A Crisis of Trust? Popular Support for the European Union During the Great
Recession
Besir CekaMax Weber Fellow
European University Institute
Indiana UniversityNovember 11, 2013
Trust in the EU during the “great recession”
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Figure 1: Change in trust in the EU between 2007 and 2011
absolute change
Source: Eurobarometer
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KEY QUESTIONS
What explains this drop in support for the EU?
Are the austerity policies of the EU/IMF to be blamed?
Has the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU increased?
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ARGUMENT
Austerity measures—only partly responsible for the drop
National economy and support for national government more important. Reason?
Most Europeans know little about EU policies and their effects
Crisis increase in the share of detached citizens
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Types of attitudes toward national governments and EU
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Diffuse support vs. specific support
Easton (1965, 1975): “Legitimacy of democracies is affected by the extent to which
citizens trust government to do what is right most of time.”
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Diffuse support
“reservoir of favorable attitudes or good will that helps members to accept or tolerate outputs to which they are opposed or the effects of which they see as damaging to their interests”
Specific support: performance-based, short term
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DATA AND METHOD
133 Eurobarometer national surveys from 27 EU countries (2007-2011)
Cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models
Individual and contextual variables
Key dependent variables:
Trust in the EU EU Membership Good measures of diffuse support for the EU
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Ceteris paribus, being under IMF conditionality has little effect on trust in the EU
Credit: AP Photo
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Source: Eurobarometer
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Figure 3: Effects of independent variables moving from minimum to maximum values on predicted probability of Trusting EU
Trust national gov. Economic situation
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Sophistication
Figure 4: Moderating effect of sophistication
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Figure 5: The % of respondents who distrust both levels of government, 2007 and 2011
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Figure 6: Trust in the EU and Trust in National Government over time
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CONCLUSION
Evaluations of the national government and economy are crucial for support for the EU
EU is facing a democratic deficit
But, national governments are facing an even bigger legitimacy deficit
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