Pierangelo Isernia, Maurizio Cotta and Paolo Bellucci
CIRCaP - University of Siena, Italy
The last few years have seen public dissatisfaction with the growth of the scope, nature and pace of European integration. According to some interpretations, the most recent developments in Europe – such as the Euro, the expansion to Eastern and Central Europe and the bolder steps being taken toward the creation of a common labor and capital market – are increasingly perceived as too costly for the benefits gained and, possibly, a threat to local and national identities and interests. European integration is increasingly seen as a potent manifestation of those globalizing processes that incite so many cultural, political and social reactions among the public of many industrialized countries.
These reactions to Europeanization as a form of globalization raise a puzzling paradox for Europe that is at the very core of what European integration is meant to be, its overarching goals and its long-term developments. The paradox lies in the fact that, nowadays, growing sectors of public opinion tend to perceive the European Project as a globalizing threat to their national and local identities while, on the contrary, for others, especially at the elite level, the European Project has been defined (as well as presented to the public) since its inception as an intentional strategic attempt to effectively cope with some of the very problems caused by globalization, and to address and possibly solve problems of the magnitude that European nation-states had to face when new global challenges emerged at the end of the Second World War.
In this paper, we explore the connection between Europeanization and globalization, using survey data at the levels of both the masses and the elite, and focusing more specifically on three different issues:
First, to what extent is this view of Europeanization as a form of globalization prevalent throughout the European countries among the masses? Second, is it common among the political and economic elites, both domestically and at the European level, or there is here a gap in the perception of the role of Europe among the public and their elite? Third, is European integration perceived as the best way to address problems that are perceived as global in nature and scope, or is the nation-state still the most preferable level of operation?
In this paper, we explore these issues on the basis of a quite diversified set of data drawn from surveys of the general public and of the elite. Our paper begins with a discussion of the existing literature on European integration and globalization among the general public in Europe. It then discusses the data, which has become available in the last ten years, on attitudes toward globalization and how it is related to European integration. In the third section, we explore a simple model that relates globalization, when perceived as a threat, to the most appropriate response to it, either national or European, and we explore two sets of intervening variables that might affect the preferable response. In this context, we explore the extent to which national and European identity, citizenship and economic interests affect both the perception of threats from globalization and the ability of the European Union to cope with these threats.