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Understanding Public Opinion towards the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) – An Empirical Examination of Attitude Formation in High Politics

European Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Security
Political Sociology
Quantitative
Public Opinion
Konstantin Gavras
Universität Mannheim
Konstantin Gavras
Universität Mannheim

Abstract

Security and defense policies have traditionally not received much public attention in Europe. Some even argue that public opinion should not be considered in high politics in general. However, since the end of the Cold War Europe finds itself in a fundamentally new security environment, which requires new political initiatives. Facing several threats from in- and outside, the EU is aiming at integrating security and defense policies of its member states for about two decades now. This has both implications for security politics as such, but also its political legitimacy. Although there is already a wide discussion about potential goals, objectives and capabilities of the CSDP (Howorth 2004, Menon 2011, Hofmann 2011, Engberg 2013), the literature has widely ignored public attitudes towards the CSDP. I argue that examining public opinion on this topic is relevant since new policies – especially when integrating them to the European level – require public support for successful implementation. In this paper, I present a framework on how national publics develop attitudes towards policies in high politics within a multi-level system. Extending the traditional RAS-model (Zaller 1992), I argue that the public faces a large variety of elite cues in multi-level systems with competing policy-makers, which prevents them from forming stable attitudes easily. Furthermore, predispositions concerning security and defense policies are not as well developed as those towards domestic policies, providing another obstacle for forming stable attitudes. Using their general attitudes towards European integration, individuals select their most reliable and acceptable elites’ information. Individuals favorable of further European integration follow the cues provided by European elites, whereas those opposing further European integration rather accept information by their national elites. Yet, both groups require elite cues highlighting specific aspects of the CSDP to be able to align their foreign policy postures (Gravelle/Reifler/Scotto 2017) with opinions towards the CSDP. In order to test my assumptions, I combine recent methods of quantitative text analysis on strategy papers and news articles with results from an original cross-national survey in Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain. Using dictionary approaches and the Wordscores algorithm, I scale preferences of the national elite actors and the EU using their published strategy papers as well as positions adopted by national newspapers since 2016 in these four countries. Using multi-level modelling techniques, I analyze that public support on the CSDP varies both within and between national publics depending on the cues provided by elite actors and individuals’ foreign policy postures. This paper advances our knowledge on how individuals make up their mind on security and defense policies in multi-level systems, and sheds light on how attitudes towards newly emerging policies develop. Furthermore, I show that elites should carefully consider public opinion during policy implementation, especially when integrating high politics to the European level.