When National Politics Matters: Individual Predispositions, Party Politicisation and Public Opinion towards the European Union

This paper explores how individual predispositions on national politics influence support towards the European Union (EU) at different levels of politicisation of the EU in national party systems. The empirical analysis focuses on 26 EU member states countries from 2002 to 2019. I run multilevel regressions with cross-level interaction terms, relying on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, country-year-level data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. The findings provide a nuanced portrait of the effect of politicisation of the EU on citizens' attitudes towards the EU. On the one hand, party politicisation of EU issues informs public opinion. This political process implies that political parties debate EU issues, which is a vehicle for public opinion formation. The findings suggest that citizens tend to rely less on short-term national political attitudes that depend on satisfaction and evaluation to form their view on the EU when these issues are highly politicised. On the other hand, party politicisation of EU issues guides public opinion. This phenomenon is structured around the emerging cleavage on cultural issues, which indicates individuals when and how to mobilise their attitudes on this political axis to form their views on the EU. The findings indicate that citizens tend to strongly mobilise long-lasting structuring national political attitudes, such as national identity, to form their views on the EU when these issues are highly politicised.