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FIGURE 1
THE EVOLUTION OF SUPPORT FOR EUROPEAN UNIFICATION, 1952-1975.
Based on percent &dquo;for&dquo; &dquo;efforts to unify Europe.&dquo; Missing data are included in
percentage base; thus, in 1952, 70 percent of the German public was &dquo;for,&dquo; 10 percent
&dquo;against&dquo; and 20 percent &dquo;undecided&dquo; or &dquo;no opinion.&dquo;
69
TABLE 1
*
Each national sample weighted in proportion to that nation’s population.
TABLE 2
*
Surveys were carried out in Great Britain only, in 1973 and 1974; from 1975 on, the figures for the
&dquo;UnitedKingdom&dquo; include Northern Ireland as well.
73
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION RATES IN EUROPEAN COMMUNITY COUNTRIES,
1973-1977 (SEASONALLY ADJUSTED, 1970 100).
=
pinge upon the general public, and tional economic indicators? Yes. The
there might well be some further best such measure, for present pur-
delay before the public began to poses, seems to be an indicator of
attribute these effects to any given inflation. Figure 4 shows the Con-
cause. sumer Price Indices for the nine
The regression of our attitudinal European Community countries from
variable on a given nation’s index 1973 to 1977. Since these indices
of industrial production one year show a steady upward trend while
before the given survey yields a our attitudinal measure does not,
correlation of .253 .7 This lag pro- it is evident that we need to use
vides our best fit: the correlations the change in this index, during
7. For these regression analyses, evalua- some specified period preceding a
tions of membership were coded as fol- given survey, rather than the index
lows : Bad 1, Neither 2. Good 3. The
= = =
itself, as a predictor of attitudes.
mean score for a given nation at a given
point in time was the input to our aggregate Empirically, our best fit proves to be
data set. Missing data were excluded from the rise in a nation’s Consumer
calculations of the mean scores. Price Index during the two years
75
FIGURE 4
INFLATION RATES IN EUROPEAN COMMUNITY COUNTRIES, 1973-1977 (1970 =
100).
preceding the given survey. The lag unemployment rates) increase the
involved here is longer, in a sense, amount of variance explained only
than that connected with the Index very slightly; but our results do
of Industrial Production. This fact seem to indicate that economic
is somewhat surprising: the average conditions have a significant impact
consumer buys things almost every on public appraisals of membership
day. One might expect that he or in the E.E.C. These results support
she would become aware of infla- the idea that favorable outputs tend
tion almost immediately. This may to enhance support for membership
be true, but apparently it takes the in a political community, while
public a certain period of time to unfavorable ones have the opposite
connect inflation with EEC mem- effect-but only in a loose way.
bership. Once this connection is It is unclear whether these &dquo;out-
made, however, its impact is slightly puts&dquo; really come from the politi-
stronger than that associated with cal system in question: the reces-
rising or falling rates of industrial sion and inflation of the 1970’s and
production: our indicator of inflation their subsequent abatement were
shows a -.268 correlation with worldwide phenomena that prob-
assessments of membership in the ably were affected only marginally
Common Market. The negative polar- by any actions taken by the Euro-
ity, of course, indicates that rela- pean Community institutions. How-
tively high rates of inflation are ever, the publics concerned here did
linked with negative assessments seem to attribute prevailing eco-
of membership. nomic conditions to their member-
Utilizing our indicators of both ship in the European Community,
inflation and industrial production to some extent, and if they did,
in the regression equation, we ob- it is asignificant fact. Given the
tain a multiple correlation of .376. relatively low rates of economic
Additional economic indicators (in- growth and high rates of inflation
cluding measures of the change in that were present most of the time
76
since 1973, the net result was a The economic context is important.
slight declinein favorable assess- Nation-specific effects, apparently
ments. But it is important to dis- linked with long-term membership,
tinguish between long-term effects are even more important.
of membership and the impact of
immediate economic conditions. THE EMERGENCE OF A SENSE OF
As we noted above, the publics COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY
of the original six member nations
retained a relatively favorable view Public evaluations of EEC mem-
of membership throughout this pe- bership remained static or declined
riod. Long-term factors-perhaps a slightly from 1973 to 1977, for
reservoir of diffuse support built reasons that seem related to the
ing what should be done, not simply endorsed by a 2:1 majority among
an appraisal of what has happened. the British public. The ratio was
The responses obtained from each almost 7:1 in the Community as a
public in 1973 appear in Table 3. whole, however. These high levels
By comparison with appraisals of of support for Community solidarity
the benefits of EEC membership, were expressed during the first year
the levels of support for Community of membership for the three new
solidarity were strikingly high. There countries. The very fact that the
was a good deal more opposition Community had just been expanded,
in Denmark and the United King- after years of debate and difficult
dom than in any of the original negotiations, may have given the
six member nations, but the prin- Community a psychological boost
ciple of aiding other European Com- that would not necessarily last; all
munity countries in time of need of this took place before the Arab
was endorsed by strong majorities oil embargo of October, 1973 and
in all nine countries. the sharp economic decline of 1974
In a sense, these high levels of and 1975. Would this remarkably
support for European Community high level of public support for
solidarity are not surprising. The economic solidarity collapse in the
Danish and Irish publics had just fact of real, rather than hypotheti-
voted to join the Community in cal, economic difficulties? For the
1972, in national referenda that Community as a whole, the answer
evoked intense and widespread dis- is a clear-cut &dquo;No.&dquo;
cussion of the choice being made. Table 4 shows the levels of sup-
There would seem to be little sense port for Community solidarity at
in joining, unless one were com- each of the three points in time
mitted to a certain degree of solidar- when this question was asked.
ity. The British electorate had not The same data are summarized in
yet been consulted on the sub- graphic form in Figure 5, with re-
ject, but their representatives in sults from the original six members
Parliament had debated extensively combined in an average weighted
and finally voted in favor of joining according to national populations.
the European Community by a con- The overall pattern is not one of
clusive majority: cues from the collapse, but of upward conver-
political elites tended to encourage gence. Among the original six, sup-
TABLE 3
*
Weighted in proportion to national populations; unweighted N =
13,484.
78
FIGURE 5
SENSE OF EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY, 1973-1977. PERCENTAGE SAYING THAT THEIR COUNTRY
SHOULD HELP ANOTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRY IN DIFFICULTY.
FIGURE 6
PERCENTAGE &dquo;FOR&dquo; A DIRECTLY ELECTED EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, 1970-1977.
The growth of public backing for that are good for Europe as a whole,
direct elections to the European even if they run counter to the
Parliament is impressive, but it is immediate national interest.
probably a relatively soft indicator This question has not been asked
of a sense of European solidarity. over a sufficient period of years
One might favor such elections in to enable us to draw any conclu-
the belief that the European Par- sions about long-term trends. The
liament will remain unimportant; or fact that the publics of the older
because one sees it as a forum for member countries are substantially
the defense of national interests. more likely to give priority to Euro-
The 1977 surveys included a ques- pean interests suggests that the
tion that enables us to examine the formation of a European outlook is
latter possibility. It is also a rela- something that develops rather
tively &dquo;difficult&dquo; question that helps slowly. It does not, however, neces-
provide an indication of the dis- sarily indicate the direction in which
tribution of hard-core Europeans, the three newer publics are moving.
because it explicitly pits the national In a sense, this item provides a
interest against that of the Com- test of whether an individual is pre-
munity as a whole. The item is: pared to become a citizen of Europe.
&dquo;Which of the following attitudes And the results indicate that Euro-
would you expect a (British, French, peans do exist. They are outnum-
etc.) member of the European Par- bered by those who are citizens of a
liament to have? given country first and foremost,
-He should support things that are among the three newer members
of the Community. But among those
good for Europe as a whole, even
if they are not always good for (my publics that had experienced almost
country) at the time. twenty years of membership in the
-He should support the interests of Community by Fall 1977, the Euro-
(my country) all the time whether peans seemed to comprise a majority.
or not they are good for Europe as
a whole.
INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL DIFFERENCES
The responses to this item in Fall IN ASSESSMENT OF MEMBERSHIP
1977 appear in Table 5. AND A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
The proportion according priority SOLIDARITY
to the interest of Europe as a whole
above the national interest is far Up to this point we have focused
smaller than the proportion favoring entirely on variations in public atti-
a directly-elected European Parlia- tudes across nations and across time.
ment, as one would expect. In the Nations are not monolithic, how-
three new member countries the ever ; within each country, one finds
national interest is clearly pre- substantial differences in support
ponderant over that of the Com- for European integration between
munity. In Belgium, the two are in people of different sex, age, occupa-
nearly even balance. But in the re- tion, political loyalties and educa-
maining five of the original six tional levels. In order to under-
member countries-and in the Com- stand changes over time in the sup-
munity as a whole-the predomi- port levels of given nationalities,
nant attitude is to feel that one’s we must analyze these individual-
of given nations at given times. could argue that support for Euro-
For example, the upward conver- pean integration is inherently a
gence of the French and Italian Right-wing political position, while
publics with the other publics of opposition to integration is the
the original six-member European natural stance of the Left. In sup-
Community can be attributed, in port of this argument one could
large part, to the conversion of the marshal evidence that the electo-
communist electorates of these coun- rates of the. Left tend to be less
tries from hostile to favorable orien- favorable to integration than those
tations toward integration.88 of the Right. This is frequently,
Among those individual-level char- but by no means universally true-
acteristics that show substantial but one might save the hypothesis
associations with support for Euro- by arguing that in some countries,
pean integration, education is prob- the electorates of the Left have
ably the most pervasive: the highly- fallen prey to delusions. The im-
educated are consistently more fa- plication of this general interpreta-
vorable than the less-educated. This tion is that the future growth or
finding emerges from virtually every decline of mass support for Euro-
nationwide survey that has ever pean integration depends essen-
been conducted on the subject. tially on whether the Left the or
The fact itself is clear and un- Right ultimately triumphs.
mistakable. But it can be inter- The foregoing interpretation makes
preted in a variety of ways. the assumption that the more edu-
On one hand, it could be at- cated are relatively pro-European
tributed to the fact that the more because they tend to come from
educated tend to have higher in- higher social class backgrounds.
comes and more desirable jobs than But education is a complex vari-
the less educated. Accordingly, the able that taps many things. It is
argument might plausibly be de- indeed an indicator of one’s social
veloped that education is linked class. It is also an indicator of the
with support for integration because presence or absence of certain cog-
the more educated respondents nitive skills, for the more educated
tend to be of higher social class tend to know more, and are more
level; European integration benefits accustomed to dealing with abstrac-
the upper and middle classes more tions and remote objects than the
than the working class; thus the less educated. Finally, education is
fact that the more educated are an indicator of one’s social milieu:
TABLE 5
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY: SHOULD PRIORITY BE GIVEN TO YOUR COUNTRY’S
NATIONAL INTERESTS OR TO THOSE OF EUROPE AS A WHOLE? (RESPONSES
TO FALL, 1977 SURVEY)
*
Weighted in proportion to national populations.
more educated are relatively pro- typical of those found at other points
European simply because this is the in time, though it seems worth
best way to pursue a distinctive mentioning that both of these rela-
class interest. But it could work the tionships were somewhat stronger
other way around: it might be that in 1977 than they were in 1973.
any observed social class differences The first thing that we might
in levels of support for European note is the fact that respondents
integration result from the fact that in households headed by manual
middle class respondents have, on workers do, indeed, make less favor-
the whole, received more educa- able appraisals of EEC member-
tion than working class respondents. ship than those in households
Let us compare the relative headed by a person with a non-
strengths of the relationships be- manual occupation. The impression
tween support for European integra- that these data convey, however,
tion and the respondent’s educa- is scarcely one of social class
tional level on one hand, and the polarization: a majority of the re-
occupation of the head of the re- spondents in both manual and non-
spondent’s household, on the other. manual households made favorable
Table 6 shows the percentages appraisals; there is simply a differ-
making positive appraisals of Euro- ence in degree and the difference
pean Community membership by is not overwhelming. Furthermore,
education and occupation in the when we compare the responses of
European Community as a whole, all four broad occupational cate-
as of Fall 1977. Though there is gories, there is no monotonic re-
some cross-national variation in the lationship between income and the
strength of these relationships, these proportion making favorable ap-
figures are reasonably representa- praisals : those from farm house-
tive of the pattern that is found holds have the lowest mean family
in each of the nine member nations income but they prove to be fully as
(though not, of course, of the ab- favorable as our highest income
solute levels). They are also fairly group, those from nonmanual house-
85
, ,
(a) Mean Self-Placement on Left-Right Ideology Scale: not repairing it. For the Revolu-
tionary Left, reforming the system
is merely a way to ward off total
overhaul: viewed in this light, Euro-
pean integration may seem counter-
productive.
Table 10 shows the percentages
making positive assessment of Com-
mon Market membership among the
seven groups in our typology. In
(b) Percentage Voting for Parties of the Right: contrast with the two preceding
tables, in which Revolutionaries
and Mobilized Post-Materialists oc-
cupy adjacent positions, here they
fall at opposite ends of the spec-
trum. Another contrast with the pre-
ceding tables is the fact that here,
Cognitive Mobilization and value
priorities have additive effects, with
favorable assessments rising in a
smooth progression as we move from
FIGURE 8 the nonmobilized Materialists, at the
LOCATION ON LEFT-RIGHT DIMENSION OF low extreme, to the Mobilized
GROUPS IN POLITICAL ORIENTATION Post-Materialists, who make the
TYPOLOGY. most favorable assessments. But the
Revolutionaries rank lowest of any
and in their political party prefer- group, with a percentage of favor-
ences, one might be tempted to able assessments that puts them sub-
conclude that the Revolutionaries stantially below the non-Mobilized
are just like the Mobilized Post- Materialists-in other respects the
Materialists, only more so. This group they resemble least.
conclusion would be mistaken. Is this an isolated phenomenon?
Though they overlap in many re-
Let us compare the proportions who from each of our seven types.
feel that their representatives in One major group is Materialist,
the European Parliament should act concerned primarily with attain-
for the good of the Community as a ing-or defending-economic and
whole, even if it conflicts with the physical security. For this group, it
national interest. Table 11 provides seems likely that support for Euro-
the relevant data. And the basic pean integration has had particularly
pattern is similar to what we have strong linkages with the perception
just seen. Willingness to give pri- that it was associated with pros-
ority to the interests of the Com- perity. In the uncertain setting of
munity is lowest among nonmo- the late 1970’s, this component of
bilized Materialists and reaches its support was relatively weak. Both
peak among the mobilized Post- mobilized and nonmobilized Mate-
Materialists. But the impact of value rialists made comparatively negative
type dominates that of Cognitive assessments of Community mem-
Mobilization: the mobilized Ma- bership, and were relatively hesi-
terialists are more European than tant to let the interests of the
nonmobilized ones, and the same Community as a whole take prece-
thing is true of each of the other dence over their own country’s im-
value types when we compare the mediate interests. For the Post-
mobilized with the nonmobilized Materialists, on the other hand,
group. But the effect of Cognitive European integration’s appeal may
Mobilization alone is not great be rooted to a greater extent in
enough to raise all of the mo- concerns for human solidarity, even
bilized types above the nonmo- apart from its economic effects.
bilized ones. This is not to say that concerns
The results of these analyses for solidarity were unimportant to
help clarify the complex relation- those with Materialist or Mixed
ship between support for European values; it is simply a question of
integration and Left-Right dimen- the relative weights.
sion. For both Left and Right have The Revolutionaries are a special
several distinct constituencies, case. Like the Post-Materialists, they
ary impulse was particularly strong Europe, the Left is highly favorable
among the latter group. Although to EEC membership; this holds true
its members have lower levels of of both Communist and Socialist
income and education than any electorates, when we analyze them
other group, which previously might separately. Clearly, we cannot equate
have tied them more strongly to the Revolutionary Left with support
the Left, in 1977 advocates of &dquo;a for the Communist Party. Most Ital-
valiant defense of the present so- ian Communists are non-Revolu-
ciety against all subversive forces&dquo; tionary. In Germany, where the So-
vastly outweighed proponents of cial Democrats have been in power
revolutionary change. The nonmo- since 1969 (and have shared power
bilized Materialists were concerned since 1966), the electorate of the
by the current crisis, but were more Left is somewhat more favorable
apt to see the solution in a restora- to the Community and to European
tion of the prosperous industrial solidarity than the electorate of the
society they had known in the re- Right. Overall, there is a clear cor-
cent past, than in revolutionary relation between support for the
change. For opposite reasons, the parties in office-whether of the
Revolutionaries and nonmobilized Left or the Right-and support for
Materialists were reluctant to sup- the Community. When the Left has
port European integration. been in power for some period of
The relationship between Left- time, there is a tendency for its
Right political preferences and sup- supporters to identify with its poli-
port for European integration is cies, including support for Euro-
complex. While the Reformist Left is pean integration, if that is one of
markedly favorable, the Revolu- them. Accordingly, in the Nether-
tionary Left tends to be suspicious. lands, where a coalition headed by
But the complexity does not end the Left was in office from 1972 to
there, because one finds striking 1977, the differences between sup-
cross-national differences in the de- porters of the Left and Right are
gree to which the supporters of the negligible; in earlier surveys, the
Left and Right hold positive atti- electorate of the Left was slightly
tudes toward the Community. Ta- more favorable to European inte-
ble 12 gives some evidence on this gration than that of the Right.
score. In Italy, the country with the Political party cleavages on this
largest Communist Party in Western issue are greatest by far in Denmark,
TABLE 12
*
Fall, 1977 survey, weighted according to population..
95