How Deep Should the European Union Be? A Multilevel Test of the Impact of Personal Utility, Perceived National Opportunity and Political Attitudes on the Support for EU Integration

Journal of Social Research & Policy, Volume: 4, Issue: 2, pp. 137-150

Date: December 2013

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

Abstract: This article considers the public attitudes towards the further integration of European Union following the two large waves of expansion of 2004 and 2007 and before the deep economic crisis that began at the end of 2008. Testing individual and contextual effects by applying hierarchical linear regression to the set of data of the 2008 European Social Survey, I concluded that a simple instrumental model of euroscepticism is supported while a model of opportunity costs of sovereignty does not hold. In addition to these a model of institutional trust is supported by the data.

Keywords: Euroscepticism; Support for European Integration; Instrumental Models of Attitudes; Institutional Trust; European Social Survey.