Introducing temporality as a predicting factor for citizens’ attitudes towards European integration. A mixed-method perspective

As views on the democratic deficit of the European Union and its search for legitimacy have changed dramatically over recent years, understanding what people think about European integration and why they develop such opinions and attitudes appears crucial. Since the first studies at the end of the 1960s, the role of different factors has largely been documented. Dutiful observers claim that nationality is the main determining factor for attitudes towards European integration. However, what lies behind nationality remains pretty much a black box. Our objective in this paper is to introduce a new element in the analysis of citizens’ attitudes: temporality. European integration being a process without a clear end goal, we believe the question of time is essential in EU polity and policies. In this paper, we claim that temporality is important not only to understand institutions and public policies, as shown by recent studies (Goetz et al., 2009) but also to comprehend citizens’ attitudes towards European integration and the different countries’ levels of support for the EU. We postulate that national visions of Europe derive from different perceptions of what the Union is (present) and where it is going (expected and desired future(s)). Our analyses are based both on quantitative data (Eurobarometer) and on two sets of qualitative data (interviews and focus-groups collected at ten years distance (mid 1990 and 2006) in France and Britain)