Abstract
This article analyses the factors leading to Eurosceptic views among the publics of three Southern European countries (Greece, Portugal, and Spain). Analyses in this article show that Eurosceptic views are strongly conditioned by sociotropic judgements and by fears that the European Union (EU) threatens national cultures. General associations between the EU and other positive objects (such as prosperity, democracy, and national influence) also affect the probability of holding Eurosceptic orientations. By contrast, party cues affect Eurosceptic opinions only in the case of Spain. Analyses on the causes of sociotropic judgements show that these perceptions are affected by egocentric views, social class (working class individuals being more Eurosceptic than members of the upper classes) and, in Spain and Portugal, by left–right preferences (individuals leaning to the left being more Eurosceptic than those leaning to the right). The fact that Euroscepticism can be traced to both culturally exclusivist and economically redistributive preferences suggests that there are strong constraints on the political articulation of Eurosceptic orientations in the Southern European party systems.
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Notes
This does not mean that there are not quite important differences between these three countries. Whereas Portugal and Spain share a history of early statehood and Counter-reformation imperialism, Greece attained statehood only at the beginning of the 19th century, after several centuries of Ottoman rule. Portugal and Spain are also different from Greece in their prevailing religious denomination (Catholic in the first two countries and Orthodox in the latter). In one respect, however, Portugal is more similar to Greece than to Spain; whereas the first two countries are unitary single-nation-states, Spain is a federal and multinational country.
It is also possible to consider differently the interaction between types of capitalism and individual economic preferences for economic policies. From this perspective, individuals farther apart from the Christian-Democratic consensus (both on the right and the left) could be less favourable to an integration process that seems to extend and consecrate the Christian-Democratic type of capitalism. This hypothesis could be connected with the inverted U-shape distribution of parties in the two-dimensional space constituted by the left–right placements and levels of EU support (Van der Eijk and Franklin, 2004; Hooghe et al., 2004).
For instance, according to OECD data (www.oecd.org), in 2001 social spending as a percentage of the GDP was below the EU average in these three countries.
Although these associations have different substantive contents (political, economic, and international), we assume, on the basis of Díez Medrano's work, that they actually map different components of the cognitive frameworks developed by Southern European populations as a result, or in light of their national histories. The fact that these associations were previous to experiences of belonging into the EU, and that they are not connected to a factual knowledge of the implications of EU membership, would show that they are components of historically formed cultural frames (Díez Medrano, 2003).
Some of these goods are the predictibility and advantages for cooperation that derive from shared norms and communication codes (Hardin, 1995) and trust (Hooghe and Marks, 2005b). Membership in national and cultural groups and acquaintance with national and cultural traditions may also open up possibilities for freedom (Kymlicka, 1997, 82–93; Taylor, 1994) and enjoyment (Hardin, 1995). These traditions involve a complex combination of high and popular cultural elements, some of which have a self-referential character.
An illustration of this viewpoint can be found in Ortega y Gasset's assertion that the full development of individual European nations has depended on their sharing a common European background and on their constant cultural and political interactions, be they cooperative, competitive, or conflictive (1998, 98). From a different perspective, Catholicism has also underlined the common heritage and reciprocal ties of European national cultures. An example of this can be found in Ratzinger (1987, 243 and the following).
We would also expect different patterns of articulation between national identities, left–right placements and European attitudes in these three countries. These patterns would result from differences in the national histories and the linguistic and political-territorial structures of these countries. Critical in this respect would be whether nationalism was mainly directed outwards or inwards, and the degree to which nationalist mobilization was the object of domestic political conflicts. Lack of adequate survey data prevents us from addressing the analysis of these issues.
We placed DK respondents in the median point of the scale (value of 3).
We have not created a unique variable based on these three indicators because we think that each of them maps substantively different connotations of the EU, and also because we are interested in establishing the importance of each of these indicators in the three societies we are examining. Running the analyses with a constructed variable adding all indicators did not alter the substantive findings we present below.
To construct this variable we added the values for questions q38 (now recoded into 1 for ‘nationality only’ and 0 for all other values), Q11c12 (1 if loss of cultural identity mentioned and 0 otherwise), and Q1503 (1 for fear of our language being used less and 0 otherwise). The highest value in this constructed variable reveals fears for the future of the nature of national culture as a result of European integration. Observe that this variable does not map general anti-multicultural and anti-immigration orientations, but rather the presence of an anti-multicultural reading of the risks posed by European integration. It might be the case in these countries that individuals with anti-multicultural orientations do not see the European integration process as a risk to their national and traditional cultural identities. Finally, we have not included identification with Europe as one of the components of this constructed variable because of its special proximity to our dependent variable. National identities are likely to be causally prior to attitudes towards political institutions (Hooghe and Marks, 2005a), but identifications with Europe lack so far a national character, and can already encompass and reveal general attitudes towards European integration.
The inclusion of this variable (which explicitly asks whether the respondent's country has benefited from membership in the EU) allows us also to assess the role played by frames generally associating economic prosperity and the EU.
This variable was created by adding the values for Q4 (recoded as 1 for better personal job situation and 0 otherwise), Q5 (recoded as 1 when the respondent's situation improved in the last 5 years), and Q6 (recoded as 1 when the respondent's situation is assumed to improve in the next 5 years).
The precise value is 5.19 for all Southern Europe, 5.97 for Greece, 4.63 for Spain, and 4.97 for Portugal.
The precise value is 1.07 in Southern Europe, 1.18 in Greece, 1.17 in Spain, and 0.88 in Portugal.
The precise value is 6.18 in Greece, 6.23 in Portugal, and 6.29 in Spain.
In fact, there is an inverted U-shape relationship between left–right placement and EU benefits in Greece, respondents situated at the ideological extremes being more Eurosceptic than those in centrist positions.
In fact, as Kriesi (2005) points out, Eurosceptic mobilization is stronger in countries in which citizens have consistently displayed comparatively high Eurosceptic orientations.
There are no statistically significant Pearson correlations between left–right self-placements and our variable indicating an exclusivist and anti-multicultural reading of the EU. However, analyses of the European Social Survey, which allows us to map more directly general anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural orientations, reveal significant correlations between overall anti-immigration attitudes and left–right self-placements in these three countries.
According to the 2002 University of North Carolina expert database on political parties and European integration.
For a general discussion of these dilemmas, see Kriesi (2005).
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Acknowledgements
We thank participants at the conference on Euroscepticism held at the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam, July 2005) for their comments on a previous version of this paper. We are also grateful to participants in a panel on European integration and public opinion held at the meeting of the Asociación Española de Ciencia Política (Madrid, September 2005). Special thanks are due to Liesbet Hooghe and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful ideas and suggestions.
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Llamazares, I., Gramacho, W. Eurosceptics Among Euroenthusiasts: An Analysis of Southern European Public Opinions. Acta Polit 42, 211–232 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500180
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500180