Political context and European integration

Previous studies have underlined different factors to explain citizens’ attitudes towards European integration: utilitarian calculations about the benefits and costs of integration, citizens’ national identification and political cues (ideology, party identification). This paper claims that the influence of the structure of political competition has been ignored to explain public opinion about Europe. Using data from the IntUne project for 16 countries and the Chapel Hill expert survey, this paper has two main objectives: first to define the structure of political competition and second, to empirically test the effect of party competition on citizens’ attitudes towards Europe. More concretely, the paper studies on the one hand how competition directly affects citizens’ attitudes (reducing or enhancing support) and on the other, how competition mediates the strength of other explanations of support (increasing or decreasing the effect of national belongings).