fuchs and Klingemann,
2002). Most recently, some contributions have found an effect of national
contexts, represented by different types of welfare regimes, economic back-
grounds and institutional factors, on support for European integration
(Brinegar and Jolly, 2005; Hooghe and Marks, in this issue; Christin, 2005).
The estimation of national variation in public opinion is located at the
intersection of these two lines of research. It is concerned with preferences
toward both dimensions of European policy-making (scope and content) as
the two dependent variables, and it will analyze the effect of the independent
variable nationality on these preferences. I have conducted analyses of covari-
ance (ANCOVA) for Eurobarometer data from 1990 to 1994 to estimate this
effect of nationality, while controlling for a set of sociodemographic variables.2
It will be shown that public opinion on EU policy-making depends
significantly on nationality. Even more so than preferences toward the content
of EU policy-making, preferences toward the desired scope of EU activities
vary strongly across national publics. These novel findings contribute to
extending and qualifying the expectations of the ‘European political space’
approach about the emergence of an integrated EU-wide space of political
contestation. Overall, the existence of such a ‘political space’ cannot yet be
observed at the European level. But, at the same time, this study also finds a
decline in the importance of nationality and the corresponding cross-national
differences over time. This indicates that at least a trend of Europeanization
European Union Politics 6(4)
446
To continue reading
Request your trial