"Support, (mostly) yes-but for what? Multilevel governance, policy competencies and European public opinion"

Green, David. (2001) "Support, (mostly) yes-but for what? Multilevel governance, policy competencies and European public opinion". In: UNSPECIFIED, Madison, Wisconsin. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[T]o a certain degree our knowledge of public attitudes towards European integration and EU institutions exists at a relatively broad level of focus, not unlike the attitudes of the public themselves, whose tendency is towards generalizations not necessarily based on high levels of knowledge regarding the target of those opinions. Moreover, these broader approaches to attitudes among European citizens do not necessarily move us further in the direction of understanding the degree and content of public support for European integration, nor do they contribute much to the resolution of related theoretical debates, or to the tracking of certain political and social attitudes of more general consequence. This study seeks to fill some of these gaps through an examination of attitudes toward European integration at a more detailed level, with particular attention to public preferences as to which level of governance in Europe should be responsible for various policy competencies. An examination of this data not only reveals public preferences on specific policy questions, but also points to the broader nature of public opinion and concerns in Europe, the possibilities of, and limitations to, further integration, and some clues as to how theoretical debates over the meaning of European integration which have engaged scholars for decades play out on the ground, amongst the citizens who have inherited this new polity.

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