Identity and Economic Rationality : Explaining Attitudes towards the EU in a Time of Crisis

Fifteen years after Matthew Gabel’s seminal work on support for European integration (1998a), this paper empirically tests the main frameworks to explain attitudes towards the EU. In Gabel’s article, findings show that citizen’s support could be explained by both cognitive mobilization and political values (affective dimension), in particular across original member states, while policy effects on welfare, political parties and government support (utilitarian dimension) were determinant in later member states. This paper replicates Matthew Gabel’s analysis, using the IntUne data (Cotta et al. 2009) and, first, briefly presents the literature on public opinion and European integration and the most recent findings. Second, it tests the main theories across Western and Central and Eastern European member states. Finally, it examines two case studies, Italy, as one of the founding member states that has undergone economic recession for four years in a row, and Poland, as one of the recent new member states that represented half of the 2004 enlargement and is the eight biggest economy in the EU.