EU Citizens' Evaluation of the EU's Economic Crisis Management

There is no lack of contributions by political scientists, economists, and other social scientists that have (critically) evaluated the various aspects of economic crisis management within the European Union (EU) after the 'outbreak' of the global financial crisis in 2008/2009. Complementary to this expert discourse, this paper focuses on adimension that has been relatively neglected in the social science literature on the EU's crisis so far: How do EU citizens evaluate the economic crisis management of their governments? To get answers to his question, this paper uses statistical methods and data from internationally comparativepublic opinion polls provided by various pollsters. Among other things, it will be explored which factors help explain the observable cross-country differences in citizens' perceptions/evaluations of the EU's economic crisis management. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the empirical findings for EU governments and "European Integration" as a political project.