Tolerating Europe: An Experimental Pre-Test

Marziliano, Amanda (2015) Tolerating Europe: An Experimental Pre-Test. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

My larger research project focuses on the question of how the European Union has achieved so much integration without a concurrent increase in identification. Most scholarship to date focuses on affective identity, and upon observing the lack of change or increase in decades, predicts a dire future for the European Union, which cannot move forward without creating some type of European citizen (Duchesne and Frognier 1995). I hypothesize that the European Union has actually become politically legitimate, even though its citizens do not express affective identification with the European Union. The literature shows that the public has awareness of positive externalities and the benefits of cost-sharing (Milner and Tingley 2012, Eichenberg 2005, Timmons 2005, Bartels 2002, Kinder, and Kiewiet 1979). Thus, they can reasonably make decisions about the policies they want controlled by the supranational level. This paper uses a between-subjects survey experiment with British and Irish citizens to focus on priming subjects to think about either national or supranational concerns. Prompts will lead them to consider efficiencies of cost or loss of sovereignty in two policy areas. The survey will then ask whether they think the EU or national governments should handle that policy area. If my hypothesis is correct, considering the efficiencies of cost-sharing should make respondents more likely to support European governance in a particular policy area than they would be without such framing. Identification simply cannot explain the puzzle of such significant advancements in integration—but legitimacy and tolerance can. Examining how many feel European, or identify with the EU on an emotional level, will explain the success of recent decades. Basing pessimistic predictions about the EU’s future on the disappointing results of such calculations about affective identification is therefore not borne out by the data on legitimacy. As Ernst Haas and Karl Deutsch both emphasize, loyalty to the EU will come as a byproduct of more pragmatic and instrumental actions (Haas 1964, Haas 1968, Deutsch 1957).

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