Foreign policy preferences and shifting group identities in a continent under threat

Abstract

Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, escalating geopolitical tensions, shifting migration patterns, and the rise of far-right movements, European citizens increasingly feel under threat and are reassessing their relationship to the rest of the world. This development raises an important question: Do these heightened threat environments transform how Europeans define group boundaries, relate to out-groups, and form preferences over foreign policy? This panel brings together four innovative papers that use survey research and survey experiments to examine how Europeans interpret and respond to a rapidly changing geopolitical and social landscape. Together, the papers investigate how citizens define the boundaries of “Europe,” how they differentiate between internal and external others, and how they form preferences over security cooperation, reciprocity in international relations, and responses to global crises.

Title	Details
Too Close to Ignore: How Geographical Proximity Shapes Support for European Security Cooperation	View Paper Details
Threat perception, reciprocity, and Foreign-Policy preferences: a two-stage conjoint experiment on reactive foreign policy attitudes across five continents.	View Paper Details
Fortress Europe in the Making? How Migration and Radical Right Politics Shape the Evolution of European In-Group Preferences	View Paper Details
Who counts as European? A Conjoint Experiment on Competing Conceptions of Europeanness	View Paper Details