Party-system politicisation over EU integration and citizens’ political awareness of EU affairs

Citizens’ awareness of politics includes a kaleidoscopic set of attitudes and behaviours describing peoples’ perceptions and acts within the public sphere. The way citizens get information and knowledge about a political subject/issue has been linked to structural characteristics (such as education or social status) and environmental elements. As the information within the environment changes, also citizens’ awareness is supposed to change in both the magnitude and the ways to deal with political matters. Despite this consideration, the relationship between political conflict and citizens’ awareness is relatively unexplored. While politicisation becomes a core subject in social sciences, the implications of a politicised environment for citizens’ awareness remain largely unknown. Do individuals’ interests, knowledge, and information about an issue change when politicisation over that issue arises? Are then awareness and politicisation related? Does awareness affect the way individuals takes side on a polarised issue? This study aims to address these issues within the politicisation process in the European Union by considering the dynamics developed in the last decade between parties and citizens. As political parties represent a crucial driver of politicisation, we test the relationship between the main components of EU politicisation in party systems and citizens’ different dimensions of political awareness using Chapell Hill and Eurobarometer data. The tests of the hypotheses are conducted through statistical methods