The Structure of the European Attitudinal Sphere, 1999-2008

The paper explores the relationships among socialist, environmentalist, Euroskeptic, authoritarian, religious and xenophobic attitudes with the aim of identifying the structure of the attitudinal-ideological space of Europe. The attitudinal configurations are analyzed at different levels of politicization with the help of left-right self-placement scales and variables measuring party choice. The analysis shows whether the combinations that are well-known from elite discourse are reproduced at mass level and whether Europe has arrived to a single, integrated preference-space or is divided by significant cross-country and cross-regional differences. The contrast between the 1999 and 2008 EVS data provides opportunities for assessing whether Europe is becoming more integrated in terms of attitudes. Next to the analysis of bivariate relations between specific attitudes the paper investigates the degree of complexity of the ideological sphere and the configuration of ideological structures with the help of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and Structural Equation Modeling.