A too complicated Europe? Lack of information and parties’ cues in citizens’ Europeanism

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relation between information and parties’ influence on public opinion. The focus is on a cueing process: the European Union is a political system that people can perceive as distant and complex. It is therefore likely that people lack the relevant information for expressing an autonomous idea of the integration process and consequently rely on their preferred party’s stance on EU. This top-down process makes party position be the cause rather than the consequence of voters’ preferences, reducing the level of accountability of political elite. The present paper tests the premise of the top-down model looking at the effect that citizens’ political sophistication and the complexity of the issue have on effectiveness of party cues. The results of both an experimental and a cross-sectional analysis show that party influence is moderated by voters’ level of political sophistication, and that the use of party heuristics for more complex issues is not higher than for less complex ones. However, the complexity of the issue is fundamental for the moderating role played by political sophistication.