The effect of a sequence of external threats on feelings of European community

How are EU attitudes changing in light of the series of external threats that the EU is facing? While the available research shows that support for specific European policies and institutions has gone up in face of threats such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g. Mäder et al, 2023; Natili and Visconti, 2023; Wang and Moise, 2023), research is much more mixed when it comes to more fundamental attitudes like identity and values (e.g. Hernandez and Ares, 2023; Mader and Schoen, 2023). In other words, the question remains whether we are seeing more of an anxiety driven rally round the flag effect that leads to a temporal ‘whatever it takes’ acceptance of EU policies, or rather something akin to a ‘Zeitenwende’ in which attitudes change in a more fundamental way. This study aims to contribute to both our conceptual and empirical understanding of what such a change might look like. More in particular, it introduces a measure of political community rather than identity, which revolves more around the pragmatist notion of sharing political project, a central element of which is an awareness of dependence. Empirically, it employs a survey experiment in which participants are exposed to stimuli priming a range of threats (the Russian invasion, the rise of China, climate change, terrorism). By looking at how combinations of such stimuli affect different attitudes differently, it wants to shed light on the question what kind of change in attitudes we are seeing.