The EU as a Saviour and a Saint? Corruption and Public Support for EU Cohesion

While the European Union is plagued by massive social and economic inequality, not least in the wake of both the enlargement and the financial crises, we know surprisingly little about the sources of public support for redistribution and further economic integration. This paper investigates the determinants of public support for the EU:s most significant tool for reducing inequalities: Cohesion Policy. We suggest that support for redistribution is highly contingent upon both the quality of domestic institutions and individual level perceptions of corruption. In examining this, we present unique and newly collected survey data on citizen attitudes regarding the main idea behind Cohesion Policy; inter-EU redistribution. We show that perceptions of domestic corruption increases support for Cohesion but only in contexts where the quality of government (QoG) is low and public service delivery deficient. In contexts where the QoG is high, perceptions of corruption have no such effect. We conclude that perceptions of domestic corruption will only drive support for cohesion in contexts where the EU can be perceived as both a potential saviour and - relative to domestic government - a saint. Thus, the QoG determines whether the EU is seen as able to compensate for the deficiencies of domestic institutions or whether perceptions of corruption simply captures a general distrust in the redistributive capacity of elites. Implications for the future of Cohesion Policy are discussed.