What Do the People Want? Opinions, Moods and Preferences of European Citizens

de Vries, Catherine and Hoffmann, Isabell (2015) What Do the People Want? Opinions, Moods and Preferences of European Citizens. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

The Eurozone crisis has pushed reform of the European Union (EU) to the forefront of political debate. How can a Union of 28 states with a population of over half a billion be reformed to weather future economic crises and political challenges? Finding an answer to this question is extremely difficult not only because current reform proposals are so varied, but even more so because we lack insights into the preferences for reform amongst national elites and publics. Although EU support has interested scholars for over three decades now, we virtually know nothing about public support for EU reform. Current research focuses almost exclusively on the causes of support for the current project and fails to provide a sufficient basis for effective reform decisions. Surely, the feasibility and sustainability of EU reform crucially hinges on the support amongst national publics. In this report, we examine public support for EU reform by developing a theoretical model and employing cutting-edge data collection techniques. Our findings will aid policy makers to craft EU reform proposals that can secure widespread public support. We aim to meet this objectives by crafting a novel multidimensional model, which posits that support for EU reform consists of four dimensions: a functional, communal, utilitarian and institutional dimension, and employing novel data collection techniques, such as a conjoint experiment.

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