Suchergebnisse

AbstractPrevious studies of turnout in European Parliament elections have focused on how positive and negative attitudes towards the EU affect voter turnout while ignoring other EU related attitudes. To fill this gap, this article compares the impact of ambivalence and indifference on turnout with that of positive and negative attitudes. Using multilevel logit regression, it demonstrates that ambivalence increased the odds of turnout in the 2004 and 2009 European Parliament elections compared to both negative and indifferent attitudes. However, ambivalence only increases the possibility of turnout if the number of positive thoughts about the EU is equal to or higher than the number of negative thoughts. Having a greater number of negative thoughts, in contrast, does not discourage turnout. The paper concludes that one‐dimensional measures of EU attitudes are over‐simplistic and fail to provide a complete description of European voting behaviour.

Drawing on insights from the literatures on direct democracy and the European Union's (EU) democratic deficit, this study is the first to analyze the likelihood of EU citizens' use of the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI). Using an ordered logistic regression analysis, it investigates whether EU citizens' degree of cynicism, attitudes toward EU membership and their country's vote share in the Council of the EU affect their willingness to use the ECI. The results show that European citizens who are more critical of the way the EU institutions work are less likely to intend to use the ECI. The results also indicate that attitudes toward EU membership and member states' voting shares in the Council do not have a significant impact on the likelihood of using the ECI, after controlling for social, political and economic factors. These findings imply that cynicism at the EU level translates into further alienation from European politics rather than willingness to use the ECI to bridge democratic gaps in the EU. Thus, it seems the ECI currently does not give citizens a sense of partnership and voice in EU governance. Adapted from the source document.

Although the determinants of trust in governments have received significant attention in the literature on political trust, there has been no attention paid to whether environmental concerns affect governmental trust. Yet, if individuals are worried about local and global environmental degradation, they may think that the government has failed in providing them with the best living conditions. Hence, it is plausible to expect local and global environmental concerns and trust in government to be inversely correlated. Using 2005 data from 24 countries, this hypothesis is tested against competing theories of civic participation, interpersonal trust, and economic considerations to explain individual trust in government. Multilevel models that specify the impact of individual- and national-level factors provide evidence that global environmental concerns do actually matter.

Despite considerable research analyzing European Union (EU) citizens' attitudes toward enlargement, there is no scholarly consensus on what drives opposition to the accession of a particular country. To fill this gap, this paper adopts a comparative approach to examine the determinants of attitudes toward the membership of twelve candidate or potential candidate countries to the EU. Using 2005 Eurobarometer survey data from the EU-25, we examine the relative explanatory power of two leading theories—utilitarian and identity—in explaining public opposition to EU enlargement. Our results reveal that, across models, subjective variables capturing material and identity threat perceptions have a more consistent impact on enlargement attitudes compared with objective indicators. While fears of higher EU budget contribution and evaluations of national economic conditions are the most consistent utilitarian predictors of respondents' opposition to entry of potential EU members, attachment to European identity and fears about the loss of cultural identity are the two most powerful identity-related predictors of public opposition. Contrary to expectations, religious attachment plays a limited role in shaping public opposition. Only Turkey elicits strong and uniform opposition from all religious groups, including atheists, agnostics, and seculars.

The aim of this overview is to critically examine the state of research on the relationship between anti-immigrant attitudes and attitudes toward European integration. We argue that the two most commonly used measures of anti-immigrant attitudes do not fully capture perceived threats from immigrants and opinion about different immigrant groups. Future research should pay more attention to two particular issues: first, scholars could employ methodological techniques that capture the underlying constructs associated with attitudes and public opinion; second, researchers could differentiate between groups within the overall immigrant population. This overview identifies themes in the literature while drawing attention to the need for more research on the behavioral underpinnings of anti-immigrant attitudes and public opinion on European integration.

This article studies how different types of tolerance and perceived threat affect opinions about the EU immigration policy in Germany and the Netherlands. We assess to what extent social and political tolerance for and sociotropic and personal threats from Muslim immigrants influence EU citizens' beliefs that immigration is one of the most important issues facing the EU. By experimentally manipulating religion of immigrant, level of perceived threat, and type of tolerance, we examine how people's attitudes on immigration policies change. Our findings shed light on how EU countries might deal with the rising tide of intolerance toward immigrants and Muslims, and how better policies of integration could be implemented in a multicultural Europe.

What explains variation in European citizens' support for common EU immigration and counter-terrorism policies? We advance extant literature that focuses on the utility versus identity debate by focusing on individuals' emotional reactions. Drawing on theories of affect, we show that citizens' emotions about immigration are integral to their preferences for EU cooperation on the dual questions of immigration and terrorism. We hypothesise that while anger about immigration is associated with opposition to cooperation on both policies, fear about immigration is associated with support for a common EU counter-terrorism strategy. Using a large-N cross-sectional survey conducted in Germany and the Netherlands, our analyses confirm our hypotheses. Our findings have implications for the progress of European integration and the scope of public approval of EU common policies.