Winners/Losers Cleavage and Opinion on the EU

During last decades, European societies have gone through several major changes. Globalization of economy and European integration are the strongest underlying forces of changes. These processes do not contribute to overall evolution only in positive direction. However, there can be also negative impact. Changes in economy lead into bigger gap between “poor” and “rich”. This process has its political outcomes, when people on the loosing side of globalization tend to support more radical solutions (e.g. extreme right wings parties). European integration is a process, which can modify results of globalization. Therefore an analysis of opinion on the EU among people threatened by attraction of extreme parties makes sense. This paper aims to answer question, how the opinion on EU is related to political orientation of individual citizens and how they modify political behavior and especially political participation of citizen. More accurately we study whether “losers of globalization” with certain opinion on the EU are more willing to participate in elections, or to use some non-electoral means of participation, or to stay out of politics. Analysis will by conducted on Eurobarometer data and on European Values Survey.