Reconstituting Democracy: How to deal with the indifference of ordinary citizens?

This paper addresses the issue of the repercussions of European integration for democratic practices by studying the growing indifference towards European integration process. More specifically, the texts questions the statement of whether there has been a change in public attitudes towards European integration over the time, in terms of a passage from a permissive consensus of citizens towards a constraining dissensus (Hooghe & Marks, 2008; Down & Wilson, 2008). The thesis of constraining dissensus has been theorized by Hooghe and Marks in terms of progressive politicization of citizens and the polarization of their attitudes derived from the consolidation and prominence of the integration process. Building first on previous work of Down and Wilson (2008) and mobilizing a complementary longitudinal analysis of Eurobarometer data (1970-2002), this paper finds that the basic shift is one towards an indifferent or undecided attitude and not towards rejection. Thereafter, it contributes to the study of the processes of acceptance and/or resistance towards European integration, as well as its possible politicization, whilst concentrating more specifically on the non-polarization of a large proportion of ordinary citizens on European issues. Thus the paper proposes in the second part exploratory regression analyses of this non-polarized category of citizens using Eurobarometer data (2004 and 2006). In conclusion, we argue that next to the resistance generally studied and known as “Euroscepticism”, one also records during the last decade a reinforcement of the indifference and indecision of ordinary citizens. The non-polarization of a significant number of citizens is indeed an overwhelming and understudied phenomenon. The politicization of European issues does not necessarily lead to the polarization of citizens opinions; we argue here that it is necessary to incorporate the notion and the role of indecision and indifference into any reflection on the democratic legitimacy of the European integration process