Public Perceptions of the European Power Hierarchy and Support for a Common Foreign and Security Policy

Prior research on citizen support for European integration has primarily focused on individuals ’ evaluations of the process of integration or its institutions, with emphasis on the importance of direct benefits and costs integration can confer. Explanations focus on overall support for integration and little work has been done on explaining public opinion on specific policy areas, such as the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Prior work also does not consider individuals ’ evaluations of member states in models. This paper will fill this gap in the research by formulating and testing a political cohesion model, which can be considered complementary to preexisting models. The analysis synthesizes systems theory with social identity theory to produce a core claim that the probability of supporting the CFSP increases with greater levels of political trust in the European Union member-states. The development of political cohesion, as measured by the amount of trust in member-states, is assumed to be reflective of a positive perception. Positive perceptions of member-states are critical because integration’s development is influenced strongly by and dependent upon the resources of the relatively more powerful European member-states. Therefore, positive perceptions of the top EU powers, namely Germany and France, improve the probability of supporting a CFSP, more so than trusting the remaining members. The results hold even when controlling for demographic variables, political values, ideology, and the democratic deficit. Binary logistic regression analysis using pooled repeated cross-sectional data from the Eurobarometer surveys conducted in 1992 through 1997 among individuals of 11 member-states largely support these claims