Euroscepticism Revisited - Regional Interest Representation in Brussels and the Link to Citizen Attitudes towards European Integration

Olsson, Anna (2009) Euroscepticism Revisited - Regional Interest Representation in Brussels and the Link to Citizen Attitudes towards European Integration. In: UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Recent scholarship has suggested that nation-states will gradually fade away in favor of regions and super-regions as the main actors within a European Union characterized by strong regional identities. At the same time, recent developments have shown that citizen support for European integration is essential for any future development of the Union. The puzzle inspiring this paper is the finding that the greatest support for the EU increasingly stems from minority nationalist, or strong identity regions seeking to bypass their central states to achieve their policy goals at the EU level. This paper empirically tests this suggestion, while shedding light on the relationship between the quality of representation of regional interests at the EU level and positive citizen attitudes towards the EU. In particular, it finds two explanations for cross-regional variation in the relationship between Euroscepticism and representation: (1) a cultural explanation, embodied by differences in the nature and quality of representation between regions that are linguistically distinctive and regions that are not; and (2) an institutional explanation, embodied by differences in the nature and quality of representation between regions from federal and non-federal member states. The paper uses an eclectic methodological approach, first utilizing multivariate regression analysis, estimating logistic and ordinal logit models that help explain variation in Euroscepticism at the regional level. The results are then complemented by the findings of indepth elite interviews of regional representatives—more specifically the directors of a selection of the many regional information offices present in Brussels. This paper takes the study of Euroscepticism to a new level, as most previous scholarly work has focused on explanations at the individual or at the member state level. At the same time it strengthens the notion of a growing importance of a “Europe of the regions.”

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