Domination and differentiation: Examining the link between implementation of and support for differentiated integration

Questions about the public desire for differentiated integration have gained increasing prominence in academic debates about the path forward for the post-Brexit EU. However, we still do not know much about how exposure to differentiated integration shapes the public’s views of it. Using survey data from 2020-21, this paper finds that exposure to externally imposed temporal differentiation has no real effect on support for the very same mode of differentiation. Similarly, the exposure to voluntary modes of constitutional differentiation found in the Nordic countries has spawned no similar increase in support for the increased use of constitutional differentiated integration in EU policies. There is however a strong effect of Central and Eastern European and Nordic citizenship on support for constitutional differentiated integration. This may be explained by how the Euroscepticism of both regions tend to have a sovereigntist bent. In other words, the current patterns of politicization of integration may be more important for explaining support for differentiation than the historical exposure to it. The results are important because they shine a light on the drivers of support for a more differentiated post-Brexit EU. These insights will be important both to the still emerging literature on public support for differentiated integration as well as political debates about the shape of the future EU.