Drivers of support for European integration during economic crisis: The Greek case

Abstract

As public support for European integration becomes increasingly vital to the longevity and legitimacy of the EU, the driving forces behind such support remain ambiguous. Using the critical case of Greece, I quantitatively demonstrate the elements influencing Greek attitudes towards integration during a tumultuous time of economic crisis and public alertness. A comprehensive literature examination and reduction of variables through principal component analysis revealed six possible predictors to test as drivers of public attitudes: sociotropic and egocentric economics, blame, trust, identity, and politics. The resulting, variable-specific regression models reveal associations in nearly every category. However, the final comprehensive model quantitatively shows that overall, attributions of blame and individuals’ trust at the EU level are the only significant predictors of their likelihood to support European integration. Such results are fresh contributions to the EI field, validating the previous literature’s shift from assessing output-based attitudes to ideational. Furthermore, the practical implications of these results suggest that while the economic crisis may not directly create an equally-strong crisis of diffuse support, policy and democratic reform must be addressed to stop the slow decline of broad support for European integration.