How Europeans See Europe

Structure and Dynamics of European Legitimacy Beliefs

Angelika Scheuer

9789056294083

228 pages

Amsterdam University Press

Paperback / softback $60.95

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Overview

How do Europeans see Europe? What principles guide people’s approval or rejection of EU projects? Are they ‘Europeans by heart’ or ‘nice-weather Europeans’? How do citizens perceive the shift from economic integration to political unification? What are chances and risks of EU legitimacy? Angelika Scheuer gives empirical answers in her study of European legitimacy based on the European Elections Study of 1994. She demonstrates that publics of the EU-12 display a similar,well-structured European belief system. This enables comparative measurement and makes the EU a laboratory for hypothesis testing. The modelling of legitimacy processes discovers cross-country differences in the evolution of European legitimacy. Distinct legitimation styles exist among European publics and call for perceptive attention in future EU proposals and campaigns.

Author Bio

Angelika Scheuer (1965) graduated in sociology and political science at the University of Mannheim and worked at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (mzes). Grants from tmr “Political Representation and Electoral Behaviour in the European Union” and the Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ascor) enabled her doctoral studies at the University of Amsterdam and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (uned) in Madrid. Specialised in quantitative analysis and comparative methods, she worked as analyst in market research and is currently researcher at the Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (zuma) in Mannheim.