Economics, political values and historic legacy : Determinants of public support for EU membership and European integration in post-communist Europe

This study examines the explanatory power of the traditional explanations as to what determines public support for EU membership and European integration – the economic explanation and the political values‐based explanation – in the context of the post-communist member states of the EU. Further, an alternative explanation – the communist legacy explanation – is presented and tested. It is hypothesized that a high degree of Soviet influence and suppression during the communist period leads to a low degree of support for EU membership and European integration, because of a willingness to protect oneself from violation of national sovereignty once again. The explanatory power of the traditional explanations does not obtain convincing empirical support, even if many individual predictors are statistically significant as determinants. Communist legacy seems to be important as a determinant of public support for EU membership and European integration. However, the hypothesis can neither be accepted nor rejected, because of the methodological problems associated with the dummy variable approach used in order to test it. Further, the direction of the relationship between communist legacy and public support for EU membership and European integration seems to be two‐fold, rather than one-sided as hypothesized