Support for Europe in Italy

The paper here purposed focuses on support and opposition towards Europe in Italy. Particularly, it aims to understand and explain the progressive growing opposition towards EU institutions within the Italian public opinion. Public opinion studies on attitudes towards the EU have recently opened a new course transcending the debate on public support for European integration. Those contributes (see for example Boomgarden et al., 2011; Beaudonnet and Di Mauro, forthcoming 2012; and Fuchs, 2010) have outclassed the concept of Euro-skepticism by using broader theoretical and analytical approaches aimed to frame the whole multifaceted set of public attitudes towards European Union. The conclusions reached by those new investigations open new fields of inquiry for the whole EU member states and particularly for the Italian case. For decades, both Italian media and parties depicted Italy such as one of the strongest pro-European countries, where support for the EU principles and policies is took for grant. Italians atavist dissatisfaction towards national political actors was often assumed as one of the main reasons of those pro-European sentiments. More recently this undisputed support for Europe has been reconsidered in scientific terms and challenged by some political issues such as economic downturn and immigration. Italian public opinion started to look at Europe with more critical eyes, while the consensus of Euro-skeptic parties grew. Although the downturn in Italian support for Europe appears evident, both its causes and consequences are largely underinvestigated under a multidimensional approach. The purpose of this paper is to fill in this analytical gap. It looks at the origins of specific and diffuse support for Europe in Italy. The analysis focuses first on the traditional sources of support/opposition (nationalism, identity, interest, attitudes towards government, etc.) towards Europe in the Italian case. Secondly, I will investigate the effects o some “Italian peculiarities”: namely the Italian dissatisfaction with politics and two mainstream issues such as immigration and economic crisis. The data have been supplied by the Eurobarometer series since 1990, and analyzed through logistic and linear models. References Beaudonnet, L. Di Mauro, D. Support for Europe: Assessing the Complexity of Individual Attitudes, European Integration online Papers, special issue ‘Beyond Euroskepticism, understanding attitudes towards the EU, by Beaudonnet L. and Di Mauro D., forthcoming 2011. Boomgaarden, H. G. Schuck, A. R. T. Elenbaas, M. and de Vreese, C. H. (2011) ‘Mapping EU attitudes: Conceptual and empirical dimensions of Euroscepticism and EU support’, European Union Politics, Vol. 12 (2): 241-266. Fuchs, D. Magni-Berton R. and Roger, A (2009) Eurosceptisism. Images of Europe among Mass Publics and Political Elites., Opladen & Farmington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers.