Explaining Support for the United States of Europe: Evidence from Austria

The label “United States of Europe” is often used as a synonym for a deeper political integration of Europe in the future. While the exact terms of such a political system remain unclear, the idea itself has a long tradition and marks one end of the spectrum in the discussion about possible future developments of the EU (the other being a sole focus on the common market). The political discourse gained new relevance when the European Commission issued the White Paper on the Future of Europe in 2017 and put different scenarios up for discussion. At the same time, however, it appears that systematic research on the voters’ perception on the United States are rare. Therefore, we present an in-depth analysis of people’s support of the United States of Europe and a comparison of our results to the scenarios issued by Jean-Claude Juncker’s commission. In so doing, we transfer the well-known concepts of political efficacy and social capital to the European level and measure their impact on the acceptance and even support for this vision of Europe. We argue that people are only open about the idea of the United States of Europe if they a) understand EU politics and feel competent to participate in a discussion about the EU, b) have the feeling that their interests are heard by EU politicians and they have the power to influence policy-making at the EU level, and c) they have a favorable attitude towards or positive experiences with other Europeans. If those criteria are not met, the support for scaling back the EU increases. As future changes to the political system of the EU are based on the status quo, creating the United States would only be possible if the mentioned preconditions are met. We base our work on new evidence from our Demokratieradar (democracy radar), a large-scale survey conducted in Austria by the Austrian Democracy Lab (ADL). The data was collected in fall and winter of 2018 (N=4,000) and we specifically designed the survey items to answer the research question at hand. We find that internal as well as external efficacy influence the acceptance of a deeper European integration indeed positively. Also, feeling a general trust towards fellow Europeans and sharing the (perceived) values of the EU have a positive impact. Furthermore, having experienced Europe first hand as part of a school exchange also have a relevant impact on the acceptance of the idea of a more integrated Europe. Controlling for sociodemographic variables, we find no significant effect for sex and education and only some evidence for age being a relevant predictor.