The long-term sustainability of the euro and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) depends heavily on their ability to attract widespread public support. The support shown for the euro throughout its first two decades has helped to shield it against populist attempts at the national level to dismantle the common currency. It has granted political legitimacy to the presidents of the European Central Bank to do "whatever it takes" whenever a serious crisis has threatened the viability of the euro. Public Support for the Euro is the second of two open-access volumes presenting a selection of the author's essays on Labor Productivity, Monetary Economics, and Political Economy. This second volume brings together eleven of the author's essays, selected with the aim of providing an overview of his research to date on public support for and the economics and political economy of the euro and EMU.
The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in its existence. No time in its history has it looked so economically fragile, so unsecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle the crisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault of Eurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recent decades have led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU is more reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than ever before. This book examines the role of public opinion in the European integration process. It develops a novel theory of public opinion that stresses the deep interconnectedness between people's views about European and national politics, and suggests that public opinion cannot simply be characterized as either Eurosceptic or not, but rather consists of different types. This is important because these types coincide with fundamentally different views about the way the EU should be reformed and which policy priorities should be pursued. These types also have very different consequences for behaviour in elections and referenda. Euroscepticism is such a diverse phenomenon because the Eurozone crisis has exacerbated the structural imbalances within the EU. As the economic and political fates of member states diverged, people's experiences with and evaluations of the EU and national political systems also grew further apart. The heterogeneity in public preferences that this book has uncovered makes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing Euroscepticism unlikely to be successful.
In this book, a historical analysis of the precedents of the euro is examined within the context of the current issues affecting the Eurozone and the long-term effects of the institutional changes implemented since 2010. The book begins by placing the Eurozone challenges in the historical context of previous monetary unions, drawing on the experience of the gold standard. It then specifically focuses on the problems arising from the running of permanent trade imbalances within the Eurozone. The authors explore the advantages and disadvantages of being a member of the Eurozone and attempt to measure the optimality of a currency area by the calculation of an index on internal macroeconomic asymmetries. They address the proposals recently made in favour of a fiscal union in the Euro zone; including the economic and political feasibility of fiscal transfers in the Eurozone. The final two papers discuss whether the monetary union is in fact more than just that, and whether it will lead inevitably to some form of political union if it is to survive. With chapters by leading experts from both Europe and the UK, this book will appeal to students in Economics, Finance, Politics, EU integration and European studies; as well as academics and professional economists doing research in EU integration, the Euro zone, monetary history and monetary and banking unions in Europe, the UK and elsewhere.
A central question in political representation is whether government responds to the people. To understand that, we need to know what the government is doing, and what the people think of it. We seek to understand a key question necessary to answer those bigger questions: How does American public opinion move over time? We posit three patterns of change over time in public opinion, depending on the type of issue. Issues on which the two parties regularly disagree provide clear partisan cues to the public. For these party-cue issues we present a slight variation on the thermostatic theory from (Soroka and Wlezien (2010); Wlezien (1995)); our “implied thermostatic model.” A smaller number of issues divide the public along lines unrelated to partisanship, and so partisan control of government provides no relevant clue. Finally, we note a small but important class of issues which capture response to cultural shifts.
This article analyses the evolution of public support for the single European currency, the euro, from 1990 to 2014 for a 12-country sample of the euro area (EA-12), focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, starting in 2008. We find that citizens' support for the euro on average was marginally reduced during the first six years of the crisis, and that support has remained at high levels. While the pronounced increase in unemployment in the EA-12 throughout the crisis has led to a marked decline in trust in the European Central Bank (ECB), it is only weakly related to support for the euro.
Although political conversations on European integration are common, they are not part of existing explanations for attitude formation on the EU. This book examines the impact of social interactions, specifically interpersonal and informal discussions, on shaping individuals’ views on European integration. Looking at opinion formation through the lens of social networks, the author develops an innovative argument about the role that social networks play in delivering information and moulding individuals’ identities. Including original survey data and an extended case study on Poland, the book identifies three processes through which informal discussions could affect views on integration and shows that differences in discussion dynamics explain why some people change their opinions while other remain loyal to their views. It shows that well-connected leaders in small communities can use informal talks to ensure the spread of local ideas, such as opposition to the EU, even when such ideas are unpopular at the national level. This book demonstrates that people who engage in informal talks about politics behave differently than those who are excluded from such interactions. Social Networks and Public Support for the European Union will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, public opinion, social networks, political marketing, deliberation, Eastern Europe and comparative politics.
This open access book discusses financial crisis management and policy in Europe and Latin America, with a special focus on equity and democracy. Based on a three-year research project by the Jean Monnet Network, this volume takes an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, analyzing both the role and impact of the EU and regional organizations in Latin America on crisis management as well as the consequences of crisis on the process of European integration and on Latin America’s regionalism. The book begins with a theoretical introduction, exploring the effects of the paradigm change on economic policies in Europe and in Latin America and analyzing key systemic aspects of the unsustainability of the present economic system explaining the global crises and their interconnections. The following chapters are divided into sections. The second section explores aspects of regional governance and how the economic and financial crises were managed on a macro level in Europe and Latin America. The third and fourth sections use case studies to drill down to the impact of the crises at the national and regional levels, including the emergence of political polarization and rise in populism in both areas. The last section presents proposals for reform, including the transition from finance capitalism to a sustainable real capitalism in both regions and at the inter-regional level of EU-LAC relations.The volume concludes with an epilogue on financial crises, regionalism, and domestic adjustment by Loukas Tsoukalis, President of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Written by an international network of academics, practitioners and policy advisors, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students interested in macroeconomics, comparative regionalism, democracy, and financial crisis management as well as politicians, policy advisors, and members of national and regional organizations in the EU and Latin America.
Public support for the delegation of competencies to Europe is at the heart of this book. Thomas Christin analyzes this major issue for European integration, using survey and contextual data for country characteristics from 29 states, both members of the European Union and candidate countries. This innovative study shows how an affective factor (identification) and a utilitarian factor (the quality of governance) influence citizens' willingness to delegate competencies to the EU. Reasonable Europeans illustrates the major potential that this less rigid utilitarian factor conceals for the future development of the European Union specifically, as well as for federal systems generally.
The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects on health and economic activity worldwide, including in the Euro Area. The application of mandatory lockdowns contributed to a sharp fall in production and a rise in unemployment, inducing an expansionary fiscal and monetary response. Using a uniquely large macro database, this paper examines the effects of the pandemic and the ensuing economic policies on public support for the common currency, the euro, as measured by the Eurobarometersurvey. It findsthat public support for the euro reached historically high levels in a majority of the 19 Euro Area member states in the midst of the pandemic. This finding suggests that the expansionary fiscal policies initiated at the EU level significantly contributed to this outcome, while the monetary measures taken by the European Central Bank did not have a similar effect.
