Support for the European Union: Re-Evaluating Responses to
Eurobarometer Surveys
Jeremy Albright
November 5, 2003
Abstract
The dominant approach to studying levels of support for the European Union has been to look
at individuals’ rational appraisals of their potential to benefit from integration. However, this
approach rests on the strong assumption that individuals are fully rational and can adequately
process abstract information about supranational institutions. I argue that this assumption
is too strong and offer an alternative perspective for understanding how citizens, when called
upon to do so, evaluate the European Union. I argue first that individuals who lack the cognitive
capacity to process information about the EU evaluate its institutions differently from those who
do have the necessary skills. I also argue that the complexity of issues relating to integration
causes many citizens, when forced to express an opinion on the EU, to draw on their experiences
with more proximate institutions in their home countries. I find support for the hypotheses that
the cognitively sophisticated are more likely to express specific support for the EU, as are those
who give positive evaluations of their domestic institutions.
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Introduction
Modelling support for the European Union (EU) has been a vibrant area of research for the last
fifteen years. While early research focused on stable characteristics of individuals such as values
and cognitive skills (Inglehart, Rabier, Reif 1991), more recent work has focused on how citizens of
member countries form rational appraisals of how they may benefit from or be harmed by European
integration (e.g. Gabel 1998a). While the effects of certain variables from both approaches have
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