External Validity for One-Dimensional Cumulative Scaling on Supranational Political Decision-Making

Journal of Social Research & Policy, Volume: 4, Issue: 1, pp. 33-46.

Date: July 2013

ISSN: 2067-2640 (print), 2068-9861 (electronic)

Abstract: This paper examines citizens’ preferences for a supranational level of political decision-making in 21 European countries on the basis of data from the European Social Survey (ESS). The goal of this study is twofold. The first one is to create a one-dimensional cumulative scale of political preferences at supranational level. Mokken scaling, a non-parametric item response approach is used for this purpose. We found no unique supranationalism scale at European level and clusters of countries based on citizens’ preferences regarding decision-making were carried out. Notably different levels of support emerged for supranational decision-making in different clusters. On that basis, individual scores for the level of supranational decision-making were developed. The second goal is to study external validity for supranationalism in order to understand empirically which factors determine the level of supranationalism, previously created. Results show that most relevant variable that emerges is trust in European parliament, which has a strong positive effect on support for supranational decision-making, while trust in the national parliament has a negative effect on the same variable. The pattern of significant variables is similar across clusters but the ranking of which variables have stronger effect on supranationalism varies.

Keywords: Supranationalism; Political Preferences; Political Decision-Making; Mokken Scaling; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Political Trust.