Out now: MAXCAP Working Paper No. 6

The MAX­CAP Working Pa­per No. 6 “Contextual Policy Reading of Public Opinion Data and Recent Trends in Attitudes towards European Integration” by Geo­rgi Di­mitrov, Ka­loy­an Ha­ral­am­piev and Stoy­cho P. Stoy­chev has been pub­lis­hed. You can down­load the Working Pa­per here.

In co­o­pe­ra­ti­on with Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty, the authors de­ve­lo­ped a fra­me­work for the con­tex­tu­al po­licy re­a­ding of pub­lic opi­ni­on data and re­cent trends in at­ti­tu­des to­wards Eu­ro­pe­an in­teg­ra­ti­on. The pa­per pre­sents a lo­gi­cal­ly in­tegra­ted se­ries of em­pi­ri­cal mi­cro-stu­dies re­sol­ving prob­lems in an in­duc­ti­ve man­ner. Using main­ly Eu­ro­ba­ro­me­ter data and heu­ris­tics of the clas­si­fi­ca­ti­on tree ana­ly­sis, the authors argue that:

a) Pro/con­tra EU en­lar­ge­ment at­ti­tu­des are a con­struct of di­ver­se, mul­ti­fa­ce­ted re­la­ti­ons­hips. It is main­ly a pro­jec­tion of an ext­re­me­ly com­plex set of other va­lues and spe­ci­fic pre­mi­ses upon the EU’s fu­tu­re, which, as a sys­tem, es­tab­lish the struc­tu­re of what seems to be an ‘at­ti­tu­de to­wards the EU and its en­lar­ge­ment’;

b) Ci­ti­zens’ at­ti­tu­des are cle­ar­ly po­la­ri­zed in most coun­tries and the­re is a ste­a­dy, in­cre­a­sing trend for ne­ga­ti­ve at­ti­tu­des to pre­vail;

c) The struc­tu­ral cau­ses for the­se po­la­riza­ti­ons are, most sig­ni­fi­cantly, na­ti­o­nal­ly spe­ci­fic and go down to 13 levels of fac­tor in­flu­en­ces. The stron­gest among the­se fac­tors are ba­sed on the most prag­ma­tic as­pects of so­ci­al life, de­pen­ding on the re­spec­ti­ve coun­try’s mem­ber­ship sta­tus and do­mes­tic po­licy-ma­king. The­se fac­tors exert in­flu­ence in dif­fe­rent pro­por­ti­ons — in line with the di­ver­si­ty of mul­tip­le na­ti­o­nal and re­gi­o­nal con­texts. The po­la­riza­ti­on is a re­sult of va­ry­ing sets of fac­tors, which them­sel­ves vary in eve­ry sin­gle case in strength and sig­ni­fi­can­ce.

It is the ob­jec­ti­ve of the MAX­CAP Working Pa­per Se­ries to dis­se­mi­na­te the re­search re­sults of the re­search con­sor­ti­um to a wide au­di­ence, in­clu­ding the aca­de­mia as well as the ge­ne­ral pub­lic. Thus, all Working Pa­pers can be down­loa­ded free of char­ge from our website.

Date: 

Thu, 2015-03-12 23:30